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.