Alien Vendetta

This was the first custom mega WAD I ever played, unknowingly featuring as my rite of initiation into a lengthy tenure as a pellet-addled DOOM addict. Even though I had been playing DOOM on and off for roughly ten years when I first downloaded this one the first time (roughly 2012) it had been restricted to the IWADs, and needless to say I was flabbergasted. It was one of the most exhilarating gaming experiences of my life. I mean, I'm still around kicking demons as a rote action.

With that as a backdrop, I recently decided to complete it again. "For real" this time, as I employed a lot less strict parameters for what I considered beating a level previously. Doing my darndest to keep my nostalgia glasses at bay (as I have about 10-20 WADs more experience nowadays), AV holds up fairly well for me... For the most part.

With few exceptions the levels look great, even though the artistic liberty of the different mappers can impact the sense of cohesion or theme. Still, only a handful or so feel like filler content and even those are at worst a nondescript experience, but never offensively bad. To put it bluntly, the lowest of AVs beauty is still quite passable, and the highs are frankly still really high.

The challenge is fairly robust, and there was no level past the fifth that I could complete in one go, and a majority of them required some form of attack plan for all of the big encounters and set pieces. Once I hit MAP20, which I will second is worth its monstrous hype, only two levels did not require dedicated practice.

It is worth mentioning that maps 25-29 are notably rougher than what has come before. It's not as big of a difficulty gut punch as Scythe (1) delivers as AV is never exactly easy, but it's nothing to scoff at. While I would argue that MAP25 - Demonic Hordes, is well put together enough that it's enjoyable despite its length and resistance, I can't really say the same for 26-29. Many of them veer quite easily into scenarios that are difficult because either it's nigh impossible without knowing what's coming, or because the only good solution is tedious camping.

It might not be worth to play each and every level, but most of them are great experiences. Despite being, from what I can tell, somewhat overhyped (nothing's perfect and AV has aged a bit), most of the hype is well earned and rather deserved. With no true stinker and overall high average level of craftsmanship, and with a few lookers and a few really challenging maps, it's a solid experience that I'm now glad I've had twice.

Awesome megawad, cool maps and cool music. I like the intermission screen music (Heretic E1M9)

Excellent. Good job

Team TNT, when making their first megawad, TNT: Evilution, brought the innovation, at silly as it sound, of big maps, really big open maps. Something that people didn't know was possible withing the engine limitations. But they went even further after that, making Icarus: Alien Vanguard and Eternal Doom. In both, they showed us that maps not only could be big and long, they could also be puzzle-ish and challenging.

On the other side, Yonatan Donner and Haggay Niv brought the idea of harder maps with a lot of monster density. Maps specifically designed by a speedrunner to speedrun. And with a lot of ingenuity, this couple of mappers make something that to this day is regarded as a breaking moment on map making.

Years later, a little team of mappers combined those two branches of mapping into one monstrous megawad. Led by Anders Johnsen, some first timers and some veterans make a megawad that to this day, and possibly forever, will be regarded as the best megawad ever.

Starting with a low key that promises a lot of fun to come, the megawad blend the different mapping styles perfectly on every map with a cohesive look of orange, brown and green, with a few touches of different textures here and there.

What can i say that it was already say abouth this megawad? it has everything!!!

Good map design with godly ideas, awesome encounters, awe inspiring visuals, and most important of all, its really fun to play.

The story of the megawad is a bit there just to not use the original text screens, but it works and, even if not the better out there, it feels rewarding when they come.

Something about a double cross the aliens make to the UAC and now they make a last attempt to invade us.

Anyway, the highlight are all the maps maybe, there is no weak map o the mapset... but i found some uncohesive desicions here and there.

For example, going from techbase to medieval to techbase, to medieval, then egyptian, then medieval, then techbase and then kinda medieval hellish is rather strange, but it works...not at a narrative level, but it works somehow.

more specific highlights:

EPISODE 1:

-map04: Seclusion shows a good starting where previous map ends, and thats a neat touch, also the maps is really awesome.

-map05: Crimson Tide has an awesome feel to it. I only see something similar to it on TNT:R map04: Blood Factory, but here it works a lot with a kinda Doom2 map14: The inmost Dens feel to it.

-map06: Hillside Siege awesome episode ending map, and the Hillside is wonderfully made.

-map08: Beast Island the first explorative map and is an awesome really inspiring map with a lot of height variations.

-map10: Toxic Touch the waste tunnels of the castle we found on map08, simply amazing design with a great use of lightning contrast.

