Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

[Average Manatee]

Good to see that someone else enjoyed Simulacrum as much as I did.

I've gone to DSDA as well. I like how it keeps map completion stats for wad levels, filling out that screen is sort of akin to an achievement

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I gave Simulacrum a go.

I quit before I even finished the first map.

'Gotcha' as a gimmick is one thing, but right on the first map it seems to be the overarcing theme. I'm never a fan of that. Out of curiosity I warped to the final map. Looked real nice and all, but the moment the monsters were alerted to me the game slowed to a crawl. I hadn't even fired a single shot.

Shame.

 

[JarlFrank]

Brutal Doom is nuts.
Imagine playing slaughter maps with that shit...

Say bye-bye to your framerate.

Say bye-bye to your health pool, too!

 

[NecroLord]

Brutal Doom is nuts.
Imagine playing slaughter maps with that shit...

Say bye-bye to your framerate.

Say bye-bye to your health pool, too!

Far too many slaughter wads fall in the trap of not leaving you much room to maneuver and be surrounded by demons from all sides.
I do wonder why some even bother including weapons other than the BFG, which is pretty much the workhorse of any self respecting slaughter wad...

 

[Average Manatee]

Constraining movement is the point of slaugther wads. The player is forced to figure out their own priorities of what to kill and where to stand to herd enemies into a place that allows evasion. Otherwise just throwing a bunch of monsters into an area doesn't make it harder, if e.g. they all come from a central location and the player can circle strafe indefinitely then there's not much difference between 100 monsters and 10,000 other than the time it takes for them to die.

You can absolutely beat those slaughter map fights with consistent strategies that understand their mechanics, and its not just about spamming BFG. For example, Simulacrum map 23, has one close quarters fight, 2 big fights without BFG, 1 fight with BFG (that is pretty much just a fun spam session with a ton of ammo), then the much bigger final fight where the BFG has to be used pretty judiciously only as a space clearing device while rockets and infighting do the rest of the work.

 

[NecroLord]

The player is forced to figure out their own priorities of what to kill

So basically everything.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Say bye-bye to your health pool, too!

Older versions of Brutal Doom were very generous about DoomGuy's maximum health/armor.

I noticed this by accident while zooming through a wad (TNTR, I think) and saw DoomGuy had 700 health and 400 armor.

Now it caps at 300 for both.

Aeons of Death has the ultra-rare Titan Armor that gives 500 armor (the maximum) which is so thick that DoomGuy essentially becomes bulletproof. Maximum health value is 666, but the game gets a little... weird if you manage to get it that high.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Played through Curse of Blood 2, a recent release.

Sadly it has compatibility issues with Brutal Doom, so my playthrough was weird at times, like how boss monsters just stood there without doing anything, and how 140 monsters all died suddenly in the final map without explanation.

I'd say it's OK, it's a good mix of nice-looking architecture and decent levels, though the 'gotcha'-moments staring pouring on a little thick towards the end. It's supposed to have a few new enemies, but the only one I encountered was a grey ghost-like imp that fired double cacodemon projectiles. An interesting and surprisingly tough addition.

MAP14 is the standout-map for me. Up 'till then it's just a decent mix of levels, but then this one rolls around with its hard-to-forget 'blue zone'. MAP20 is a large castle-like structure which overstays its welcome, but the worst map is easily MAP28 which is an even larger castle-like map - so large that my game started lagging right away. MAP25 is surprisingly neat, and MAP27 was fun and different.

But overall you'll quickly notice that the mapmakers love Lost Souls and hate radiation suits and exploding barrels. The final boss was either glitched or pathetically easy, one shot was all that it needed once exposed.

EDIT: Forgot to mention one thing that peeved me about this wad: Inconsistency. The base game teaches us that radioactive waste, blood and lava is bad to walk on, this wad throws all that out the window. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it doesn't. This also applies to blue and brown water. Combine that with the complete lack of radiation suits, and you start to get an idea of how low-key annoying this wad can get.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Tried out 'Vogel Im Käfig".

