Requiem

Classic and memorable megawad

I cut this from the title card for my Thumbnails, it was a huge pain in the ass so thought I would drop it here.

May post an actual review after I post my vids for it

Memento Mori but with even more backtracking and also better

Enjoyed most of these, Map 23 is my favourite, it has the Icon of Sin, "ghost" monsters and everything.

Awesome midis. Some maps appear to be filler? I don't dislike them. I like to take breaths. My absolute favorite is Procustes Chambers (24). Replayed and re-enjoyed again. Great music!

It's hard to rate Requiem fairly for simple reason - inconsistency - it contains levels in range from bollocks to flawless. Some levels got as few as 30 monsters and can be completed < 1 minutes in first run (and it's not one of the first 2-3 levels, lvl 26 got 21 enemies on UV). Some levels are just blatant showoff of what super cool features author can work out for the level, but then he forgets to build actually nice level and play is boring to painful (I'm looking at you, level 21, I didn't hate a Doom level like this for a long time).

Bugged triggers, unreachable secrets, plain openable walls that are no secrets, but you need them to complete the level.. Requiem has it all. Should the editor dedicate more effort into playtesting and polishing maps (and probably also putting them in different order), result could be easily nearly perfect.
All-in-all, the bad levels are no more than 1/3 of the pack and other parts will provide you with tons of fun, challenge and some breathtaking design. My special praise goes to levels 3, 6, 13, 22 24 and 28).

Mixed feeling about this megawad. Intended as the final symphony of doom before it demise in the hand of the games to come, this one feels rushed (it was) and with a need to rearrange the maps for a better progression.

After all, its pretty much enjoyable, and there are really great maps here. But some other seems to be fillers or simply not much polished as an orchestration of this end needed.
Iikka Keränen is somewhat the showman here, making some of his better maps, and also some strange ones like ''Escape from chaos'' that start in a toilet, and ends in a spaceship... yep, really random!
Dario Casali map23: Hatred, is like the description of the map said, possibly one of the better maps that could be made pushing the doom engine to the limit.

I like it the same or a little more than Memento Mori, but i liked Memento Mori 2 much more.
I made a neat dehacked patch, and wrote a backstory for this, so maybe i will release all the work i made for this trilogy in the near future.

Fortunately for us, we didn't have to hear the true requiem of doom, and maybe it will never happend.

For some reason, I always looked at Requiem as one of the more 'weird' and forgettable of the popular 90s megawads. However, that doesn't mean it isn't good fun and doesn't feature mindblowingly good levels, with an amazing soundtrack all the way through.

For the most part, Requiem was certainly very advanced for its time, much like Memento Mori II and Eternal Doom.

Its first two episodes contain the most fun and beautiful levels of its package, with a grand variety of themes, from techbases, to temples and caves, to the most wonderful and memorable city levels of 90s megawads.

However, it doesn't go without featuring many bad apples, mostly seen on its late episode. MAP20 and forward certainly features some of Requiem's worst levels, resorting to hitscan hell for their difficulty and featuring weird, confusing progression, downgraded visuals and other weird issues: MAP24 for example being one of the most infamous for being near impossible to complete through a pistol start, and the last level featuring a laughably easy to kill Icon of Sin with some weak, uninspired battles beforehand. I can give a shout-out to MAP28 for being an unique and fun level, much like the early and mid episode levels.

Requiem is a very good megawad which everyone should give a try at some point, but personally, it wouldn't be one of my first recommendations when it comes to the 90s.

[HMP, Continuous w/ pistol-start mindset, regular saves]

I went into Requiem with relatively low expectations. Having not been thrilled by the Memento Mori series and having just come off playing the superb Alien Vendetta, I expected a solid if relatively forgettable megawad with desgin concepts in the old school. In many ways I was pleasently surprised: solid map design through about the first 20 maps, a Quake homage in Map 31 that made me smile, a few obnoxious encounters due to tight spacing and poor distribution of the Sshotgun, okay, but better city levels than the IWAD, so that was nice. Map 15 was frustrating to navigate and Map 18 actually forced me to restart since I saved after the red key, but no real bs otherwise. But then came Map 21: Be warned, it is possible to softlock yourself out of the lift in the X room if you are backtracking; upon restarting I found the switch to lower the panel in front of the red door did not work and remained "active" and non-function despite repeated Uses. I would recommend an updated version of this map because this simply wasn't acceptable. (For reference, I was running this with GZDoom 4.1.3; your mileage may vary.) Nor was Map 24, as commented below. After the grueling and frustrating Map 23, this almost made me want to stop playing the Wad or at least skip this one, which would be a first for me. Not enough ammo, revenants and a few more revenants, the only nice thing I have to say about this debacle is you will learn just how effective (of often inneffective) that stupid chainsaw can be against enemies that can do over 40% damage in one hit. Not. Good. Design.