-map11: Nemesis. Gigantic map, remind me a little to Joe Pallai's 2002: ADO E4M6: Dementia. But where that map fails, having an obscure progression and being a slog to kill all those barons, Demesis made it good with all the Doom 2 bestiary use at it full extent. Great experience. And awesome episode ending.

EPISODE 2:
-map12: Entropy is a great opener for sure, the starting area is awesome and the rest of the map is wonderfully made with a lot of teleport traps that make for a good challenge.

-map13: Suicidal Tendencies, probably one of the most round up maps of the set. Looks good, plays good and have a lot of challenge.

-map15: Bulls on Parade, awesome map with a lot of interesting details like the computer area, or the garden outside. The elevator down is a highpoint on tension for the map.

-map31: Killer Colours. simple and amazing use of recolored textures that make one hell of a map with some neat encounters and color coded enemies, too.

-map19: Alien Resurrection, starts simple, but gradually unfolds into a wonderfully detailed map. Highlight the end corridor with thoose hanging bodies over the bridge.

-map20: Misri Halek, deemed as the best map ever made, it is for me a great achievement, especially under vanilla limits. The starting area is just mesmerizing, and the mountain climb is just awesome. But aside from that, it is a little oppresive, as most action is took underground, and it goes a little longer than one would expect. Aside from that, yes, i haven't see any map like this anywhere else.

EPISODE 3:

-map21: One Flow over the Caco's Nest. Linear and fun map with hellish touches and nice rooms to look at.

-map23: Blood Sacrife, starts like a followup to map10: Toxic Touch, and then unfolds into a great castle like map. The castle area has awesome details, like the fake 3d bridges that could make for a confusing progression, but its beyond awesome.

-map24: Clandesite Complex, ehhh totally out of nowhere tech base map. Fortunatelly, its the best tech base map on the set, with a lot of height variations, good encounters and nice visuals. Love when you have to take the route down the sewers. That part is simply amazing!

-map25: Demonic Hordes a map divided on different areas, all of them awesome looking. Starting hellish looking then going for a more Heretic styled area, with a nice building that kinda looks like a graveyard, and then a town square that leds to more side areas. The hillside chaingunner encounter is one of the best looking secrets i have seen ever.

-map26: Dark Dome. Sincerelly, i hate Post Mortem style of maps, supposely they are inspired by Doom2 map29: The Living End, but they don't play at all like it, and Dark Dome is a really hot take on that style. there is almost no safe space, and one could run into a lot of ammo waste. But well, it is fun and really challenging.

-map27: Stench of Evil, linear and fun, with a totally lovable Thy Flesh Consume aesthetic and even an easter egg referencing it.

-map28: Whispering Shadows, long and sprawling map that comes and goes back and forward but is fun and totally good looking.

-map29: Fire Walk With Me, probably my favourite map on the set, a lot of great visuals, and awesome encounters. The hanging imps, just that, just that make this map awesome.

-map30: Point Dreadful, even for being a simple IOS map, it have some interesting things, like the strange sound that plays when you reach the portal, and the totally evil Romero speech that sounds at the IOS. Aside from that, hell, its really hard to find the timing to shoot it, and that fucking elevator is really far away.

This mapset proves and stood to time like no other.

Awesome adventure, awesome challenge, awesome visuals.

Every mapset that come later tried to be the next Alien Vendetta.

But to this day, no mapset dethroned the king of all megawads.

Thanks to all the AV Team for this marvelous megawad.

You guys surely spend a lot of time on these maps.

Gets way too exhausting by the end, sometimes feels its age and the progression is odd with inconsistent quality. However I'd still recommend it, during its high points it was superb and there are many great maps, just feel bad I couldn't give it a higher rating due to the aforementioned reasons - its quite enjoyable until it isn't.  

A WAD VERY ahead of its time, map 20 is my favorite map of all of doom, its shame that the wad gets very slaughtery making the wad a bit of a pain in the end.

WAD mandatory to play

-JuanchoES

simply a masterpiece,best wad most probably!

04.09.2020 update: Considering I gave Scythe 4 stars and I most likely would give D2TWID either 3 or 4, I must actually give 5. Reasons: 

1. I liked the combat here far a lot more. 
2. Definitely doesn't deserve to be that close to D2TWID in terms of rating, it has to be slightly higher and I can't give the latter wad 2 stars.
3. My initial disappointment didn't at all mean that I dub the wad that bad. I don't know if I liked it less than the majority of the community. 

Here is my original review: 

Can't believe I hadn't written a review for this yet. What's there to say that hasn't been said?

It's unique, legendary, fun, and filled with soul. Slaughterful and brutal since the very beginning, no boring build-ups or episodic themes -- It's varied and straight to the point. It's what it wants to be. Not at any point is it boring or lackluster ('cept for MAP17).

