Doom 2 In Name Only

I played up to The Crusher and... frankly, it soured the taste in my mouth to the point that I don't want to continue and try all of the maps. 

Surprisingly hideous and wonderfully claustrophobic architecture, with monotonic texture usage and gimmicks at every turn of the map. Then of course the Arch-Vile maze because apparently it's a necessity to copy the Casalis at least once in your mapping career. The crushing ceiling was just the cherry on the top. Not a fan.

Pretty long maps and it can get kind of frustrating. But overall, it was a pretty fun playthrough.

Pretty good first 6 maps, map07 is cock and ball torture, but overall the megawad is kinda mediocre.

I was intrigued by the concept, so I decided to try this out. Turns out, the megawad is very mediocre at best & one of the worst Doom 2 style megawads I played in a while.

This is a poorly executed mess. Most of the maps are designed in mediocrity & don't play well. Monster placement is bad, maps are unnecessarily long & drag for a long time, switch hunts & dark areas you can't see at all & frustrates you more than challenges you. I stopped at Map 19, couldn't take the limited visibility & samey map design.

The whole experience was a snoozefest boring tedium with occasionally a good challenge. Nothing special, though.

Two stars for some good enemy encounters & interesting concept.

=========

NOT Recommended

Map20 is a bit surrealistic

IMO, great maps = 09, 10, 13, 15, 22, 23, 28 and 34. Good maps = 01, 04, 05, 06, 12, 31, 16, 17, 18 and 26. Bad Maps = 08, 11 and 19. Worse Maps = 20 and 24. In the end worth a download and play.

Infuriating monster placement in many maps.  Prepare to endure revenants, archviles and pain elementals used in the most enraging, dickish ways possible. The wad is proliferated with dickish traps which will get you killed without foreknowledge. Forget pistol starting some of these maps, revenants and pain elementals in your face at when you have nothing more than a shotgun and a few shells. Some maps are decent, e.g. Map 29, but many are shit to mediocre at best, with maps 6 and 7 being a special kind of standout dickballs shit.

Done with these settings:

- Crispy Doom 3.5

- Hurt Me Plenty.

- Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset.

- Saves every 10 minutes or so.

It wasn't as bad as the popular opinions say. In fact, it has a lot of fun maps faithful to their titles, with nice visuals, good architecture and detailing. Monster placement isn't the most exciting thing but it holds its own. Some of the custom tunes were catchy. In general it gives what it promises.

My favourite map is the twentieth, it gives some fun close encounters as well as Nobles vs. Cybers. Other maps like 05, 11, 15, 17, 21, 26 and 31 stood out as totally good, in my point of view. Then maps like 13 and 24 felt like better ideas than the originals in Doom 2, though the first one has a secret homage to the original Downtown, I'm not sure if this is "legal" since the maps are meant to be In Name Only.

Anyway, there were also maps that I didn't enjoy that much. Map 07 would be better if much shorter and less lava floor. Map 14 has a lot of non-secret areas that could have been tagged as secrets perfectly. Map 19 is fine, if somewhat obscure, the dark hallways were really mazy but ok, at least there were no roaming archviles, and as it had a great final arena that can be twisted, I find this map mostly positive. Map 23 provides some fun with barrels but it also has no possible ways to return to previous sections once you get past them, and also archviles that never teleport in anywhere, why? I dunno. Map 27 has a sector problem where imps overlap a wall that is supposed to raise, making the map impossible to beat in vanilla unless cheating; it also has a SMM that has troubles to teleport in the central backyard, and disliked parts like the fake walls section and the path to the blue key, where there's a tiny horribly hidden switch. And finally the bonus one, map 34, which is horrible and impossible, so bad monster placement, so bad ammo placement, soooooooooo bad constructed, and the end is... like kmxexii stated in their review, avoid.

The other maps I didn't specifically recall vary from ok to good. Next mission will be UV-pistol/fist starting, someday in the future.

Overall, I'll give this 6.5/10, which means I had fun with the wad, just not all the time.