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
Tag: 2016 WADs
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
rf1024
With over a year between each of these last three updates, I think it’s about time to admit that this column is reaching the end of its days. I’ve had a specific end in mind for years, actually, though I expected to get there much, much sooner. Between focusing on other projects (mostly WADs of my own), and the dreaded Real Life taking up more and more of my time, even plans of ending What’s Awesome, Doom? had to be put on the back burner for a long while. Now, though? With other chapters of my life coming to a
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
Special Report: One-Map WADstravaganza!
By now you’ve probably noticed that I lean more toward bigger WADs and megaWADs to talk about in this column. As a result, I have a growing list of one-map WADs I’ve either enjoyed or been meaning to play that has just been getting longer and longer for years now… You know what the means! That’s right — it’s time for another special episode! Welcome to the One-Map WADstravaganza: eight single-level releases from the last five years or so. Let’s jump right to it, before I get wrapped up in some long, masturbatory introduction! Presented in alphabetical order: Big Woodchip
Mano Laikas: A road to Gamzatti
Nicolás Monti is an artist. Maybe the Picasso of Doom mapping. I’ve made a point of playing all his recent releases as they come. That includes my 2014 WAD Of The Year, Apostasy on Amalthea; one of my favorite WADs of 2015, Desecration on Thebe; and his most recent and expansive work, 2016’s Mano Laikas: A road to Gamzatti. Rounding out that roster is Erkattäññe, in my opinion Monti’s weakest WAD and yet the only one to win him a Cacoward. Erkattäññe didn’t work for me in large part because it was a Doom II WAD. Doom II’s textures just didn’t jive
Doom the Way id Did – The Lost Episodes
If you’ve played Doom the Way id Did, its Lost Episodes are essentially more of the that. A little less id-like, maybe, but with a wider quality spectrum. Doom the Way id Did: The Lost Episodes, to put it indelicately, is six episodes of leftovers and cut maps that didn’t make it into the official DTWiD release. What you have to keep in mind when saying these maps were “cut,” though, is why they would have been cut. The strict rules of DTWiD mean that submitted maps could easily be — and often were — rejected not for being of low
Tech Gone Bad
John Romero is back, baby — and he’s brought a new Doom level with him. No, you didn’t read that wrong. Over twenty years after the game came out, Romero’s back with a freshly-baked map. Maybe the first of many, if we’re lucky. [Edit: We were.] Welcome to Tech Gone Bad, though “E1M8b,” the WAD’s file name, may be a more fitting title. This is Romero’s take on Phobos Anomaly, one of only two maps in Doom’s first episode that he didn’t make himself. Being E1M8, it’s a classic showdown with the Bruiser Brothers, only with a twist. And much