It's not a 5/5, I love it immensely, but wouldn't tell anyone that it is perfect. Some levels are centered around BFG spamming, and/or straight up grindy. There's inconsistencies, such as some types of floors sometimes being damaging or not, or familar actions that previously require or didn't require switches, or unmarked colored doors.

Legendary. Once saw someone say that the maps were "ugly". They can have the opinion they want, but man, is this wad out of this world in terms of looks, gameplay and variety. A must-play.

Good old-school hard-WAD. Starts at roughly Plutonia difficulty, gets harder and quite slaughtery at the end. MAP20 has terrible progression.

It might not have aged too well or something, but it doesn't feel nearly as great as it's hyped up to be. It's still pretty decent and worth a try, but it doesn't hold up too well against modern stuff.

Excellent map set, appealing to challengers and nostalgics alike. There are probably too many revenants and teleport traps (it's amazing how all the different authors coordinated towards this style) but that only means the wad will be so much harder.

I wonder if 'alien' refers to the Doom monsters (i.e. they're aliens).

Alien Vendetta is a megawad that has a plenty of good maps mixed with some levels are not as great. The maps I recommend are 1-10 and 18-24. The other 16 maps suffer from odd progression, far too many fights that occur in doorways and tedious slaughter gameplay. My least favorite levels have to be maps 12,13,16. Map 12 consist of multiple maps that were Frankensteined together and is possible to accidentally finish early. Map 13 is a linear level made tedious by flooding rooms with enemies. Map 16 has to be my least favorite as it starts you off with multiple hitscan enemies facing you. Overall Alien Vendetta is a mapset that when it's good it is damn good but is unfortunately dragged by some tedious annoying levels.

A decent (if slightly dated) set of maps with a moderate level of difficulty for the majority of it. I played it twice recently on UV, both runs played continually. Both saw me enjoying a good portion of the wad, but on each run I left the experience irritated. I feel Map 26 is the true end to the wad, as Maps 27 through 29 are extremely drab, boring slogs that fail to continue the intensity introduced with Maps 25 and 26. Map 30's Icon of Sin fight is also tedious and a poor way to end things, essentially requiring SR50 for the first elevator. Had it not been for these issues (and an excruciatingly sluggish Map 20, but slightly less so on my second playthrough), I would have given the wad four stars. It's easy to see why this was seminal at one point in time, but wads in more recent years have far surpassed it in not only map complexity, but enemy diversity and overall map/wad pacing, among other things. It's most certainly not the greatest megawad ever made, but it's still worth playing.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT launch the file "AVMOVFIX.WAD" when playing Alien Vendetta. All it does is remove one of best portions of MAP20. That file was conceived as a fix for demo recording back in a day when processors where much less powerful, and despite being included in the download serves no purpose whatsoever in this day and age.

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An epic experience in the most genuine sense of the word, Alien Vendetta's long-standing reputation as the most legendary Megawad of all is entirely deserved, although it isn't quite my number one choice. Variety, quality, creativity and spectacle abound in just about every moment of this very lengthy, challenging adventure.

Indeed, it should be clear that even now, in 2018 as of me writing this review, Alien Vendetta still belongs to the realm of the fairly difficult by today's overall PWAD standards. However, this absolutely shouldn't stop any curious players from trying it out, because the content offered is absolutely, positively worth it. In fact, although Alien Vendetta as aged a little, it holds up much better than most of its contemporaries and many of the old classics so lauded by the community.

As a negative, I will say that I don't think I approve of that final boss map, which calls upon skills that are never necessary in the rest of the Megawad and generally not a priority of classic Doom gameplay, all the while demanding a very exacting display of said skills from the player. Also, if I really have to nitpick, then I will concede that a couple maps contain very clumsy moments ("Nukefall"...).

I will give away no more and let the rare few Doom 2 players who have not yet experienced this masterpiece discover it for themselves. Highly recommended.

So here goes another wad, one that I for one could easily label as "close to hardcore" . It starts easy, then the difficulty nicely increases, and eventually culminates with some extremely difficult maps towards the end. Very tricky but not impossible to complete despite this undoubtedly initial impression. Most levels involve certain tricks in order to make everything easier, some of them, especially towards the end, relying quite a bit (or a lot, depending on the map) on infighting, such as MAP26. This one was easily among the hardest map at first sight, primarily because in a few words, it's a Revenant fest, most notably at the beginning. Yet all that had to be done there was letting the Cyberdemons take them out, but of course that's easier said than done. Since everything I'm playing is without any prior experience (blind, if you will) it always takes me a while to figure out the difficult maps. I think I died like 50 times in this map but it got easier once I gained experience through trial and error, therefore when I could finally make the enemies start an infight it became much easier.

