Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

[Ash]

Be a man and go play the N64 classic Turok (1997). Prepare to get lost in vast mindfuck mazes of level design 5x the size of vanilla doom maps. Face some gruelling hardcore platforming Duke Nukem and Freeman would break down crying in the face of. Some surprisingly Quake-ish combat (though a little inferior) revolving around manly primitive desires of ripping dinosaurs to shreds in a fight of survival man vs beast. And finally the devs control when where you can save your game, thereby turning each section into an obstacle course of challenges that you have to endure in succession without failure. Grab the PC remaster (though it reduces difficulty because mouselook, increased draw distance etc). It and the original version also has a lives system which offers some leniency, it's not crazy hardcore really. It and its sequel are still some of the most hardcore singleplayer FPS games out there though, (because the bar ain't that high in FPS). Especially in their original N64 form.

 

[Average Manatee]

Is there a mod that makes the game harder (without adding monster respawn. I hate that shit) that doesn't alter any of the assets AND is compatible with all wads? Frankly i can play this game with my hands tied on my dick at this point.

-fast isn't enough?

 

[mogwaimon]

Be a man and go play the N64 classic Turok (1997). Prepare to get lost in vast mindfuck mazes of level design 5x the size of vanilla doom maps. Face some gruelling hardcore platforming Duke Nukem and Freeman would break down crying in the face of. Some surprisingly Quake-ish combat (though a little inferior) revolving around manly primitive desires of ripping dinosaurs to shreds in a fight of survival man vs beast. And finally the devs control when where you can save your game, thereby turning each section into an obstacle course of challenges that you have to endure in succession without failure. Grab the PC remaster (though it reduces difficulty because mouselook, increased draw distance etc). It and the original version also has a lives system which offers some leniency, it's not crazy hardcore really. It and its sequel are still some of the most hardcore singleplayer FPS games out there though, (because the bar ain't that high in FPS). Especially in their original N64 form.

Definitely do the PC remaster for the original Turok. I mean, if you were to load Turok up in an emulator you'd have the luxury of remapping keys anyway, but I recall renting Turok 1 as a kid and it having atrocious controls, and no real good options to change them to something resembling other N64 shooters at the time. It was something like a choice between stick for freelook and C-buttons for strafe and move forward/back or vice versa, nothing for someone used to Goldeneye, Doom, or Duke. Fortunately, Turok 2 fixed this and was a much better game overall, though Turok 1 still had better cheats. The mini-enemy cheat in Turok 1 also made all the enemies voices high-pitched, which ten year old me found hilarious. Anyways, point is, don't go real hardware for Turok 1. Turok 2 would probably be just fine on real hardware but whether or not you're on real hardware or an emulator make sure to have the 4MB memory upgrade installed, as Turok 2 was one of the games that took advantage of it, IIRC.

 

[Siveon]

Turok 2 also has a PC remaster, FYI. Both of them aren't emulators I don't think.

 

[Sjukob]

Yo, if you werent following GMOTA got a huge update that revamped almost everything and added new character, check it out !

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Ash]

I went ahead and got that mod since I had yet to play Heretic. It's gud. Game itself is better than Hexen too. Only issue is the lack of music diversity, but there's some nice tracks in there. Hexen probably had more diverse art direction too, but the overly obscure switch hunts and lack of weapon diversity was a real let down.

 

[Jazz_]

I'm enjoying BD 64 quite a bit. (in b4 Astral Rag's butthurt rating)

 

[unfairlight]

brutal doom sucks

 

[Ash]

Brutal Doom 64 is one of the best Doom experiences I've had. And I've played a lot of WADs.

 

[ghostdog]

Operation - BIOWAR

Nice classic-ish megawad. Tough but fair. Some p.cool maps. Thankfully the icon of sin was a puzzle fight and not a slaughterfest.

Palace of Nemrac

I'm always amazed when modders make these huge doom levels that are better in architecture than anything AAA gaming has made in decades, but it's Paul Corfiatis we're talking about, so it's a given. This is one awesome big-ass level, that can be pretty tough.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS SOME MOD PLEASE STICKY THIS FUCJING THREAD

ITS ONE OF THE BEST ONES HERE

 

[lightbane]

Truly Doom can do everything! I wonder if someone could make a point-and-click adventure based in Doom as well?

 

[ghostdog]

BROS SOME MOD PLEASE STICKY THIS FUCJING THREAD

ITS ONE OF THE BEST ONES HERE

That's a great idea, but we don't even get to see who are the moderators for this forum anymore... JarlFrank perhaps?

 

[JarlFrank]

BROS SOME MOD PLEASE STICKY THIS FUCJING THREAD

ITS ONE OF THE BEST ONES HERE

That's a great idea, but we don't even get to see who are the moderators for this forum anymore... JarlFrank perhaps?