In a post-apocalyptic setting, this is a single map where you play a soldier tasked by the remnants of human authority to infiltrate a town overrun by a doomsday cult, and "neutralize their activities there" as they're believed to be connected to the demonic forces found all over the planet.

No new weapons or baddies, but plenty of reskin jobs.

On one hand the map is badly designed, clearly made to box in the player and create 'longest possible paths through an area'-scenarios. On the other hand it is dripping with atmosphere, desolate architecture and grim imagery. The monster reskins are pretty good, it's amazing how more terrifying Pinky becomes when one single detail is removed.

Eventually you reach your objective and...

You learn that the doomsday cult was actually fighting against the demonic forces, trying to preserve nature and hold back the worst of the demons... even though it meant ritual sacrifices of humans. And you, the jarhead that you are, put a stop to their actions once and for all... which causes the demonic invasion to begin in earnest. Ever fought ~7 cyberdemons at once? I haven't, but you're not supposed to, you're supposed to dodge them and head for the exit... which conveniently now takes a much longer path to reach, as lava pits have erupted all over the city.

Anyway, once you reach the end you realize that you doomed Mankind with your actions. The End.

 

[ghardy]

Another pointing-to. I played this one some months ago. I remembered it being quite fun, devious in some places.

Anomaly Report (2022)

It's the size of your standard megawad (32 maps). The choices of music are nice and fit the levels for the most part.
The textures (selected from the range of Final Doom games - Doom 2, TNT, Plutonia) are well used, the atmosphere thus created is effective and not hard on the eyes.

No new monsters, but the way the Good Old Bestiary has been deployed was entertaining. Encounters are fair, ammo is (just) enough.

All in all, a good one.

(I thought to mention that it was the runner-up for the 2022 Cacowards, but nowadays a Cacoward is a discommendation.)

 

[ferratilis]

Anomaly Report (2022)

If you haven't already, check out Reverie, by the same guy. I think it's his best work.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm having a go at "Road to Hades", another TNT-remake wad thingie.

It often leans too heavily into 'gotcha'-elements, like you opening a door and you see a monster, but the game immediately teleports the monster directly behind you. It's also doing its darndest to be "creative" when it comes to monster closets.

But it also has nice arena fights where a cyberdemon/spider mastermind is plonked into a group of lesser monsters, making it easy for monster infighting to take out either group while you take a breather in a corner somewhere.

For a while it was just following the motions, but after Map16 things start to get weird. There's a map where a giant worm has burrowed through all the rooms, Map18 is called 'Deaf, Dumb and Blind' and lives up to its name. Map20 takes the battle from skyscraper to skyscraper, culminating in a huge fight at the end with multiple cyberdemons and hordes of lesser demons. Map21 has to be seen to be believed... and then Map22 is just a stroll through the forest.

Dunno how it'll end, but that Map18-Map21 section at least goes into my history books.

EDIT: Finished it. Every map past Map22 is a slaughterfest, and when they start spamming Revenants is when I lose interest. Two notable exceptions - Map24 asks the age-old question "How about we make a map comprised solely of Pain Elementals?" (Watch the enemy counter rise every second.) Map26 only has ~100 enemies, but as it takes place on a moving ship the map immediately lagged out for me and entered negative framerates, so I had to skip that one.

The final map has the odd novelty that Romero's Head is moving - it's on a conveyor belt and needs to be fragged before it's too late. At least I think that's the case - it's completely exposed and I killed it in three seconds.

So yeah - not recommended except for a few maps as mentioned previously.

 

[ghardy]

Anomaly Report (2022)

If you haven't already, check out Reverie, by the same guy. I think it's his best work.

This one, is it?

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Reverie

"Each level was designed to be reminiscent of the style of classic mapsets (such as Plutonia, Cleimos 2, Icarus, Memento Mori, Requiem, and so on), with the accompanying text file listing the specific influences for each level."

Looks nice. Thanks!

