I adore Peter Hawes’ OCD-Doom… even if the WAD has jack shit to do with OCD. It’s a hard WAD to recommend, though. Its gimmicky focus means OCD-Doom has ended up with a relatively unflattering 2.5 stars on the /idgames Archive — and comments describing it as both “innovative” and “enjoyable” (5 stars)… and as “nauseating tripe” (0 stars). Hoo boy. You could say I’m something of a gimmick map aficionado, so OCD-Doom has got that going for it in my book. I also love me a black sheep, so I might be biased. But this WAD is just a heck of a good time,
Tag: Doom
Counterattack
Mechadon is known mostly for his contributions to community projects and multi-author megaWADs — projects in which he consistently steals the show. He’s also made more than his fair share of one-off maps, DM mapsets, co-op sets… What we’ve never seen from him is a solo, singleplayer mapset. Until now, that is. And it was well worth the wait. Mechadon’s style cannot be mistaken: beautifully crafted architecture on a grand scale, meticulously detailed all the way from a tiny light fixture up to the vaulted archways of a nightmarish mega-cathedral large enough to fit every single denizen of Hell. His
Mano Laikas: A road to Gamzatti
Nicolás Monti is an artist. Maybe the Picasso of Doom mapping. I’ve made a point of playing all his recent releases as they come. That includes my 2014 WAD Of The Year, Apostasy on Amalthea; one of my favorite WADs of 2015, Desecration on Thebe; and his most recent and expansive work, 2016’s Mano Laikas: A road to Gamzatti. Rounding out that roster is Erkattäññe, in my opinion Monti’s weakest WAD and yet the only one to win him a Cacoward. Erkattäññe didn’t work for me in large part because it was a Doom II WAD. Doom II’s textures just didn’t jive
Doom the Way id Did – The Lost Episodes
If you’ve played Doom the Way id Did, its Lost Episodes are essentially more of the that. A little less id-like, maybe, but with a wider quality spectrum. Doom the Way id Did: The Lost Episodes, to put it indelicately, is six episodes of leftovers and cut maps that didn’t make it into the official DTWiD release. What you have to keep in mind when saying these maps were “cut,” though, is why they would have been cut. The strict rules of DTWiD mean that submitted maps could easily be — and often were — rejected not for being of low
Tech Gone Bad
John Romero is back, baby — and he’s brought a new Doom level with him. No, you didn’t read that wrong. Over twenty years after the game came out, Romero’s back with a freshly-baked map. Maybe the first of many, if we’re lucky. [Edit: We were.] Welcome to Tech Gone Bad, though “E1M8b,” the WAD’s file name, may be a more fitting title. This is Romero’s take on Phobos Anomaly, one of only two maps in Doom’s first episode that he didn’t make himself. Being E1M8, it’s a classic showdown with the Bruiser Brothers, only with a twist. And much
A DIGITALEIDOSCOPE Exclusive: 13 Most Memorable Maps
It’s the holidays! Another Doomsday just a few days ago, with Christmas and New Years right on the horizon. There’s another sort of holiday to celebrate today, too: the 25th episode of What’s Awesome, Doom?, and just over three years that I’ve been doing the column! Yeah, I’ve really only done 25 episodes in all that time. What a professional! To celebrate the holiday season and these big landmarks, I’ve put together a special episode: one of those Top Ten lists the internet loves so much. Except this is a Top 13 — my personal most memorable maps: three official
Doom the Way id Did
Another Doom anniversary, another classic Doom-styled mapset. What better way to celebrate Doom’s 22nd birthday than with what, in an alternate universe, could have been id’s official Doom levels? Doom the Way id Did is the Doom homage to end all Doom homages. Tired of mapsets only textured to look like E1 but don’t play anything like it? Done with the straight lines and right angles of modern maps? This is the WAD for you: for the first time, a full, three-episode megaWAD that attempts to recapture the essence of id’s original levels in every possible way. I can’t list
Scythe
It’s weird to think that I’ve been doing this Doom thing consistently for over a decade. 2002 is when I really got into it, even if I did dabble in Doom as a kid back in ’94. I was a teenager by 2002: no longer terrified of the pixelated demons, and newly equipped to navigate the internet and find WADs to play. That’s where I found the three names that still embody that early time of wonder and discovery, as I first stepped into the glorious world of Doom WADs: STRAIN, 2002 A Doom Odyssey, and Scythe. Returning to Scythe
Monument
Chris Hansen is the God King of the single-map WAD, and virtually his entire two-decade body of work, outside of the occasional community project contribution or collaboration with Paul Corfiatis, fits that mold. Hansen has been doing what he does, and doing it brilliantly, for a very long time. So, of course, here comes Monument to change all that. Monument is Chris Hansen’s greatest hits album. Most of the Episode 2-styled maps he’s released throughout his career are assembled here as part of a nine-level episode. That includes last year’s award-winning The Wailing Horde (diced into three more digestible chunks),
50 Shades of Graytall
Limitation projects. Love ’em or hate ’em, there’s no escaping them. You see a lot of the standard bemoaning about the concept — “Why can’t anyone just make a normal WAD anymore?” — but the truth is you could do a lot worse with one of those “normal” WADs than you could with something like 50 Shades of Graytall. Of all the limitation projects that’ve come out in the last decade or more, 50 Shades may be the most compelling. The idea behind all these projects is to put creators in increasingly restrictive boxes — to force them to be