My curiosity on the popularity of certain PWADs

[The_SloVinator]

Since I came on Doomworld only two years ago, I'm curious about why certain mega wads are so well known, popular & many people mention it to this day.

PWADs I'm curious about their popularity:

- Scythe 1

- Scythe 2

- Alien Vendetta

- Hell Revealed

- Scythe x

 

 

[seed]

Probably because they were more or less great products of their time, have aged well and are still great and fun to play even by modern standards. In other words, classics.

 

They could probably still be a valid source of inspiration too.

[Deadwing]

They're classics and are the first things to be recommended when someone asks for something to play. Probably when they got released they were one of the best thing that was done by the community at the time. However, IMO, at least Alien Vendatta and Hell Revealed feels a lot outdated and there's a lot of new stuff that plays better than both.

[leodoom85]

Hah

I just played Alien Vendetta with a bundled mod at the weekend. I can say for sure that the wad is overrated because yes it start well but sadly, it ends pretty badly at the last cluster. 

And, as Deadwing said, it's better to play recent wads that has better gameplay than the classics...although, it's also not bad to revisit them.

[bioshockfan90]

Scythe still holds up pretty well, but I'm in agreement with Deadwing over AV and HR being outdated nowadays actually, it doesn't 'click' in comparison to what we have out today. If you had to ask me to make a 'modern' version of some popular WADs, I'd put this in:

 

-Back To Saturn X (Episodes 1, 2, and 3 )

-Jenesis

-Speed of Doom

-Resurgence

-Valiant

-Ancient Aliens

 

[Gaia74]

i d

12 minutes ago, bioshockfan90 said:

Scythe still holds up pretty well, but I'm in agreement with Deadwing over AV and HR being outdated nowadays actually, it doesn't 'click' in comparison to what we have out today. If you had to ask me to make a 'modern' version of some popular WADs, I'd put this in:

 

-Back To Saturn X (Episodes 1, 2, and 3 )

-Jenesis

-Speed of Doom

-Resurgence

-Valiant

-Ancient Aliens

 

I dont try valiant, Do you recommend it?

[Deadwing]

There's no way you can go wrong with Valiant. Just be sure to select a lower difficult if you don't feel like going through difficult maps.

[Memfis]

Scythe 1: first tremendously successful pack of short punchy maps. Before that we had Demonfear, Shamus Young levels, etc, but they never really became popular. Erik Alm's designs were cooler and he knew how to put the player in danger much better, which helped him find a very large audience. Every mapper dreams of making their own Scythe.

 

Scythe 2: an expansion on Scythe ideas, more daring, more sexy, more visually unique. The architecture, the gameplay, and the overall consistency were groundbreaking and they are still imitated all the time.

 

Alien Vendetta: first really epic megawad not counting Eternal Doom. The problem with Eternal Doom is it was a bit too peculiar and Hexen-inspired to become a smash hit. But the AV team said "no" to puzzles (well, almost... Map01's exit room is a funny counterexample) and instead went for total carnage in beautiful and grand environments. Many innovative design techniques, especially Anders Johnsen's approach to lighting, became widespread thanks to this wad. Hell never looked so amazing.

 

Hell Revealed: is there a need to say anything? Slaughter was born here. Absolutely shocking difficulty for the time and many clever setups which are still copied by many authors.

 

Scythe X: well, it's a part of the Scythe series...

Edited July 23, 2018 by Memfis

[purist]

47 minutes ago, bioshockfan90 said:

 If you had to ask me to make a 'modern' version of some popular WADs, I'd put this in:

 

-Back To Saturn X (Episodes 1, 2, and 3 )

-Jenesis

-Speed of Doom

-Resurgence

-Valiant

-Ancient Aliens

 

 

And I'd add Sunlust to that list

 

 

[NuMetalManiak]

The popular megawads are well known mostly for several factors, like consistently decent gameplay, neat tricks here and there, as well as good design. All of this is subjective, but when more people like the wad for what it has overall, that's how it's popular.

[Pegleg]

1 hour ago, purist said:

 

And I'd add Sunlust to that list

 

 

Then should you also add Sunder to the list?

[Dragonfly]

3 hours ago, Agent6 said:

They could probably still be a valid source of inspiration too.

 

I can very much vouch for Scythe II's impact on my mapping, even with maps I work on in 2018. Some other megawads of the past on't hold up nearly as well as Scythe II, and if I had to place my money on the table, I'd bet Scythe II would still win a cacoward and receive just as much attention today as it did when it came out.

[purist]

40 minutes ago, Pegleg said:

Then should you also add Sunder to the list?

 

It certainly inspired a lot of mappers and it looks epic but I've never had the inclination to play it.

[Mr. Freeze]

Hell Revealed was the first "pure" slaughterWAD, and places a great deal of your success on positioning. The first time I played it, I was used to tanking a few shots or whatever simply because I knew a Medkit was around the corner. In HR, trying to do the same thing will get you mauled to death. It was the first WAD to make me adjust my playing style on the fly. Also it deserves credit for being a slaughterWAD before other slaughterWADs fell to the "Big room + BFG and ammo + 1000 monsters" syndrome. 