 

[ferratilis]

Check out Pirate Doom 2, ye land lubbers. Bite sized maps with nice encounters, beautiful art and music, plenty of small details. Imo it's much better than the first.
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/pd2

 

[Baron Dupek]

Doom 64 for Dreamcast is out

https://github.com/jnmartin84/doom64-dc

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Been playing through "Necromancer's Thirst", which seems to be France's belated contribution to the Doom-community.

This has been fun so far. Level design is scoring big time here, it is so intricate and tightly woven together. It uses a mix of monster closets and teleport spawns, and some of these are damn sneaky. I'm still trying to figure out how they managed to make a monster and a super shotgun occupy the same space, but the monster doesn't 'pop out of the ground' until after you pick up the shotty. The end result looks like a silent teleport... right behind the player, of course.

The magic so far has been in the contents of the monster spawns. When a group of monsters appears, it's mixed. You get 1-2 zombiemen, 1-2 shotgunners, 1-2 imps, 1+ chaingunners, 1-2 Pinkies, and then later on a couple of Hell Knights or Revenants or Cacodemons thrown in. Never large groups and always mixed. This means infighting is always an option.

Monster build-up is gradual. By the end of the fifth map I had only encountered a single arch-vile and a single cyberdemon. But on the downside there are lots of monsters, Map05 has ~760 enemies.

Make note that I'm using Brutal Doom, and strangely this wad seems to compliment that perfectly - health and armor pickups are plentiful. BUT - this comes at a price.

This wad not only has a custom palette, but one that stretches over onto many of the monsters. Chaingunners wear bright green, Barons of Hell have been switched out for a winged version, while Cacodemons, Pain Elementals, Mancubi and Cyberdemons are almost colorless - this is all lost in Brutal Doom. In addition at least one of these monsters (Barons of Hell) has different beheavior in this wad, and that is lost as well. As a result playing this with BD is a completely different experience - and one that may have unforeseen consequences down the line.

I'm currently at Map07, and I seem to be stuck. The only way forward is through a mob of monsters (the first one of this size and strength in the wad) that I simply don't have the firepower to take on. It's not that I lack the weapons or ammo - I need the BFG for this one, and I don't have it.

Seeing how this wad is escalating, I snuck a look at Map30. First you get a scenic part where you reach a central bonfire with a dozen cyberdemons looking on, doing nothing. Then you have to reach the main circular arena (which is not as simple as it sounds) but once you arrive there you have to fight eight cyberdemons, one after another, each in a confined space, with at least one other cyberdemon always being able to target you as well. This part is outright impossible in BD due to how cyberdemons work there. BUT if you survive this, the circular arena properly opens up with another eight cyberdemons to kill, plus huge spawns of regular monsters, of which many are arch-viles. The goal is to reach and push four buttons, then enter the central point. All this in a hue of neon-green and gray. Good feckin' luck.

I honestly don't know whether I should bother to continue. It's clearly a masterfully crafted set of levels (people keep praising Map22, but I can only dream of reaching it) but it's way out of my league to play. Even with Aeons of Death this would be a challenge beyond my luck and abilities. 'Ludeat emptor' indeed.

 

[Sceptic]

I honestly don't know whether I should bother to continue. It's clearly a masterfully crafted set of levels (people keep praising Map22, but I can only dream of reaching it) but it's way out of my league to play.

I felt the same about 180MPV years ago*, so many amazingly crafted maps especially considering the speedmapping limit, but after a while every map was brutally murdering me. I like the French community a lot though, they seem like a chill bunch, I've never seen any drama among them, they tend to avoid derailing into politics, they just want to make and play and talk about wads.

* Actually I just feel the same about half of the wads that get released lately. Skill ceiling keeps going up, which is normal, but it seems to raise the floor along with it.

 

[HansDampf]

I've also noticed a kind of counter-movement to make easier WADs or at least properly implement lower difficulties.

 

[ghardy]

I've also noticed a kind of counter-movement to make easier WADs or at least properly implement lower difficulties.

That's good to know. I play HMP most of the time, though I gather that a majority of WAD makers seem to craft the player experience with UV in mind.