But there is hope, as Map 27 is one of the nicest vanilla Maps I've seen in one of these older Wads (The Labs of MM 1 notwithstanding), and its winding journey almost redeems the package to the finish. The unfortunate and clumsy Icon of Sin encounter at the end of Map 23 aside, I found the final map mercifully short and I appreciate the little bit of lore in the text file giving us a semblence of an "alternative" final boss.

Overall, worth checking out for several of the maps here. A compliment to map 20 while I'm here- short, sweet, and nice outdoor environment design w/ vanilla assets not unlike Scythe meets Plutonia. A few bumps with the weapon placement and some points off for 21 and 24, but a solid recommendation going in forewarned.

Oh, Requiem... What to begin with... 

Outstanding frst 15 maps and if that design, gameplay and combat was more consistent in the further levels, I would have given 5! But it drops off quite a bit from map 16 onwards and becomes a jumbled mess of maps. Considering the difficulty I faced in Memento Mori 2 I expected Requiem to be even more difficult than that. It was, but only until map 15 and from then on it became a relative cakewalk. Well, not completely though. There are a few tough monsters and still maps are difficult from pistol start. The second time I played it I felt like I liked it more, but rage quit on map 27. Iikka Keränen, please put more ammo! 

The lack of ammo frustrated me from map 22 onwards. The wad intends a lot of infighting, which is in a lot of cases impossible, because of big groups of monsters of the same kind and/or often presence of arch-viles. There also aren't many crushers that can help the player kill monsters easier and there are a lot of long-distance enemies. The lackluster of ammo is definitely map 24. It has only 40 shells, a couple of rockets and a small patch of plasma while 60% of the enemies are revenants and there are a few imps and hell knights. It has no single corner where infighting is possible on top of that. Oh, and it comes after map 23 which is an ammo eater due to the presence of an Icon Of Sin fight. It's manageable until map 27, but no further than that. Compare that with how many shells the player was spoilt with in Memento Mori 2. In MM2 the rule is that if you have no shotgun ammo, you're dead. 

Fighting was OK. I expected a harder wad, but still the fights were OK. Some were forced, some were tedious. Basically the problem was again, you can't really infight beefier monsters. 

Yeah, map 24 Procrustes Chambers is my least favourite. In fact I hate it more than I hate The Chasm! Hey, another time I don't like map 24. Coinsidence? Is it that I hate this number or this number hates me? Speaking of The Chasm, map 19 is also bad. Not to mention the design flaws, but also that twisted cubic staircase platforming in The-Chasm-style? Will there ever be an end to ledge walking as a gameplay gimmick? 

Visuals were perfect and very interesting. This is one thing they did well. 

Maps ranking: 

1. Hatred - 23 
2. Cursed Kingdom - 27 - next time I play it I may be more careful with the ammo 
3. Last Resort - 15 
4. The Black Gate - 10 
5. The Portal - 14 
6. Den Of The Skull - 21 
7. Town Of The Dead - 13 

A lot of levels though had the impossibility to get 100% kills and/or secrets. And Den Of The Skull is unique in that aspect. 100% kills - impossible, 100% items - impossible and guess what - 100% secrets impossible! People, when creating maps, please make everything the player can take accessible. I found out you actually can make 100% kills possible, but you have to use a map editor. And if to fix one map, why not fix all of them? I don't think it's legal. 

Bottom line: What could have been. I don't care about the visuals. If this wad was harder than MM2 and had all kills and secrets accessible, I would have given 5. And of course, if it had better ammo balance. I must give three. I gave MM 4 and I gave MM2 5. 

PS: Mark Klem, if so many designers left the team, why the heck didn't you create a single map in this wad? Base Exposure is one of the best maps I've ever played and I definitely would have asked for more of the same! 

Good megawad but one of the most overrated from the 90's. Likka keränen's maps are by far the most memorable with their vanilla tricks but the rest is easily forgettable and sometimes annoying to play because of global narrowness. Map 23 has very interesting concept contrarywise.

