Your old pal scwiba is ready to hang it up, folks. Certainly not ready to stop playing Doom WADs, but ready to stop writing about them. And thinking about writing about them, and playing them while thinking about writing about them. In total I’ve covered about 80 Doom WADs — with more than one thousand maps between them. What more is there to say, after all? You know, it’s odd to reflect on everything I’ve written here, because I always come back to this idea that I’m not cut out to be one of those great, lifelong reviewers. I’m no
Tag: Doom
Eviternity
December 10, 2018 marked the 25th anniversary of Doom. There were about as many different ways of celebrating the occasion as there are people who play Doom. Countless retrospectives dotted the internet landscape. Tons of new mapsets were released around that date, including one of my own. That’s not to mention other big projects like the colossal OTEX texture pack. It was a big day, but to my reckoning the biggest thing by far to come out of Doom’s 25th birthday was Eviternity. The reasons are many, not least of which is that Eviternity was the flagship WAD to feature
Sharp Things
Gosh, when was the last time we talked about an old-fashioned standalone map? UAC_DEAD back in… 2018? Oh boy. A bit of inside baseball here, but this episode was up in the air until last night. I planned Going Down as Episode 61 for at least the last couple months, and the remaining WADs from here on out are pretty set in stone — I’ve already played them and know they’re awesome. But the WAD I penciled in for this particular slot, after playing through in its entirety, sorting all the screenshots, and outlining a review… it dawned on me
Going Down
We’re really in the final stretch, folks, and Going Down is one I’ve meant to check out for eight years now. Outside of the Doom community, Going Down’s creator Cyriak Harris was already pretty well-known by 2014. In fact, if you’ve spent any time on the weirder side of YouTube, you’ve assuredly seen at least one of his bizarre, mesmerizing music videos. “cows & cows & cows” currently has about 68 million views, and that’s not even Cyriak’s most popular video. If those videos are your only experience with Cyriak, you may actually find Going Down to be rather tame
Mass Extinction
I said we’d see Nicolás Monti one more time, didn’t I? I’m nothing if not true to my word. Mr. Monti in fact commented on a previous review of mine, quite a few years ago now, recommending that I play his megaWAD Mass Extinction. His “most mature work” as he called it, and believed it would be up my alley. Well, I’m ashamed to say that it took me until late in 2021 to take him up on that, but he was spot on. Mass Extinction is more of the Nicolás Monti that I love. What else do you say
The City of Damned Children
I’ve never had the pleasure of watching the ’90s cult flick The City of Lost Children, but having played the Doom WAD inspired by it, I really feel like I should. The City of Damned Children is a 2020 community project, part of the long-running Doomer Board Project series, in which Auger;Zenith was a later installment. I’m hard-pressed to think of two mapsets more thematically at odds. Zenith was all bright colors and wicked fights, lots of in-jokes and silly references, while Damned Children is more sedate and moody; not easy on the combat but certainly more concerned about establishing
100 Line Massacre
I ask you, dear reader: what greater joy is there than a 100-linedef map? ‘Tis a bliss like no other, whether in the playing or the making. Thank our lucky stars that Arsinikk and NinjaDelphox have blessed us with a Doom II WAD full of them, here at the end of all things. I really didn’t expect to be writing about any 2022 WADs in this last stretch, but what else could I do when a brand new, 32-map linedef limitation project comes out? Make room in the docket — that’s what! 100 Line Massacre is the work of two
Unwelcome
I live and breathe for the works of Doom modding that transcend being works of Doom modding — the WADs that advance my understanding of what a WAD can even be. There are plenty of total conversions of Doom, dating as far back as the mid-’90s. And thanks to advanced ports like GZDoom, there’s dozens of completely new games being developed today on the engine. But those projects aren’t what I’m talking about exactly. I’m more focused on what can be done within the confines of Doom while retaining its most basic and core elements. Unwelcome is one such project.
Auger;Zenith
I only learned of the Doomer Boards Project series shortly before the release of DBP26: La Cité des Enfants Damnés, The City of Damned Children. DBP26 came out around this time last year, and already we’re on to DBP38. I can’t fathom how they do it, but the virtuosos over on the Doomer Boards crank out one of these things every month — honestly deflating my ego a fair bit over the release schedule of my own UnSeries. A megaWAD made in just a month? Cool, cool; now do twelve of those every year. In any case, the Doomer Boards
rf1024
With over a year between each of these last three updates, I think it’s about time to admit that this column is reaching the end of its days. I’ve had a specific end in mind for years, actually, though I expected to get there much, much sooner. Between focusing on other projects (mostly WADs of my own), and the dreaded Real Life taking up more and more of my time, even plans of ending What’s Awesome, Doom? had to be put on the back burner for a long while. Now, though? With other chapters of my life coming to a