Wonderful Doom, v.1.3

I was pretty suspicious at first, but "ultimately" a very nice experience. Such an "alternate" endeavor can be a dangerous one as the mapper's rubbing elbows with an already established, and quite iconic, map set - but he did well I think.

If you're into the "classic Doom" and want some new stuff to play which is different but not too different... give this a "shot"!

p.s.: E3M9 seems quite different.

If you like Doom The Way Id Did serie of mapsets, this will probably be of your liking, as this mapset was release a few years before of the TWID serie began, and its possibly the mapset that give the idea to the original designers and is actually a precursor of the serie.

Wraith made his own version of Ultimate Doom, adressing all the problems the original IWAD has.

Maps are rehashes of the original maps, so even when the maps are similar aesthetically and contextually to the orignals, they are by no means the same, and most have the touch up to difficulty and navigation Wraith thought would make them even better.

The principal change is that most map are interconneted, especially after map E1M5 and all E2, E3 and E4. So its hard for you to get stuck or lost as most on the original maps suffered with deadends and some oneway only sections.
The tweaks to difficulty is apparent as this maps are more challenging than their IWAD counterparts, and that mostly thanks to Wraith more than enough experience on mapping that let him design better enemy encounters and moster placement but still being respectful of the original design of the map.

Another great enhancement is that the boss maps are actually maps and not just an one on one arena anymore. So the added challenge is greatly appreciated in here.

For certain, Wraith made an excellent megawad that not only its faithful to the original school design, it also adresses the problem of the original maps making them even more fun, entertaining and challenging than before.

Why it doesn't win a cacoward and was just a runner-up when there was no vanilla winning mapset that year, it something that totally baffles me.
So for me, this one is the vanilla cacoward winner of that year.

An award it totally deserves.

Done with these settings:

- Crispy Doom 5.3.
- Ultra-Violence
- Continuous combined with pistol start mindset.
- No saves, mostly.

Very decent tribute to the original game. Each map is essentially a remix of the ID's levels, built around the same theme and music tracks per episode, albeit with the author's personal changes to the design. Aesthetically, the only notorious difference, and by no means less important, is the texturing he decided to use in some sections. In general the maps look extra polished, there were no signs of misaligned textures, but I wasn't that attentive to be honest. He did left the most distinctive visual features of each map untouched, for example where it's supposed to be a dark secret dungeon, it is a dark secret dungeon, just not copy-pasted. 

As said before, Wonderful Doom is just a revamped Ultimate Doom. If you know the game by heart, there may be little room for surprises, so you can take it as a memory test. Of course, the author added his own touch to the gameplay. I would underline the size of the rooms in comparison to the iwad, tending to be more compact though in no way less attractive. In consequence, they lead to a bit more claustrophobic combat, specially throughout the latter episodes, sometimes you'll find yourself in a hairy situation like a slow drop in a cluster of imps and barons coming from the shadows, or starting surrounded of pinkies and barrels to detonate using your ol' peashooter. Another thing is the resource balance, sometimes giving more leeway where there wasn't originally, other times less obvious for the pistol starter. This is part of several plot twists Wraith added here and there to the main concepts to keep it somehow fresh and interesting, but I'm not going to spoil any in particular. 

Secret-wise, I guess it's not needless to say almost all of them can be found normally, there is one in E2M9 that can't be triggered due to the teleport line. Otherwise, there are no broken sectors or staircases of secrets (sorry to burst your bubble ;P). There are no disliked maps, and so I'll avoid to pick favourites this time. I also didn't care if most maps were extremely similar to the iwad ones, but that could not be the case for you.

Overall, I won't lie and say this turned out to be thoroughly enjoyable. It's what I expected from an author with such love for plain vanilla Ultimate Doom. Nostalgia fans should give it a go. Well, as long as you wish to "play Original Doom one more time", otherwise if you expect a thing like "Doom the Way ID Did", it might not be wise to download this. My rate is 8/10.

This feels like a very well done remake or somethint like that, its pure vanilla and has an amazing layout based on the original Doom, I also enjoy vanilla a lot like some other Doomers so overall, this is a great megawad.

This was a blast to play through. Everything felt familiar (like I was playing the Ultimate Doom) while still doing its own thing. Granted, some things felt a little too familiar but for me that wasn't a bad thing. I can see why that wouldn't appeal to some folks though.

I'd still recommend downloading this and giving it a shot.

A good throwback to 93's Doom.

Official maps with with different map layouts.

Cons.

E4M2 in Wonderful Doom is less balanced than the official E4M2. Needs either less barons or more plasma ammo.

At E4M3, Chocolate DooM likes to crash, so I recommend Boom engine for it.

Lots of tutti frutti & found one HOM on E3M9.

Some floors or bridges have pain sector applied, which should not have them since the nukage is around them.

Example: E1M5 starting area.

basically it's like playing Doom as if it was a PWAD. it's fun if you are already familiar with Doom and want to play it again except with things different in it, but with the overall feel remaining the same.

I had a dream once, true story, where I was playing DOOM and everything was kinda familiar but kinda not. Such is dream logic. Keys were the wrong colour, layouts were reversed or had new sections. And yet it still looked precisely like DOOM, the one I've come to know and love.

This is a set of maps that does the same thing; even some questionable choices like the damaging start sector of E1M5 add to the 'dream logic'; everything's familiar and yet, it's somehow wrong.

Definitely worth a curious look even if all you're going to do is get drunk and/or stoned and give it a shot to freak yourself out or something.

Meant for people who know the game by heart and want to experience it differently. Fun concept, diligent texturing, uneven execution.

The amount of variation from the originals ranges from pointless to almost new. As an E1 fan I found it disappointing (save for E1M7), but E2M1, E2M2, E4M9 and E4M3 in particular were great.