Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

[Saint_Proverbius]

It's one of the wads that I enjoy trying to best with Aliens Eradication (and relite 0.6.7a).
Definitely great open maps.

I watched the review of it, and MtPain27 was talking about how leisurely the first bunch of levels are. I was looking around, crossed a bridge to a cave. Killed some imps in a room where the shotgun was. Thought, "Oh boy! The shotgun!" Grabbed it, then a Hell Knight and two imps teleport in front of me, and a bunch of imps teleport in behind me. So, I promptly died. I was not expecting a trap like that at all, not that soon, and not that close to the start of the first map.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

This is pretty interesting:

 

[lightbane]

Day of the Toys got a new episode and some new upgrades, such as locational damage for some enemies! Plus another total conversion of yet another obscure game, this time a FPS where you pilot a guy with an helicopter backpack.

https://mikestoybox.net/doom-maps/

 

[Average Manatee]

Finished Eviternity 2, and I have a lot to say because while it obviously has an incredible level of polish and effort, I found I really didn't like it as much as I expected.

Overall feelings

In general I found a lot of the levels overly long and not terribly eventful. The word I want to use to describe them is grindy, it feels like a fairly constant amount of fighting and enemies without much ebb or flow to it aside from a few final fights of levels. For that first 90% of levels its almost always a bit on the easy side without many memorable moments.

Eviternity 1 was also a bit easy most of the time (though I think 1 was still harder than 2), but where in E1 I was able to use fast monsters to make things difficult its not really an option for E2. This is because they didn't program the monsters to properly adjust to fast monsters. In E1 this had a few problems with new monsters (nightmare pinkies weren't faster (which is kind of fine since they are already faster than base pinkies), and the asrtal cacodemons were kind of buggy and didn't attack much), but in E2 there are more new monsters that don't adjust and the old new monsters are used way, way more. Especially the astral cacodemons. There's also a LOT of hitscanners everywhere in this wad so fast monsters would probably be more annoying than anything. In fact it kind of feels like there's too much variety of monsters, sort of like an inverse-Plutonia thing where rather than focus on the hard stuff most encounters throw everything piecemeal at you and not much is done with level design to make these enemies difficult.

A few things I did appreciate: 1. A lot of the levels especially early on giving you that "hot start" where you gotta figure out a place to go that's safe without attracting new enemies. This is where the "constant enemies everywhere" actually works in the wad's favor, the problem is it doesn't work if you stretch it out for 20 mins. 2. The lack of a BFG for most levels, making the plasma gun a reliably useful part of your arsenal. In a huge amount of doom maps plasma ammo feels like it should be reserved for the BFG when you find it, but the number of levels I found a BFG on was countable on one hand. 3. Around half the levels do have a a good, decently tough fight, it's just that it often requires half an hour before you can see it.

New enemies and stuff

Overall I like most of the new enemies.

The nightmare pinkies are back and are used really well, just a few in places where you want to use rockets but need to be careful to avoid blowing yourself up on them. Not a terribly complex enemy but it does its job in a way that normal pinkies can't, because if you doubled the amount of pinkies you'd crowd the fight and make it unmaneuverable.

Astral Cacodemons are also returning from E1 and are really just annoying and the one enemy type I don't terribly like. Unfortunatly they are also one of the most used. Their stupid movement is just unpredictable and messes up your planned movement in a way that usually ends up in you immediately dying to either a face rocket or their triple attack all hitting you at once. You can't really react to them on the fly, just have to immediately focus them down wherever you see them. It doesn't help when they start silently appearing from some hidden alcove and the level is dark and you just get screwed without foreknowledge. The fact that they fly also makes it quite hard to start infighting with them. Ditto for Nightmare cacodemons which are just worse.

Uber-barons of hell are also back, but lose their hitscan for a projectile. Much better than before. Still find it kind of annoying how quickly they fire, think it could be slowed down by a few frames. It's quite hard to play peekaboo with them in close quarters (esp dark) areas without catching a rocket to the face.

Green hell knights don't have much too them other than more damage. They infight a lot better than normal hell knights but have about the same HP I think so they go down fairly quickly. They also aren't used widely when they really should, they are pretty interesting and fair to fight when combined with other enemies.

Uber-spidertrons and Macubi (not sure on the correct name) are both kind of upgunned and uphealthed versions of the originals. They tend to be great fun to fight because they cause even more infighting and absolutely annihilate hordes of enemies while being strong enough to not die immediately to the counterattack. Even Cyberdemons go down quick to them. I feel they are a bit underused, would have liked to see more of them.

The new soldier-type enemy are a great addition. Basically feels like a fast monsters imp, since they have a very fast projectile that shoots often but is stil dodgeable. Only annoying part is that they drop... 1 armor packs. Cmon, give me chaingun ammo plz.

Veilimps are... interesting. Feels like a pretty low tier enemy that is also underused, they are barely better than imps but get introduced so much later than all the other enemies. You'd be forgiven for thinking they are some kind of uber-archvile when you first see them but no, they are pretty much just imps that go invisible when not attacking. I guess if they were used a lot they'd lead to issues with facerocketing yourself on invisible things though so maybe its good that they are used sparingly.