Other maps however are more unforgiving, and that not due to seemingly impossible odds, but because well, the eternal old story, resource starvation. I ran out of ammo an annoying amount of times on the aforementioned map. When everything was clear, surprise, either no health or no ammo, typically remaining with just a few shotgun shells and nothing else. Now of course I should also mention that when I usually say "resource starvation" this does not include whatever can be found in secret areas. I'm usually terrible at locating (most of) them so when I mention that be aware that it primarily refers to what the maps offer during normal play without any secrets involved, or only very few, unless explicitly mentioned. MAP28 was an even worse offender, it's not a particularly difficult level but there was just not enough ammo for what came later, so for instance at the end I completely skipped a room with a Soulsphere and (3 I think) Arch-Viles because I just had no ammo to make it out alive and kill them as well. In my few attempts to grab the bonus they always managed to escape from their own little lair and well, you know what followed, so in the end I decided to skip them altogether and call it a day. MAP23 was also pretty scarce on resources, but not very difficult overall. So despite the nice difficulty curve, it does seem to spike every now and then.

My favorite maps are going to be MAP20 and MAP25. No doubt, these maps are very atmospheric with cool music and great gameplay, basically the perfect recipe for a great level, and nothing insane. I didn't really like these levels where the difficulty spikes nastily because they felt more like a test or a pure challenge, and weren't that much fun or enjoyable, yet I wouldn't count them among maps I loathe because they were still great, just mocking the player and very tricky. There are no bad maps here, except perhaps MAP21, it was neither an interesting nor fun level for me and felt more like just a filler and no killer. I was surprised to see that MAP30 was an Icon of Sin map, but frankly I'm really glad it was this and not something nuts serving the purpose of some sort of ultimate challenge after walking through the fire, considering some of the levels preceding it. It took me a few tries to figure things out though, because apparently the lift in this map is completely transparent and has 2 torches placed on it, and I thought the switches only lower them at first when in fact they are supposed to help you by marking something, but once that was out of the way it was piece of cake. I should mention that the lift at the base raises surprisingly fast so you've got to be very quick there, run (strafe) like hell after activating the switch. It's a fitting end to a thrilling but sometimes exhausting and frustrating journey. And that voice at the beginning of the map when you pick up the ammo and the power ups? That was amazing to hear, it sounds just so perfectly inhuman and purely evil, very intimidating and sets the tone for what's around the corner.

The music in this wad is very good and it has many different sources. There's vanilla Doom music, some completely new stuff, and even Heretic music. This might sound like a mess on paper, but it works, and rather well no less.

However, there are some problems on the technical side of things, or that's how my experience was anyway. I played this in PrBoom+ but every now and then it would become glitched so the stats at the end of the map would be broken and in the upcoming map I would spawn in an incorrect location, thus breaking the map completely and making it impossible to complete. For instance, I had to pistol start MAP13 because I kept spawning in the area where the yellow key normally becomes accessible only later down the road, an area that's normally accessible only with another key, but I had none so there was no way out. This occurred in a few other maps but luckily this could be easily resolved by just restarting the source port and reloading a previous level/save, finishing the map normally, proceeding to the next (offending) level, and everything would correct by itself. It's the first wad in any port I use where I'd ever come across something like this, so I've no idea what caused the problem. I've also had the correct compatibility options set the entire time, for that matter.

All things considered, I had a blast (quite the damn literally on so many occasions). It's a solid classic wad that has aged well and is also far from being impossible, but it does take time to understand its most challenging maps if you choose to go for it blind but also well aware of what you're getting yourself into beforehand like I did, so expect a lot of trial and error in this case, but at the end of the day it pays off. And it's not unfair even if some levels do look like this at first sight, but in fact they're not. Remember, these levels usually require you to resort to a couple of tricks, be quick, and careful. Moreover, I also found them rather predictable once I figured them out. If I could pull it off so can you.

There simply isn't a WAD that tops Alien Vendetta. Despite being released a good 16 years ago, this could be considered the first "modern" WAD. What I mean by that is that the maps here have tip-top design and attention to detail that is present in practically every WAD released nowadays. Like Memento Mori, its sequel and Requiem, AV brought a lot of Doomers from around the world to contribute (the US, Sweden (?) and Norway to name a few).

Each map has its own identity, and thus they are ALL memorable. The first level immediately tells you that the details, lighting and enemy placement is gonna be spectacular. Once you get to Map03 and see the city overlooking the main station, you know this is something that is way more advanced than anything before it. When it comes to Map11 and Map20... well, we all know how epic THOSE two look. Those two maps still look better than most maps today!