Nice megawad, it was fun to play.  Nice new music included

Played through GZDoom V3.7.0 on Ultra-Violence in a continuous playthrough, how does "the last great megawad", Requiem, hold up today? Sadly, not really that great. I never really played much of the megawad then and playing it again now reminds me as to why that is. Requiem is an odd megawad to have the title it was given, as when comparing it to other 90s classics like Hell Revealed and Eternal Doom, the WAD is unpolished and boring even. For every upside, there are one or two downsides that drags down the experience, and it's a shame because when the levels are good, they do still hold up and stand out from the bunch.

To get this out of the way, the music is pretty good, a lot of tracks fit well in the levels they play in and they do help provide atmosphere in some of the better looking levels. Some of my favorite tracks are "Under Death" (MAP08 and MAP30), "Last Resort" (MAP15), and "The Everlasting Negative" (MAP21). Some tracks may not hit as good as others and some do get reused, but otherwise the music is one of the best aspects of the WAD and I don't know what reason you can have to not use the separate music WAD file.

While Hell Revealed may have aged in its gameplay, you can still play it from start to finish without running into too many issues. Requiem however, you can find yourself getting stuck sometimes, you can't get 100% secrets on all maps due to some mapping oversights, and some maps are filler and not always the good kind. Some maps have deathmatch arenas separate from the main map with items not flagged as multiplayer only, so you will never get 100% items on them (assuming you care anyways). No matter the length, some levels are just not interesting. You have your typical MAP07, short levels that end faster before you start enjoying them, and map tricks that can't really save levels that are really just boring to put it simply. I found myself snoozing on maps like MAP11 and MAP16 and just feel like playing something else. Finishing the levels out of obligation left a kind of "nothing" taste on me, and it certainly doesn't help when for a second I thought I was playing a SLIGE level (MAP18 start rooms)! There are surprises in some levels like the Arch-Vile ghost bug on MAP23 and numerous uses of fake 3D bridges, but not a lot happens for the most part, if that makes sense.

Some of the level design just feels needlessly annoying. MAP06 and MAP08 are the two maps that come to mind for me, and being on the first episode, they can leave an odd impression in what the remainder of the WAD will be like. MAP06 has this one room where some metal bars will lower and you have to wait for them to raise again so you can access the switch you need to press to continue the level. Of course, you can skip that since the switch you need to press is way above your head so you just press the use key where the switch is and there you go. The wait isn't necessary since by then you killed all the monsters around you, making the whole room wait pointless. MAP08 has those slow elevators when you get into the caves, especially near the end of the level where you have to wait around 30 seconds just to reach the exit switch. Wouldn't it be better to just have some stairs or making them lifts instead, it doesn't bring any immersion to the level, and when replaying this level you'll start to really dislike these elevators.

Secrets mostly consist of similar looking walls that you press use on or shoot at, and when I say similar I mean walls that don't look any different to surrounding ones. Sometimes what you think is a secret is not actually one and might even be required to finish the level (MAP15 as an example), and sometimes what you think isn't a secret is actually one. There are times where secrets don't have you guessing on walls, but they are uncommon. Sometimes I have to look inside a map with a map editor just to know how to finish a level (again, MAP15) since some maps don't do a usual switch hunt as you may think, and that's just not fun. There's also a lack of ammo on some maps, especially early on. Sometimes you may have plenty of bullets, other times you are down to your fists to survive.

Overall, Requiem is not a bad WAD, but among the 90s classics, it aged poorly and the lack of polish made some maps a chore or stop you from progressing in unexpected ways. There are maps I liked a lot, such as MAP05, MAP17, and MAP27, but having to play some "meh" levels on the way got me uninterested in finishing it. The "last great megawad" could have been much more, but instead it's more average than anything else. Might be good to play out of curiosity or playing some specific levels, but not much else.

Having just finished the wad I figured I might as well share my thoughts on the experience. This is the second custom wad I have played after Memento Mori, on UV, in GZDoom 3.2.4's Software render.

First of all, the levels. I think that they are superb and of high quality, and the vast majority of them use custom textures, occasionally reminding me of some maps from Quake, but that's a good thing in my book. The action takes place in multiple areas, some Earth bound, including some arctic looking zones at the beginning which are later never revisited, and of course later in Hell. Some of the later levels tend to have a medieval feeling to them, such as MAP24, or so they felt to me anyway, I'm not familiar with the vision the authors had for these particular levels.

Moving on, there seems to be quite a bit of emphasis blasphemy, making great use of switches with inverted crosses and other, bigger, iron crosses during maps and there's even upside down crucified marines in some of them, such as the aforementioned MAP24, as well as executions. I must say that the amount of dead marines in this wad is surprising, at the very least.

