Vile Flesh

you see it often, the fans of Vile Flesh always say this is an underrated classic. there are reasons for that, the level design offers nothing new, it's all just fancy stock textures, and the gameplay, well, the first few maps are quite linear, then the maps delve into very large maps that tend to be rather tedious to fight through. it's rather progressive, in other words, shorter stuff, then longer stuff, and the difficulty actually scales rather well. LOTS of imps and LOTS of hell knights will be around these levels, seems that the arch-viles aren't advertised as much as the wad title states.

the pacing becomes more like the linear Eternal Doom levels as you go along, this is most easily seen from MAP16 onwards. you're probably gonna get stuck at least once, but it's easy to figure out what to do next right afterwards, just find out what you're missing. most secrets are simple enough, but hard to actually figure out. in between all the combat there's gonna be switch presses, lots of them in every map, although figuring what each switch does isn't that hard. a few interesting themes get tackled using the stock textures, in an attempt to make the maps more memorable (as if their length really doesn't make them any more memorable). the music is all nicely crafted and adrenaline-pumping.

however you set it, Vile Flesh requires a lot of time to go through it, and isn't speedrun friendly.