It looked to me a while ago that developers either

• didn't implement difficulty levels, or
• implemented but didn't test the difficulty levels.

The first alternative was at least honest.

Most of the time, the arguments against doing the hard work were boredom and tedium, with the entirely predictable outcome being that only the hardcore wackos played the WADs, skewing the feedback for the developers.

 

[Average Manatee]

I haven't really tried to play a whole wad through on lower difficulties but I do usually check out a few levels and they seem reasonable. The skill range of players is pretty large and different fights and mapping styles respond to difficulty differently so I'm sure it's not easy

 

[Alex]

Been playing through "Necromancer's Thirst", which seems to be France's belated contribution to the Doom-community.

This has been fun so far. Level design is scoring big time here, it is so intricate and tightly woven together. It uses a mix of monster closets and teleport spawns, and some of these are damn sneaky. I'm still trying to figure out how they managed to make a monster and a super shotgun occupy the same space, but the monster doesn't 'pop out of the ground' until after you pick up the shotty. The end result looks like a silent teleport... right behind the player, of course.

The magic so far has been in the contents of the monster spawns. When a group of monsters appears, it's mixed. You get 1-2 zombiemen, 1-2 shotgunners, 1-2 imps, 1+ chaingunners, 1-2 Pinkies, and then later on a couple of Hell Knights or Revenants or Cacodemons thrown in. Never large groups and always mixed. This means infighting is always an option.

Monster build-up is gradual. By the end of the fifth map I had only encountered a single arch-vile and a single cyberdemon. But on the downside there are lots of monsters, Map05 has ~760 enemies.

Make note that I'm using Brutal Doom, and strangely this wad seems to compliment that perfectly - health and armor pickups are plentiful. BUT - this comes at a price.

This wad not only has a custom palette, but one that stretches over onto many of the monsters. Chaingunners wear bright green, Barons of Hell have been switched out for a winged version, while Cacodemons, Pain Elementals, Mancubi and Cyberdemons are almost colorless - this is all lost in Brutal Doom. In addition at least one of these monsters (Barons of Hell) has different beheavior in this wad, and that is lost as well. As a result playing this with BD is a completely different experience - and one that may have unforeseen consequences down the line.

I'm currently at Map07, and I seem to be stuck. The only way forward is through a mob of monsters (the first one of this size and strength in the wad) that I simply don't have the firepower to take on. It's not that I lack the weapons or ammo - I need the BFG for this one, and I don't have it.

Seeing how this wad is escalating, I snuck a look at Map30. First you get a scenic part where you reach a central bonfire with a dozen cyberdemons looking on, doing nothing. Then you have to reach the main circular arena (which is not as simple as it sounds) but once you arrive there you have to fight eight cyberdemons, one after another, each in a confined space, with at least one other cyberdemon always being able to target you as well. This part is outright impossible in BD due to how cyberdemons work there. BUT if you survive this, the circular arena properly opens up with another eight cyberdemons to kill, plus huge spawns of regular monsters, of which many are arch-viles. The goal is to reach and push four buttons, then enter the central point. All this in a hue of neon-green and gray. Good feckin' luck.

I honestly don't know whether I should bother to continue. It's clearly a masterfully crafted set of levels (people keep praising Map22, but I can only dream of reaching it) but it's way out of my league to play. Even with Aeons of Death this would be a challenge beyond my luck and abilities. 'Ludeat emptor' indeed.

Have you tried playing without Brutal Doom to test the difficulty?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Have you tried playing without Brutal Doom to test the difficulty?

I played through Doom 1 (+ Thy Flesh Consumed) and Doom 2 back in the day, on Ultra-Violence, getting every level on 100% (except for that sole secret on Map15).

Without using a mouse.

I feel like a cripple playing Vanilla Doom, and I'm completely burnt out on it, ~30 years later. In all honesty it's easier to type IDDQD and cheat for a bit. :/

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Finally gave up on "Necromantic Thirst".

It was as I feared: The monster encounters kept escalating, and more and more I needed the BFG, but didn't have it.

