In the absence of a QuakeRL, I suppose this cameo will have to do. I can’t really tell you when I first came to be aware of Kornel Kisielewicz’s Doom, the Roguelike. It most certainly wasn’t in 2002, when the initial version was released, but it was definitely prior to the addition of Derek Yu’s non-ASCII graphics in 2012. Somewhere in that ten year window. Not that it matters. More to the poin...
2004 was a pretty solid year for Doom WADs, which is not exactly a surprising development given the state of things. With years of mapmaking experience to draw from, design sensibilities were, by and large, pretty sophisticated by this point in time, and many authors were producing levels one might call professional… if one was inclined to use such words to describe hobbyist pursuits. Furthermo...
Another week, another set of levels. Or in this case another subset of the same group of levels I’ve been playing for the past two. Let’s start that again. Hello and welcome to the third and final week of my in-depth look at Hell Revealed 2. Having now finished the damned thing I’m finally in a position to say something about the product as a whole. It is in fact… wait for it... a Doom WAD. Yup...
Welcome to week two of my ongoing misadventures in playing WADs that may or may not be too hard for me. Last week you may recall that I started playing Hell Revealed 2, the sequel to probably the most trying WAD in my map-playing career. To my great surprise and mild disappointment I’ve been making steady progress with it, which means I’ll most likely have to finish it come hell or high water n...
1997’s Hell Revealed is one of the few Doom fan creations that you could honestly argue has been as influential within the community as any of the original IWADs. It is not hyperbolic to claim that many of the super-hard WADs that have been released in the years following owe their very existence to Hell Revealed, which legitimized a brutal, take-no-prisoners approach toward gameplay that, more...
It’s not hard to understand why there are so many Episode 1 replacements out there. It was the shareware episode. It was played more than any other, and it has the most nostalgia attached to it. I’ve played more than a few E1 replacements, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone try what ReX Claussen has tried with 2004’s Phobos Revisited . More than an homage, it’s an attempt to create something ne...
Welcome to Contraville, USA, where slow-moving bullets are the #1 cause of death. Some things come along and take you totally by surprise, it seems. I had heard a little bit about 2004’s Action Doom prior to playing it, most of that little having to do with its over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek PR campaign involving fake print adverts , physical copies complete with manuals, and Action Doom-branded...
And so it ends with a whimper. I finished this whole “10 Years of Doom” business this week, wrapping it all up with the RTC-3057 demo (despite the full release being available. I know, I know). Turns out, it’s pretty busted in newer versions of ZDoom, with missing textures, bugged music cues, and an unusable pistol. Also, the final puzzle is hard to complete even when you know the solution. So,...
It’s been an eventful week of WAD playing here, much more so than the last in terms of the sheer number of WADs under my belt. Believe it or not, I’ve gone through twelve in seven days, and while a few of those were one-off levels, over half of them were episode-length affairs, and one was a full 32-level megaWAD (albeit a concise one). This leaves me with an interesting dilemma: I don’t have e...
So, whad’ya know? I did another one of these. The quest continues here in Doomville, where I’m currently knee deep in year nine of the Doomworld “10 Years” feature. The end is in sight, but there’s still plenty of Dooming to be had before the beast is finally slain. Two more WADs are under my belt this week, which, I know what you’re thinking, doesn't sound like much. But consider that that acc...
Against my better judgement recently, and in flagrant disregard for my rather tenuous grasp of entry-level mathematical concepts, I decided to tabulate just how many Doom maps I've played to completion. You see, some time ago (read: I'd rather not try to figure out exactly how long ago this was, lest it depress me) I got it into my head that it would be a good idea to play through every single-...