[valkiriforce]

Just wanna add to the love for Alien Vendetta for having so much personality between map authors including Anders Johnsen, Kim Malde, Brad Spencer, Mattias Berggren and others who helped to make it what it is. It really helps that it kind of falls between being a communal effort and having a number of authors touch-up other maps like what Malde did to Berggren's MAP03 in adding the city visuals and the navy ship, giving it more of a singular consistency you would get with fewer authors. I like that despite using various map themes throughout it still feels like one cohesive whole thanks to the quality of detail pushing for realistic earth environments, whether it's a techbase or a cave crawl or an oceanic panorama. There are sections of the megawad that really make it interesting like Spencer's techbases entering into episode 2, and Johnson's hell maps really pushing the player into a corner in difficulty. Sprinkled with some very talented authors like Madani el Hariri and Martin Aalen Hunsager. For me it just doesn't get boring because while the map authors and themes may be varied it still holds strong as one complete megawad. Getting to move from a brick and mortar fortress to a techbase carved into an earthen crater to a cargo bay by the sea is just satisfying because you don't always know what to expect next, and for me it's rewarding in itself to get to play a variety of maps like these with a consistency in vision for what that megawad was supposed to embody. There were few megawads of such high quality like what AV gave us in the early 2000's so it's no wonder it would be remembered to this day.

[Cynical]

4 hours ago, bioshockfan90 said:

Scythe still holds up pretty well, but I'm in agreement with Deadwing over AV and HR being outdated nowadays actually, it doesn't 'click' in comparison to what we have out today. If you had to ask me to make a 'modern' version of some popular WADs, I'd put this in:

 

-Back To Saturn X (Episodes 1, 2, and 3 )

-Jenesis

-Speed of Doom

-Resurgence

-Valiant

-Ancient Aliens

 

Of that list, only Resurgence plays as close to as well as HR, AV, or Scythe 1 and 2.

[Grain of Salt]

I'm going to put a word in for Plutonia 2 and Kama Sutra.

[bioshockfan90]

1 hour ago, Cynical said:

Of that list, only Resurgence plays as close to as well as HR, AV, or Scythe 1 and 2.

To each their own, I suppose. :p

[Catpho]

8 hours ago, Memfis said:

Scythe X: well, it's a part of the Scythe series...

Scythe X deserves more than this one line. Its shows Erik Alm at the height of his powers in techbase mapping for Pete's sake!

Edited July 24, 2018 by Catpho

[Doomkid]

Man, Memento Mori is nowhere to be found in this thread.. Has it really aged that much? I always suggest it to newcomers!

 

*cries in the corner desperately clutching onto bygone mapping tropes*

[Linguica]

Just now, Doomkid said:

Man, Memento Mori is nowhere to be found in this thread.. Has it really aged that much? I always suggest it to newcomers!

 

*cries in the corner desperately clutching onto bygone mapping tropes*

 

Memento Mori was already considered "kind of old and not great" in, like, 1998.

[Doomkid]

Yeah sure, by people who are wrong

 

In all seriousness, I've always considered it one of the classics, up there with the others. Certainly flawed, but there's a lot of fun to be had and creative map designs/enemy encounters.

 

EDIT: I just wanted to add a brief little point about Alien Vendetta: I really enjoy this wad and have replayed it probably too many times in multiplayer over the years, but some maps are so huge and confusing that they always kill servers without fail, even if there were 10+ people there. There are several, but the biggest culprit of this is Map11 with it's ugly starting area and convoluted progression. Every time I join an empty AV server hoping to get a few others to join in, it's sitting on Map11 where the previous party left, likely after 5 minutes of aimlessly wandering around in that giant blocky ashwall start area thing with random invisible blocking lines. In contrast, MM doesn't really have any maps like that where the server just instantly comes screeching to a halt.

 

Bit of a ramble but I've noticed this for eons without ever actually bitching about it, so here it is.

Edited July 24, 2018 by Doomkid

[The_SloVinator]

What about some other mega wads out there that are quite popular?

Let's say Epic 2 or Unholy realms? I heard people talking about Memento Mori a lot as well.

 

It's fascinating to learn the reasons behind the popularity.

 

Ancient Aliens & Valiant are pretty obvious, though. xD

[Catpho]

1 hour ago, The_SloVinator said:

What about some other mega wads out there that are quite popular?

Let's say Epic 2 or Unholy realms? I heard people talking about Memento Mori a lot as well.

 

In general: They won cacowards and Memento Mori was featured in the top 100 wads feature in 2003.

More sutff:

-Epic 2's author, Eternal, was a well known mapper, and it's prequel "Epic" was well received already.

-Unholy realms was created by a (former) DW regular named @Snakes. IDK anything else, yet to play it too.

-Memento Mori: getting a bunch authors to make a megawad of that quality was pretty impressive for the time.

Edited July 24, 2018 by Catpho

[NaZa]

Requiem is extremely underrated for its time I think, but it was popular. 

 

Also iirc Memento Mori came out in 1996.

[seed]

4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Man, Memento Mori is nowhere to be found in this thread.. Has it really aged that much? I always suggest it to newcomers!

 

*cries in the corner desperately clutching onto bygone mapping tropes*

 

Honestly, yeah, it really aged. The second one not as much, but the first, with the exception of certain later levels...

[Jayextee]

"Oh no, people like a thing that I do not" - The Movie.

 

This being said, I'm also on-side with anyone who doesn't believe Hell Revealed aged all that well; or, for that matter the original Memento Mori (second still holds up in my eyes, but I'm pretty lenient personally as to what that means).

 

But yeah, just let people enjoy things innit.

[NuMetalManiak]

Both Memento Moris were made for coop in case you were wondering. They just tweaked it so singleplayer players can play the play out of it.

[eharper256]

Scythe 1 is undeniably a classic. Its flows like melted butter and provides a reasonable challenge for those who like a lower intensity as standard.

[valkiriforce]

12 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Man, Memento Mori is nowhere to be found in this thread.. Has it really aged that much? I always suggest it to newcomers!

 

*cries in the corner desperately clutching onto bygone mapping tropes*

 

Memento Mori is ageless.