I was supposed to get one on Map10, but since Brutal Doom has some randomness to its weapon drops, I instead got the Buzzsaw. While a powerful weapon, it's nowhere near as good as clearing out enemies as the BFG and getting ammo for it is a PAIN.

I slogged my way onward, until I reached Map15.

Number of enemies... 5612.

That's not a typo, that is an insane number of monsters.

That also means that Brutal Doom will go and have a cry in the corner due to lag.

But with Aeons of Death? It's heaven to have so many enemies at once, and then wipe out hundreds at a time with an overpowered weapon shot or two.

Now if I could only get it to work again...

 

[OndrejSc]

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I couldn't quite let go. Not yet.

I wanted to see Map22 of 'Necromantic Thirst'.

So I just slogged through all the maps leading up to it with godmode on, watching as the monster count kept going up.

One map (can't recall which) goes for that "maze of passages where you need to hunt switches while only Arch-Viles are thrown at you"-bit that Plutonia did IIRC. It was bad enough then, it's even worse now.

Far too many maps are so convoluted in architecture and detail that one loses sight of what needs to be done next. Switches become hard to spot, progress becomes muddled. Not a good thing.

But then I reached Map22. I can understand the expectations. It's large and open-ended, with one central passage that has six locked doors, each corresponding to a keycard/skull key of the basic colors. And lo, the map offers six directions to go, to fight in locked arenas with interesting (but sadly predictable) fights, with a key at the end of each. Behind each door is a nice reward, like an invuln sphere (better save that one for later), a plasma gun with ammo, lots of medkits, etc. But it's finding the secret set of doors in the central passage that nets you the good stuff.

All this with great-looking, intertwined architecture and design that makes you feel like they're all connected to one another. There is a certain sense of freedom in this map that the others don't have.

And then, regrettably, it comes to an end with a mob + bunch of cyberdemons fight in an enclosed space. A bad end to a good map.

But here's the thing - Map22 is not the showstopper here. It's Map23.

Map23 starts out as most of the other maps - green, grey, hordes of monsters to slay, etc. But eventually there comes a quiet, innocent-looking room where everything is green save for one facet of a pillar. Press that facet to be transported to an identical room where the colors are inverted, but that's not all. What follows is easily one of the most unforgettable, tense and atmospheric sections I've seen in a WAD. They even went one further and spent a monster slot to create a most chilling SFX that moves about, that every Thief-player will instantly recognize.

(If you play this map in Brutal Doom the SFX-bit is lost, as BD will auto-convert that slot into possessed marines, meaning you get the mother of all jump-scares instead of the original intended effect.)

That section is not going away from me for a while. But there are still maps left to go, so I figured I'd give them a look.

Map25 has ~8500 enemies, but strangely it didn't make my system lag at any point - instead it just crashed it when I killed too many enemies with one shot (200+). The BIG FIGHT is when you unlock the key holding the BFG in place - I stood still for a minute, not firing a single shot as I watched the kill counter go up by dozens every second. That's a lot of collateral damage.

Map29 has ~7500 enemies, but it starts lagging right at the start, before receiving any input. Not good, forced to skip it.

All maps after Map24 have 1000+ enemies.

So next up is me trying to get this running under Aeons of Death. Will take some fidgeting, and has a high chance of not working - but I gotta try. The later maps throw cyberdemons at you like candy, and under AoD that means cyberdemon-level infighting possibilities - I've had sessions of AoD where I just hid in a remote corner waiting for the big'uns to duke it out.

EDIT: Success! Got it working (need GZDoom v4.8.2) but some tweaking will be required as it's too dark now.

EDIT 2: Forgot to mention this, but I was wrong on something earlier. I stated that Barons of Hell acted differently here and got a reskin. This is wrong. This is in fact a brand new monster for the wad called a 'Hunter in Darkness'. It's a dark-green hued BoH with wings, and it tends to shoot three green bolts in quick succession. Backs quite a punch, but only has slightly more HP than a Hell Knight. Hard to spot at a distance.