Seven years ago, I had this idea of cataloging my favorite WADs from Doom’s entire history. When I first set out, that history already spanned 19 years. Now we’re at 26 — and I’m looking back to realize that the most obvious WAD of them all still isn’t on this list. Over the course of 50 episodes, I haven’t at any point talked about the one WAD that kicked this thing off; I’ve never reviewed DOOM.WAD. Of course, everyone else has. In the Year of Our Lord 2020, you can probably find a thousand discussions, reviews, essays, and videos on
Tag: Doom
Doomsday of UAC
Any discussion of the history of Doom WADs eventually arrives back at a single map from 1994 called Doomsday of UAC. But you might know it better simply by its filename: UAC_DEAD. Leo Martin Lim’s Doomsday of UAC is one of the earliest and most famous WADs ever made. If you can put on your 1994 glasses, it’s not hard to see why. The Doom community was ravenous for good custom content in that first year after the game’s release, and Doomsday was probably the best you could find. It towered, head and shoulders above the crowd, with a combination
The Revenant Problem
Presented without comment: The Revenant Problem requires DOOM2.WAD and runs on Boom-compatible sourceports. If you’re not sure how to get it running, this may help. I’ve also reviewed some other WADs if you want to check those out, I guess.
Mutiny
I have a problem right now: I can’t stop playing awesome Doom WADs. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to check out Mutiny, the 2016 community project that aims to revisit the glory days of WADs like Dysphoria 3, Perdition’s Gate, and my forever-favorite thing in the whole wide world, STRAIN. I’m about two years late to this party… but hey, at least I’m here now. There was a certain flavor to WADs like Dysphoria 3 and STRAIN that just isn’t seen anymore in the world of Doom WADs. I’ve heard a lot of folks call it “cyberpunk” (though
Hell on Earth: Super Tiny Edition
You know how I’m always going on and on about short maps? “I love short maps.” “These maps should be shorter.” “Why doesn’t anyone make short maps anymore?” Hell on Earth: Super Tiny Edition is like if someone pandered directly to me by taking “short maps” to their most ridiculous, comical extreme. And no surprise — I adore it with every fiber of my being. Super Tiny is a reimagining of Doom II, with all 32 levels condensed into a playable space only 64 map units across. For those not in the know, that means you’re stuffed into a box exactly
The Episode of Episodes!
To celebrate the 45th edition of this column, my plan was to take a look at some episode replacements I’ve always meant to play but never got around to. I’d heard good things about all of them (and in most cases, I’d enjoyed their creators’ other work), so I expected to play some pretty good maps… Instead, I played four of the most amazing episodes I’ve touched in years. I know I said just a few days ago that Mapgame was possibly my favorite ever Doom episode, but all four of these are in the running for that title now — and
Scythe X
Scythe X is basically two more episodes of Scythe II. That’s it. That’s the whole review. Thanks for coming, everybody. Alright, alright… Erik Alm made his triumphant return in 2009 with a quick one-two punch: the Scythe II re-release and the first release of Scythe X. It was a smart marketing move — filling out the famously empty three mapslots in Scythe II to reinvigorate interest in the series, and then jumping right into what were supposed to be episodic releases of the next WAD. Except that’s not what happened. We got the first two episodes of Scythe X at once
Mapgame
Gosh, can you believe it’s been over five years since I last talked about an rf’ map? 40 episodes after Wire Brush, I’m finally, finally doing that review of Mapgame I’ve wanted to do all these years. And hopefully it won’t be another 40 episodes until I get to do rf’s 1024 megaWAD… if I can find a copy of it somewhere. Mapgame has long been one of my go-to Doom WADs. I’ve held it on this pedestal, ranked it among my favorite WADs of all time, and any time the topic of best episodes for Doom 1 came up,
Avactor
2018 has been a heck of a year for Doom WADs. I can’t even keep up with the major releases: REKKR, Doom 64 for Doom II, Dimension of the Boomed, and now Avactor. And they’re all amazing. If Dimension of the Boomed hadn’t already taken its place as my WAD of the Year, the title would fall to Avactor. Avactor: End of the Fifth Cycle is a 12-level epic from Eradrop, a mapper who loves jungle maps as much as I love gimmick maps. Eradrop… drops (sorry) an entirely new textureset into Doom to turn it into a dark, murky, foreboding crawl through overgrown valleys,
Tower of WAR
Tower of WAR is not a good WAD; let’s get that out of the way right up front. It’s the only WAD I’ve discussed on this column that isn’t exactly awesome — and you can decide for yourself whether that means this whole thing has jumped the shark. I don’t enjoy playing Tower of WAR for the most part, if I’m completely honest, but I do actually think it’s worth checking out. But what is Tower of WAR? Why haven’t you ever heard of it? Well, it was a 32-map megaWAD designed by a little-known mapper named Net Nomad. It