Cabro's legacy

Cabro's legacy is a big megawad comprising of a hub and 40 playable maps. While the design of maps isn't that great, the gameplay is balanced with lots of fun and there're at least 10 maps that have more than 500 enemies. I really enjoyed the whole megawad and will replay it in future.

the history behind Cabro's Legacy is quite interesting, and the mappers involved all seem to be from the same nationalities (as evident by the mapnames, mostly) hosting Doom mapping contests. what Cabro's Legacy is a megawad of 43 levels, all organized for 14 tournaments, giving us the gold, silver, and bronze winners of each contest. these levels are not ZDoom-made, except for the hub which has information given about the tournaments and who won what slot. every time you beat a level you'll be back at the hub, and the wad actually forces pistol starts by using ResetInventory and ResetHealth in the MAPINFO (so if you wanna be a jerk and play continuous, remove these lines from every map). you get a little "COMPLETED" thing after each level you beat. for the first contest, only one map is available and the others are locked, sadly.

so what to expect here. if you're an avid player like I am, you'll find some familiar maps. I remember playing Cosa'e Mandinga, a megawad made by @Aluqah prior to this, and some of his maps were apparently in this contest. Vanilla Sky is also here. Aluqah's maps are pretty well made, as are Eye Del Cul's (he's the guy behind Garrulismo, an average megawad). and HeDRoX is also in this wad. other notable mappers here include Mojon Man and Wraith.

now HERE'S the real deal, many of these maps are huge, and have shitloads of padding for the sake of padding. because of that, I tend to like them less. Mojon Man is a major offender here to be frank, many of his maps are full of hitscanners and his teleporter closets are awfully made. one thing a lot of the authors have that contributes to the padding is one thing I often neglect to mention whenever I talk about stuff in Doom that annoys me, forced arena fights. the reason these are bad is not even attributed to the arena battles themselves, but rather having to wait for something to lower all the way to proceed. this is my biggest issue with many slaughtermaps in this entire set, and too many maps have it. whenever I mention the term "speedrun-unfriendly" I refer to these things.

there is bound to at least be some interesting stuff here, but the fatigue from playing many of the longer levels will wear thin even patient players. you get some individual experiences due to the forced pistol starts, which is neat, but if you wanna go through everything in this megawad, you'd best prepare for a long haul.