I can’t quite believe that I’ve been writing about Doom since 2012, and here we find ourselves in the far-flung future of 2022. Turn the clock back another ten years, all the way back to 2002, and you’d find me discovering the vast universe of custom Doom content for the very first time. I could never have suspected then how deeply I’d ultimately venture into that universe… or how I would contribute to it in my own small way. For the last decade I’ve tried to pay tribute to the projects that inspired me to open a map editor all
Tag: Scythe
Scythe X
Scythe X is basically two more episodes of Scythe II. That’s it. That’s the whole review. Thanks for coming, everybody. Alright, alright… Erik Alm made his triumphant return in 2009 with a quick one-two punch: the Scythe II re-release and the first release of Scythe X. It was a smart marketing move — filling out the famously empty three mapslots in Scythe II to reinvigorate interest in the series, and then jumping right into what were supposed to be episodic releases of the next WAD. Except that’s not what happened. We got the first two episodes of Scythe X at once
Arcane Dimensions
Many of my favorite Doom WADs — STRAIN, Scythe, Apostasy on Amalthea — are a bit of a mess. They’re works of undeniable (if undisciplined) genius, yet full of strange creative choices and huge fluctuations in quality. The mod we’re about to talk about may not be a Doom WAD, but it follows in that proud tradition just the same. It’s a profound, landmark achievement for its respective modding scene… but at the same time, the edges could have used a good amount more sanding. I’ve wanted to get into Quake mods for a long, long time… but moving into a new mod
Scythe II
Scythe II and I have a complicated relationship. I was a massive fan of Scythe years before the sequel was a thought in my head, so when II was released, I jumped on it like a rabid wombat. In the beginning, I was blinded by love for Erik Alm and the Scythe name. As the initial high faded, I found myself a tad disappointed. It wasn’t quite there for me — not quite what Scythe had been. And back in those days, I had an strange preference for tech maps, of which there were only five or so buried in
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