The Enigma Episode v2.0

Puzzles, weird progressions, mandelbrots. Somehow every map has a theme or a sensation. I don't know, I just love the Enigma. Flynn: I once had a pet spider named Hilbert... 

This one did not aged so well. It reminded me a lot of Hexen; at least the parts, where it's more about searching for switches or other ways to get further rather than shooting stuff. That said, if you enjoy this, you will get what you want. Personally, I'm not a big fan. Completed on UV, it's quite easy (aside from mentioned switch/key hunting). I managed to get several times into area of no return and had to load - apparently I was supposed to get there later with a key/after swtich trigger/not be able to make that 'jump'. Also, secrets are not really secrets in this one; you need to find majority of them to get further. I spent few times annoying 15-30m searching for key hidden behind really random wall/fake wall. On bright side, I saw one or two very inventive level design features that deserve praise (notably two-sided stairs at the left side of beginning of lvl 3 is genius!). Overall 3/5, as this is quite old wad, so I'm not judging it too harshly.

first of all the biggest issue I have with Enigma is I for some reason cannot extract the download from the zip file for some really dumb reason. have no idea what's up with that, but I have to download it from the DSDA archive and I'm not sure if anyone else has this problem besides me.

Enigma, a 9-level set by the late Jim Flynn, lives up to its name. this is the kind of wad where you will get lost, looking at completely odd, Maximum Doom-like detail (sorry, but is this really amazing design?), jumping puzzles (I never find these fun), and cryptic progression where if you're gonna try and get out somewhere, you might want to try to use random walls. some secrets are required. those weird Mandelbrot images look like fancy desktop wallpapers, and you're gonna spend some time looking at them since this set actually is quite long in individual level length. levels like Triplet and The Citadel are true highlights of the set, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here. another thing to take note of is that each of these original levels somehow had been released beforehand, while Jim actually compiled them all and released them as one wad which is this file.

gameplay actually is quite hard, for a set from 1995 that's quite an accomplishment. if you're not dealing with figuring out where to go, it's actually somewhat enjoyable. unfortunate that I spend quite a lot of time groping at the level progression and what I need to do. perhaps the design also didn't help matters. Jim's definitely a peculiar one, this and the Eternal Doom maps he made show just how powerful he is at trying completely off-the-wall things. me, I'm more traditional than this.

oddly beautiful in its sheer massiveness and haphazard contrast between 0 and 255 light levels - truly unforgettable and quite a good play, but i think its best as a relic of when nobody really knew how to make things look "good" so they fucked around and we accidentally get this quasi masterpiece, its rad