Bugs are something I did not experience a lot, and nothing major. There's some problems with the textures in some maps, I remember seeing some odd, "hanging" textures under some walls in the Quake styled levels, but aside from this, I didn't run into any other kind of issues, be they graphical or enemy related.

The major problem of this wad is related to the gameplay. Some maps simply force you into using specific guns. Both in the early and later levels I found myself running out of ammo more than I'd like to, being required to resort to either the fist or the chainsaw. Fortunately, when this happened the enemies had the tendency to be either Pinkies, Imps, or other, weaker enemies. This does impact the overall experience and in a negative way from my point of view, feeling almost cheap, it's best for a map to let you figure out what weapons are best to use for different scenarios, instead of forcing you to use something.

Despite this, the gameplay is solid most of the time, challenging, and fun. The wad does rely a lot on Revenants, Chaingunners, and Mancubi later in the game to the point they are essentially overused, but not to the point of being outright tiresome to fight them, although it does actually tend to feel this way on a few occasions. On the contrary, enemies such as the Hell Knight are underused, which feels like an artificial method of increasing the difficulty instead of doing something interesting with the maps themselves and the enemy placement within them to spice up the gameplay. Talking about the placement of the enemies, I'd say it's pretty good most of the time, but the maps themselves lack in enemy variety sometimes. On a few occasions however you end up with powerful enemies in either closed or very narrow areas/spaces, which is not fun at all, basically forcing you to take damage. One very interesting thing to point out is that the wad does feature Nazis in at least one map. The element of surprise is most certainly there, and it did take a bit to figure out how they're actually supposed to be killed since there seems to be only one way, or in only one specific spot anyway. I don't find any map in particular to be bad, but I do find at least one of them to really drag on, that being MAP27. While this map has some pretty good gameplay, it becomes tiresome after a short time due to its challenging nature and especially great length. On the other end of the spectrum, some levels are very short, compact, perhaps even fast, and straight to the point, such as MAP25 and MAP26.

All this being said, I think that's about it.

Is it overrated or underrated? I don't know, and I don't think I want to anyway. It's up to everyone to figure things out on their own and make up their own minds, these are my thoughts on the wad.

Will I change my mind later, after playing more wads? Possibly, I don't know the answer to this question either, and even if I do, this review will most definitely not be updated/changed, because for one, I write them very shortly upon their completion, when they're still very fresh in my mind and I want the reviews to reflect the thoughts and feelings I had at the time, and two, I want each one of them (the wads I mean) to stand on their own and not compare one with the other.

Between the time when the oceans drank Duke Nukem and the rise of the sons of Modern Warfare, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Requiem, destined to bear the jeweled crown of Doom megawads upon it's troubled file extension. It is I, its player, who can tell thee of its saga. Let me tell you of the times of high Dooming.

Doom doom doom doom, doom doom...

This here is the crowned jewel of Doom, showing the pure creative force of this fandom. The WAD that was to mark the end of the modding scene, now shines as its achievement, whereas the successing games faded into obscurity. Who would have thought that the simplicity of Doom's geometric shapes will beat the complicated brush mapping of later titles?

Is it flawed? - Yes, a little. Does it have technical derpiculties? - Yes. Is it awesome? - Fuck yes.

Straight from 1997 comes a mapset of excellent design. You will never notice a misaligned texture, you will never find yourself prolongly stuck, you will never think that the fights are boring. Instead you will find masterpieces such as MAP21, where the Doom engine was pushed to its limits. Or MAP06, which is another take at the famous "'O' of destruction". Or the city-like MAP22 and MAP27. Or the eerie MAP24. It's funny, because when you look at the automap, the shapes are almost always rectangular and bending on right angles. This is something that the mapping community has strayed from nowadays, and yet, in this WAD, it is absolutely not detrimental. There is great variety between the levels. You never feel like you're playing a rehash of a previous design.

The combat never stalls and there is right balance between the difficult fights and the monsters placed there to keep you engaged. Sometimes, after a particularly engaging map, the WAD will give you a respite and the next map will be a low monster count, light-play game. This improves the pacing and makes you want to play just one more map, even when you know that it's time to take a break.

Initial maps will give you plenty of shotgun and chaingun ammo but very few rockets. This balance changes in the latter half of the WAD and you will have to choose between your weapons more carefully, albeit there will also be plenty of rockets and cells. Whenever a large pack of Barons is thrown at you, it's almost certain you will have enough of BFG ammo to dispose of them quickly. This is very good as it maintains the pace of the game.

This WAD has not aged a bit and if you haven't played it by now, you should give it a try.