The Necromenace is definitely interesting with his ability to resurrect things all around him. The fatal weakness though is... the same gun that you use to kill him (plasma rifle) is also the best weapon for killing the resurrecting spirits, so you kind of just keep spraying and he dies? I think you only fight him 2, maybe 3 times. Would be way more interesting to be used in a bigger fight.

The new gun (penetrator? Cant recall name atm) is stupidly overpowered. Takes 25 bullets per shot but kills an archvile, or a lot of smaller enemies. I only found it in secret levels, but if you can get it in normal levels through secrets or aren't playing by pistol start rules and carry them over from secret levels then I can't imagine how the game doesn't becomes utterly trivialized by having it. Keep in mind that most of these levels never go so far as to give you a BFG, and this thing not only uses bullets, but does so exeedingly efficiently. Even Cyberdemons fall in like 4-5 shots.

One decision I found curious was that Lost Souls had their HP nerfed, by about half I think. They die reliably to a regular shotgun blast. As first I liked the wad for this (not that other wads haven't made the same change), but then as I played I found that none of the levels ever really used Lost Souls or Pain Elementals very much. This would have been a great excuse to make the Pain Elemental a fairly standard enemy but they just... didn't. And I'm not sure why.

Individual episodes

Episode 1 is just too easy. I appreciate that it's "cool" that map 1 is a retread of one of the last levels of Eviternity 1 but its far too drawn out and boring. Still likethe overall environment theme, which is the last episode of Eviternity 1 but made dreary with dark and hellish skies and all.

Episode 2 I *LOVE* the theme of the outdoors levels, which give off an Aztec vibe. I'm almost tempted to replay map 7 just because of the visual aesthetic (also a pretty good final fight). The outdoors levels also tend to let you kind of go anywhere and do things in any order you want. The indoors levels, unfortunately, aren't that interesting visually and are way too dark. Map 6 is a bit annoying with ammo starvation.

Episode 3 I *LOVE* the outdoors theme again. Map 11 is "Titan", so I guess its supposed to be a semi-terraformed colony there. It's uniquely kind of alien but still very earthlike, and you can tell that it's not natural but a place intentionally built to be beautiful and for colonists to live in. Map 11 also has great gameplay right from the start, I love maps which give an interesting twist like this where you start off with just a rocket launcher and have to do a bunch of work to get your other weapons. Most maps in this wad would be way more palatable to replay if they started off with a banger rather than ending with it. Map 12 is another pretty good one, slightly less beautiful but lots of path options, not too long, and the final fight is a pretty cool spectacle. Map 13 is meh, a lot less beautiful and more dreary looking, nothing too interesting. Map 14 is way too long and has... puzzles. Puzzles that are cool to see that you can do in Doom but not at all interesting to actually complete, even if they only take a few minutes apiece. Map 15 is also a bit dreary and not too interesting aside from the introduction of the veilimp which is quite the letdown when you realize how easy they are to fight.

Episode 4 I'm kind of ambivalent about. It's got a sort of... medievel village theme? Not very interesting. A lot of long drawn out levels without a ton happening for most of your time. Map 20 introduces the green hell knights and has a pretty cool final battle that uses a lot of the new enemies, which is quite a rarity in this wad.

Episode 5 I'm heavily biased against because I really hate the snow theme. It just doesn't feel right for doom, with hellish enemies throwing fireball and all, and I don't like the snowy foggy distance effect thing either. Didn't like it in Eviternity 1 either and thought it was the low point of the whole wad. Most of these levels feel indistingiushable, just the continually overly long and drawn out levels with too much to fight through. Seriously if I gave you a screenshot of any random room from these levels you'd probably not be able to tell which one it was. Breaking the mold is map 24, which while the longest of them all contains several excellent fights that would not be out of place in a truly designed-for-difficulty mapset and a novel ending challenge. Map 25 is a boss map which is pretty simple once you understand the Necromenace.

Episode 6 I like the overall look of but it's WAY TOO FUCKING DARK. I feel like these maps are designed to be played with a gamma level of like 1.3-1.4, not 1.0. Map 26 is an interesting "puzzle" map, but its doom-related puzzles rather than arbitrary stolen from outside sources puzzles like map 14. Individually they are interesting but collectively they take just too much time to get through. The final fight is set up to be an epic battle vs. a thousand enemies but the room is just too big, you can strafe around them too well, and the overpowered new enemies clear everything too quickly. It's more of just a bullet hell spectacle than a real challenge. Rest of the levels continue the formula of being a bit overly long and not challenging outside of some final battles.

Final boss is really cool, one of the few times I've thought that an FPS boss battle was actually well designed. Only downside is that unlike Eviternity 1 there's no awesome monster menagerie to fight along with it and watch the boss murder legions of trash.