Yes.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

While I was preparing to replay original campaign in Doom 2 I have stumbled on a wad called Maps of Chaos. Basically it is the same thing, but with cranked up difficulty and reshaped levels. Apart from the vanilla version there is also overkill one. You can guess easily, that it is even harder version for all the veterans who want to rip and tear like never before. I've finished the whole scenario on Ultra Violence with Beautiful Doom, and some of the original levels are insane. But you can finish it if you have enough patience and quick reflexes. The only letdown is that the last part of the campaign just adds more monsters instead of changing them less or more in a new interesting way. Overall for those who don't like slaughter mods, but do want to test their skills, it's a good choice.

http://www.moddb.com/games/doom-ii/addons/brutalized-doom-and-doom-ii

 

[Bigg Boss]

Langoliers anyone?

 

[Anomander Rake]

So, I discovered this topic only today. Interested in good mods for Hexen, Heretic, Duke nukem. Suggestions?

Unluckily the first post of this page sucks pretty bad. Why would you make such a topic it if you won't edit the first post with links to the various reports of the various people reviewing mods, what is suggested to be played and w/e?

 

[Sjukob]

So, I discovered this topic only today. Interested in good mods for Hexen, Heretic,

Tough shit pal. They are quite unpopular among modders, but you can try Brutal Heretic linked above.

Duke nukem

http://www.moddb.com/games/wgrealms-2

 

[Anomander Rake]

Thanks sjukob. I tried the mod for DN but does not match my taste. Will try brutal heretic soon.

 

[Sceptic]

So, after almost 25 years, I FINALLY managed to get my hand on a copy of The Lost Episodes of Doom.

Not the PWAD, I've had that for decades. The book.

I'm actually quite disappointed. I always thought the book provided more text and a narrative about the levels. Most descriptions of it led me to believe they provided a framework for story-based Doom episodes, which would be quite cool and unique. Turns out there's very little of this kind of support text in the book. Instead it's basically a strategy guide. The bulk of the book is a detailed step-by-step walkthrough of each level, complete with maps and lists of secrets. It's not quite what I expected or hoped for, especially since there are much better fan levels out there, and they were free, while this was being sold for $17.

Still both book and levels have a not-inconsequential amount of charm. The book is really quite nicely done and edited, and thinking about it a 300-page strategy guide for fan-made levels is really quite unique, I can't think of any other level pack for any game that got this kind of attention. The levels themselves are not bad actually, and I think this was one of the earliest "megawads" of note that came out for Doom. In fact it's so old that the book mentions needing Doom 1.2, but what it doesn't mention obviously is that the levels have quite a few bugs if run directly with The Ultimate Doom (ie v1.9), some quite funny to see. Apparently it has even problems with v1.666 but I didn't test that one.

I'm toying with the idea of decrypting the PDF and keeping a DRM-free non-time-limited version of the book. As it stands I took individual screenshots of each page for archiving purposes.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

I'm toying with the idea of decrypting the PDF and keeping a DRM-free non-time-limited version of the book. As it stands I took individual screenshots of each page for archiving purposes.

Are you saying for a book about some ancient doom levels, you pay $17 and there's a fucking time limit? On a book that you paid for?

Aside from that, I've been having some fun with Doom wads and mods lately. Most of the mods I've been testing have been of the excessive variety, so I'd test them on Maps of Chaos - hardcore or overkill versions. Just getting through the first 3 levels takes anything up to 40 minutes, with over 200 enemies per map. Well, maybe not so long with Russian Overkill, which was very silly but quite entertaining. The chaingun-that-fires-jets-that-drop-bombs-and-explode was hilariously absurd, and a lot of the others has a lovingly beefy feel to them. Guncaster was also pretty fun, though you end up overpowered very quickly with the greatly increased enemy count. If you got the meteor punch thing and the Iron (Dragon) Man suit you were pretty much unstoppable. Great super-shotgun though. Or super-super-super-shotgun, I guess.

 

[Sceptic]

Are you saying for a book about some ancient doom levels, you pay $17 and there's a fucking time limit? On a book that you paid for?

No, it's on a time limit because I didn't pay for it

 

[Luzur]

Is there a mod that makes the game harder (without adding monster respawn. I hate that shit) that doesn't alter any of the assets AND is compatible with all wads? Frankly i can play this game with my hands tied on my dick at this point.

Brutal Doom

Spoiler

on the optional purist mode

Spoiler

*insert purist rage regardless*

Spoiler

Yes it also alters assets. Not really in any divergent way though.
BD has very notable AI improvements, that's a big point of interest for me.

There is also MooD, a Hotline Doom mod



And miniDoom: a plattformer



i have to say these guys are taking Doom down a totally new (and better then Bethesda Doom) path.

 

[Luzur]

Well, ok, Dreed didnt like that, so what about this then? if this isnt good enough, i cant really help you guys anymore, you might wanna install Wolfenstein 2: the Colossus then.