I can’t quite believe that I’ve been writing about Doom since 2012, and here we find ourselves in the far-flung future of 2022. Turn the clock back another ten years, all the way back to 2002, and you’d find me discovering the vast universe of custom Doom content for the very first time. I could never have suspected then how deeply I’d ultimately venture into that universe… or how I would contribute to it in my own small way. For the last decade I’ve tried to pay tribute to the projects that inspired me to open a map editor all
Category: Modding
No End In Sight
Your old pal scwiba is ready to hang it up, folks. Certainly not ready to stop playing Doom WADs, but ready to stop writing about them. And thinking about writing about them, and playing them while thinking about writing about them. In total I’ve covered about 80 Doom WADs — with more than one thousand maps between them. What more is there to say, after all? You know, it’s odd to reflect on everything I’ve written here, because I always come back to this idea that I’m not cut out to be one of those great, lifelong reviewers. I’m no
Beta 64
Love for Doom 64 is a quiet but unwavering thing. Rather than fading out slowly over the 25 years since Doom 64’s release, it has only grown stronger. Doom 64 fans are probably the most dedicated and die-hard of the Doom sub-fandoms, faithful for decades to a console-exclusive game they could only play on modern systems via emulation or fanmade ports. Because of how hard it’s been to play, Doom 64 has enjoyed less than %1 the amount of custom content that Doom and Doom II have — by far the biggest reason those earlier Dooms have managed to stay
Eviternity
December 10, 2018 marked the 25th anniversary of Doom. There were about as many different ways of celebrating the occasion as there are people who play Doom. Countless retrospectives dotted the internet landscape. Tons of new mapsets were released around that date, including one of my own. That’s not to mention other big projects like the colossal OTEX texture pack. It was a big day, but to my reckoning the biggest thing by far to come out of Doom’s 25th birthday was Eviternity. The reasons are many, not least of which is that Eviternity was the flagship WAD to feature
Sharp Things
Gosh, when was the last time we talked about an old-fashioned standalone map? UAC_DEAD back in… 2018? Oh boy. A bit of inside baseball here, but this episode was up in the air until last night. I planned Going Down as Episode 61 for at least the last couple months, and the remaining WADs from here on out are pretty set in stone — I’ve already played them and know they’re awesome. But the WAD I penciled in for this particular slot, after playing through in its entirety, sorting all the screenshots, and outlining a review… it dawned on me
Going Down
We’re really in the final stretch, folks, and Going Down is one I’ve meant to check out for eight years now. Outside of the Doom community, Going Down’s creator Cyriak Harris was already pretty well-known by 2014. In fact, if you’ve spent any time on the weirder side of YouTube, you’ve assuredly seen at least one of his bizarre, mesmerizing music videos. “cows & cows & cows” currently has about 68 million views, and that’s not even Cyriak’s most popular video. If those videos are your only experience with Cyriak, you may actually find Going Down to be rather tame
Faithless
What if — and I know this is hard to imagine — but what if… Hexen was good? I kid the Hexen fans. I know there’s a lot of love for the game for some reason, and I don’t mean to offend. On the other hand, this is my review series, so… indulge me just a moment while I tell you a few of the many ways that Hexen sucks. I mean, Heretic’s enemies weren’t tanky enough already? Okay, with modern modding tools you could easily tweak the HP values a bit yourself for a significantly better experience, but what’s
Mass Extinction
I said we’d see Nicolás Monti one more time, didn’t I? I’m nothing if not true to my word. Mr. Monti in fact commented on a previous review of mine, quite a few years ago now, recommending that I play his megaWAD Mass Extinction. His “most mature work” as he called it, and believed it would be up my alley. Well, I’m ashamed to say that it took me until late in 2021 to take him up on that, but he was spot on. Mass Extinction is more of the Nicolás Monti that I love. What else do you say
Veni Vidi Valiant — or — I Came, I skillsaw, I Conquered
If you’ve hung around these parts long enough, you’ve likely noticed an immensely prolific mapper’s conspicuous absence. Somehow I’ve made it ten years writing about Doom WADs and literally never mentioned him a single time? How could this be?! Well, don’t fret, old friend; even I know that there’s a special place in Hell for a WAD reviewer who ignores our most decorated mapper, Paul “skillsaw” DeBruyne. But I have to admit up front that part of the reason I’ve not yet written about any of skillsaw’s WADs is because I’m not exactly sure what I think of them. I’ve
Nihility: Infinite Teeth
Believe it or not, when Doom first came out it was actually pretty scary. A genuine 3D space seen in first-person? Just you and the nightmares lurking all around; roars and snarling in the distance. Enemies attacking from the darkness, from behind, opening doors and riding lifts in order to chase you down. Nowhere was safe. In 2022, it’s hard to even convey what that experience was like. There’s simply no way to recreate the revelatory, revolutionary way Doom felt. No way to impart the context in which it appeared, the blissful ignorance we had back then… of what all