Of course, the look of the levels aren't the only thing that make-or-breaks a game. The gameplay here is nothing short of brilliant. All the maps besides Map21 (which is a Tyson-based map) are balanced for pistol-start and also for continuous gameplay, which is nice. I said before that each map has an identity, or a personality. This is true in the fact that the traps, secret placement and challenge are all different yet balanced. AV gradually gets harder and harder, reaching its boiling point with Map27.

Speaking of that map, there aren't that many slaughtermaps in the WAD. Maps 25, 26, 27 (yep, three in a row) and 32 are, but as I said before, each are identifiable and aren't brainless BFG spam. 25 isn't too hard, though 26 and 27 take the cake as the two hardest maps in the set.

Memorable set pieces I can recall are the Cyberdemon zone in Map06, the Demon horde in Map15, the Mastermind madness area in Map18, the island climb in Map20 and the waterfall trap in Map26. Everything is memorable here!

If there's ANYTHING I can criticise, it's a bit weird having the techbase levels start in Episode 2. Though then again, that makes the WAD that bit more original. Oh yeah, and Map30 can be a bit annoying, if only for that one lift.

Oh course, I can't write an AV review without mentioning the great Kim André Malde, who passed away a few years ago. I heard he was a talented mapper but, more importantly, a lovely person in real life. Rest in piece.

Favourite Maps: 04, 09, 10, 11, 20, 25, 29

"Least" Favourite Maps: 06, 19, 27, 28, 30

My Rating: 4 / 4 (thus a full 5 / 5)

This megawad seems to have a fearsome reputation, but I was surprised by how playable and straightforward it was. Maybe the main reason I found it so manageable was that, being just an averagely good doomer, I played on HMP difficulty with the odd save within the levels. The maps are generally well constructed, and even the handful of 'slaughterish' ones are hard but fair: though the fact that even on HMP the wad contains over 30 Cyberdemons means that it's still a decent challenge.....

My only complaint would be with level 30, an IoS affair which, like quite a few others I've encountered, is unworthy of the wad as a whole. If playing 'by the book', one is forced to attempt SR50 strafe runs along a lengthy section of wall, which soon becomes infested with all sorts of monsters. I suspect that the vast majority of players, and even quite a few seasoned campaigners, will have no chance with this, though they'll be able to avoid this issue by aiming with mouselook. 

I'd also recommend acquiring the original version of the game from the AV official website, as it contains the famous (notorious?) Valley of  Echoes level 25, which didn't make it into the final version of the game, but is well worth a look.

Overall, 4+ out of 5.

There is no presentation for this mythic wad, it is something that belongs to the history of Doom and the community, one of the first and most brilliant works done by fans, a megawad that surpasses any expectations and that innovates with so much fun and genius. My first megawad in my life, the first one completed, I was just hooked and enjoyed every single map, without a doubt, something epic and fantastic to play that I am grateful to have known.

Done on HMP/continuous/saves

Good old wad. It has it's beautiful scenarios with very neat detailing, for example in map 20, which is purely egyptian. Most maps are linear, some too linear, and others annoyingly too linear. I generally don't mind backtracking for, ammo for example, but I found some maps with odd pickup placement, where a lot of handful ammo is in the first areas, and I had to backtrack several times. Map 27 comes to my mind, imagine myself returning from the end to the start point more than once to look up for ammo.  

Monster placement is, in the majority, ok. There are some cheap traps specifically with archviles and no cover. In maps 08 and 20 I died in the same kind of traps, an archie appearing in front of me in a corridor without escape. Due to this I had to keep my continuous BFG all the time. Apart from that, some really brutal scenarios, and high number of infighting circumstances, this is what I liked the most.

Midis are cool, some Doom and Heretic tracks, as well as others. Secrets are not very interesting in this was to be honest, some of them don't give you any clue to find them. 

My favourite maps are 06, 12, 18, and 24. Unfortunately, map 30 is the only one I completely disliked and didn't even bother to complete it legally. 

But overall I still had fun, I do think it's a little overrated, by reading general thoughts by people I sometimes don't understand what they see in this wad as legendary or epic. On another side, finding other wads inspired by this one is good and tells how much it impacted on mappers, so that's a good thing. I'll give this a 7/10 

A lot of ambitious contributions by a lot of talented people. A few of them being misses but overall a varied mix of good to great maps with a splattering of slaughter here and there. Some had an older style feel to them but nothing that ever detracted from the overall presentation. Worth a look.