Secret levels are a mixed bag, 1 per episode. 31 isn't that interesting except that its one of the few indoors maps that I think looks pretty good. 32 isn't hard but the final fight has a cool gimmick (you can choose when to electrify the ground and kill everything... which obviously makes it way too easy, I didn't even need to do it a second time). 33 is a speed running gimmick I couldn't finish. 34 has the one good use of veilimps in the wad with 2 archviles behind a horde of them and I was out of rocket ammo. Map 35 has a really, really cool gimmick wasted on a pathetically easy level. Map 36 is the epitome of a way too long level that with a bunch of fights that are way too easy once you have a basic understanding of how they work, though it gets props for a sort of inverse of the Sunlust map 29's archvile carosel which is a novel idea.

Overall, my main benchmark for rating a WAD above a 6/10 is how many of the levels I want to replay when I load up the wad a second time and most of the levels in Eviternity 2 just don't hit that threshold, so I'm rating it 6/10, with a difficulty of 4/10 to 7/10. I will say that if this was released 10-20 years ago it'd be an easy 8/10, but I feel standards should be higher for a major 2024 wad with this many authors and all this custom content as opposed to stuff released in the early 2000s by one or two dudes making the whole mapset. It also hurts it a lot that fast monsters isn't a viable option (what I normally use for older and/or easier wads).

Have to amend this review a bit. They just released a new version of Eviternity 2 which has an above UV difficulty option. It's interesting how its designed, levels have about 50-100% more enemies, and there's also some more items to compensate. The result is like half mini slaughterfest levels of weaker units (e.g. rather than 3 zombiemen in a corner you might have 12), half tougher encounters with a few more revenants/archviles/etc, and a few new custom enemies exclusive to this mode. It's pretty good, and satisfies my complaint of UV being too easy and UV + fast monsters not really working well. So far I particularly like a fight on level 5 where I could get one of the new super-spidertrons to absolutely demolish a cyberdemon for me.

My level complaints still stand (don't like the darker levels, puzzle levels, or the chapter 4/5 aesthetics), but this moves the wad to a solid 9/10 for me.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I recently played through a couple of Doom 2 megawads that strangely enough both shared the same theme, without me realizing it until after the fact.

First, based on Saint_Proverbius mentioning it, I tried out "Perdition's Gate". It's an older megawad that prefers to use the smaller monsters and gradually and slowly introduce the bigger monsters, with Arch-Viles being rarely used. One notable thing it does differently is that it uses the end-of-level and start-of-level screens to try to tell a story on a level-by-level basis, but then I noticed that the story jumped one over, so you get the next mission's storybit for the current map. But ultimately it's too old and progresses too slowly, and the maps are generally simple and uninteresting (and WTF was going on with the secret levels?) until, strangely, the final maps pick up the pace. Strangely enough the Icon of Sin is on Map29 and not Map30. Map30 instead is an 'Escape-before-the-time-runs-out!'-affair, where you have only two minutes to reach the exit point before everything blows up. Except the Icon of Sin is still active and spewing out monsters in your path, and then there's the two Cyberdemons trying to prevent your escape...

Overall I don't recommend it. It has aged badly.

The other megawas is "Fragport", another story-heavy wad where Doomguy makes his way through area after area, before blasting off in a space shuttle to an artificial moon to blow it up. "Fragport" uses more of a "show, don't tell" manner of storytelling, with maps representing areas along the way, like the docks, then the ship you undocked in, then arriving at a beach (while watching the ship sink behind you), then heading towards a town, then into the sewers, etc. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's just silly. The secret levels are a bit of both - Map31 is a map experimenting with black walls, while Map32 is... something. Dull, mostly. Oh, and there are puzzles to solve. Light ones, but still puzzles, both in Map32 and elsewhere.

Unusually for a Doom 2 megawad, there is only one hell-based map in the entire wad - otherwise it's all man-made structures and areas. And the final few maps are spent on battle arenas, each one housing more deadly creatures than the previous. And, to my surprise, the Icon of Sin is also located on Map29 in this megawad... but to get to it first you have to traverse a labyrinth of ducts, in the dark. You'll have to use the map to get through it, but if you focus entirely upon it you miss an important clue given - namely that once you start Map30, you have ten minutes to beat the map until it blows up and kills you! No pressure then.

Except the Icon of Sin-fight here is one of the most intense fights I've ever had in Doom. Pre-present in the map are six Arch-Viles, but the Icon of Sin spews out so many enemies, in such a tight space, that it becomes a free-for-all fragfest in a matter of seconds. Good thing there are plenty of Megaspheres around. And the goal is to find and press all the switches in the area, to lower the barrier guarding the killswitch for the Icon of Sin. Press that, and the map ends.

And then Map30 starts, and you have to start by navigating your way BACKWARDS through that dark labyrinth of ducts, while on a timer... except something bugged out for me, and at the point where I'm supposed to be teleported out of the ducts to progress in the base itself, I get stuck in place, unable to move. Lovely. Nothing a little no-clip can't fix, but still. In the hallways that come afterwards, don't dally around. Find the right path, run like mad, kill everything that moves (and quickly) and don't try opening every door. Eventually you should reach an escape shuttle and end the campaign.

"Fragport" surprised and impressed me. It's showing its age, but it also isn't pulling its punches. That said, it is a bit easy as there's always plenty of ammo around. Worth a look if you're looking for something a little different in Doom 2, but it's not a keeper for me.

 

[Baron Dupek]

lmao Beth never change