The Talosian Incident - A Requiem For Doom

Some cool mystery maps, beautiful lighting, and you know something's up. What wins is the music.

This wad didn't age well. It's too simple, too easy (easier than vanilla) and pretty boring by today's standards. However, some of the latter levels are quite fun and the boss level is interesting.
Mod compatibility: Fully compatible with Brutal Doom or Project Brutality.

I really loved this mapset.

There are just smooth details, just little neat hints about what is going on.

And the music really take things up to eleven.

The maps are not really complex, but they quitly fulfill the role for what they were designed. And it would be really cool if this was a full mapset. Maybe not, but two more maps to use the message screen after map20 would round up the experience quite a lot.

The maps range from totally atmospheric maps, to sprawling with challenging but moderated encounters. Some are challenging, some are not soo much, but all in all, its a great mapset with awesome music and being a good farewell song to the mapping scene by this authors.

Thanks Black Star Coven, you really know how to set the mood and to create a really claustrophobic and mysterious atmosphere.

The Talosian Incident is a megawad from the tail end of the classic era of Doom mapping. Unfortunately, it hasn't aged well at all. Although parts of the levels can still be quite moody and memorable, on the whole the maps feel lackluster, with amateurish layouts and haphazard monster placement (the two "Fort" maps are particularly bad in this regard) and sometimes overtly cryptic progression. The authors experiment by replacing typical rockin' music with creepy, moody ambient (or at least as close as you can get to it in MIDI), although the results are uneven: the map06 "music" is simply a horrific noise which is impossible to "listen" to for more than a few seconds, and the map11 music is mostly an earsplitting screech.

I'll admit to being indecisive with how to rank this experience, despite going in expecting to take it slow with the first map opening up with no action and just letting myself get pulled into the atmosphere. The music is pretty cool and sets the mood in places - I particularly liked destroying what seemed to be some kind of device which led to the next map blaring an alarm as I scrambled around the place. It's got some nice moments that carry the action a little better but loses momentum with the frequency in maps that contain lots of halls, doors and enemies packed in a rather square-looking interior. Being a lover of old-school vanilla wads, I did have trouble committing myself by the time I reached the third map. The good points weren't enough to outweigh the negatives for me, but there's always a chance someone can appreciate what they were trying to accomplish for the time it was released.