⬆️ Doomworld Community Top WADs of All Time (resurrected)

[roadworx]

2 hours ago, Ravendesk said:

If a wad at any point has more than 3 monsters in one room it's a slaughter wad.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

it's a nebulous term. a lot of people do consider those wads slaughtery tho, even if i wouldn't specifically label them as "slaughterwads" myself

Edited April 7 by roadworx

[Li'l devil]

Since I decided to move to playing newer wads, I should update my list again (I know, only a couple of weeks passed since my last one).
 

10 - Memento Mori
10 - Memento Mori II

10 - Requiem

8 - The Plutonia Experiment

8 - STRAIN

5 - TNT: Evilution

4 - Icarus: Alien Vanguard

 

Edit: changed scores

Edited April 10 by Li'l devil

[Bryan T]

A lot of nostalgia in here. Gotta take these results with a giant grain of sand.

[Li'l devil]

Naturally there will be nostalgia, we're human after all. I don't see a better way of doing community voting though. Exclude people like me who only play old stuff? lol

[NiGHTS108]

On 8/31/2022 at 11:36 PM, NiGHTS108 said:

Hi, I'm back to change my votes

Sunlust - 10 

Tangerine Nightmare - 9

Speed Of Doom - 8

Struggle: Antaresian Legacy - 7
Back To Saturn X: Episode 2 - 6
Haste - 5
Valiant - 4
Ray Mohawk 2: Ray Wreaks Havoc! - 3
Rowdy Rudy II: Powertrip! - 2
Lost Civilization - 1

 

Been a long time, think I'll change again

 

10 - Sunlust

9 - Tangerine Nightmare

9 - Speed Of Doom

9 - Scythe II

9 - Struggle: Antaresian Legacy

9 - Back To Saturn X: Episode 2 

Edited April 16 by NiGHTS108

[Worm318]

31 minutes ago, Li'l devil said:

Naturally there will be nostalgia, we're human after all. I don't see a better way of doing community voting though. Exclude people like me who only play old stuff? lol

In other communities, there are differentiated popularity polls (or vote counting/rating collection) for overall and annual releases.

 

However, I don't think it's a good idea to apply it here because it's quite ambiguous when exactly a project is truly released (first public version? first beta? first RC? /idgames upload?) or some projects change quite drastically with the pass of time (e.g. Brutal Doom). This is not exclusive to Doom WADs tho.

Also, what is heavier? a kilogram of nostalgia bias or a kilogram of recency bias?

[m8f]

On 4/7/2024 at 10:46 PM, roadworx said:

it feels odd to lump stuff like kama sutra and resurgence in with sunder and flotsam

Thanks, unmarked Kama Sutra and Resurgence.

[Archvile Hunter]

I would like to update my vote:

Eviternity II - 10

Sunlust - 10

Abandon - 8

Eviternity - 6

Speed of Doom - 6

Overboard - 5

Going Down - 5

Valiant - 3

Resurgence - 1

TNT: Revilution - 1

[Pancrasio]

Cyberdreams - 10

[Li'l devil]

On 4/8/2024 at 11:14 AM, Li'l devil said:

10 - Memento Mori
10 - Memento Mori II

10 - Requiem

8 - The Plutonia Experiment

8 - STRAIN

5 - TNT: Evilution

4 - Icarus: Alien Vanguard

Played AV and reevaluated other wads (and removed Plutonia because on replay I realized I don't really like it), so I felt a strong need to change scores again, heh.

 

10 - Alien Vendetta

10 - Memento Mori

10 - TNT: Evilution
10 - Memento Mori II

7 - STRAIN

5 - Requiem

3 - Icarus: Alien Vanguard

[apichatpong]

Sorry, some major changes since :

 

Spoiler

On 9/30/2023 at 7:31 PM, apichatpong said:

 

Sunder 10
Sunlust 10
Tangerine Nightmare 10
Going Down 10
Fractured Worlds 10

 

 

Drastic changes, not on the wad’s choices but on the way to organize the points.

Since last year my way of playing evolved a bit : I moved from all cheating to playing easiest skill levels (with, for some dark encounters, a slice of cheat, and with two exceptions : 1) believe it or not, 25 years after my discovery of the game, I finally beat doom II on UV (not easily) 2) never tried Sunder without iddad).

 

These are the five wads I cherish the most, from beginning to end.

 

 

Sunder : everything I wrote last year still hold, but now, for the fun, I’ve tried other wads in Sunder’s style, some of them were nice but none had neither the cathartic sadness nor the intricate way Insane Gazebo manage to make you « feel » the architecture inside the fights (the closer I’ve found is maybe some levels in LunchLunch’s 10x10 (thanks MtPain27, and thanks LunchLunch).

 

 

Sunlust : my favorite 32-megawad. I know there is no such a thing as a perfect megawad, I know everybody is supposed to love Sunlust so it’s an easy pick… but, man, I love every level in it, I love the diversity in atmosphere, fights, secrets hunt, the great intertwining of both author’s style. On this last point, the last levels (notably 28 but especially 30 - two levels I still can’t beat, even on ITYTD) are astonishing achievements. Plus, when I feel that I’m gonna have a tough night, the best way I’ve found to change my mind without any form of anxiety is trying to beat my record for the journey through the whole wad (without monsters)(at some hours in the night, even the timed switches - with the help of the music - are hypnotic).
I’ve not tried yet Combat Shock but went through (or, at least, tried to) some Ribbiks’s classics… I was close to insert another one of them : Swim with the whales or Stardate 2X06 because they are flawless, also very impressive and challenging (even on low skill), Stardate 2X07 or, especially, Magnolia because, from my point of view, it seems to me that finishing them, even with cheats (I try not to) will take me another two years… (plus, all three levels of Magnolia are, in their own way, fascinating)

 

 

Going Down : the second wad (after TNT) I’ve played after returning to Doom a year and a half ago. It was on a direct download, without use of a port like zdoom or others, there was a bug in the end with an early collapse of the building with the spidermastermind, impeaching her to become the red angrier version of herself. Anyway : it’s a chaotic, energetic, twisted and very funny megawad. Mouldy hold the chair for doomcute’s best use, the going up for the mother’s phone call in the secrets always give me naïve joy. The level with the 7 yellow keys is my first remembrance of spending hours to understand the mechanic of a level, being at first annoyed then enlightened and rewarded. In fact, every floor of the elevator is smartly placed and the full coherence of it impress me.
Overboard is also very nice and, recently, I’ve played The eye which is banger !

 

 

Fractured Worlds : don’t get me wrong, it’s not (at all) an easy one ! But the job done by Nirvana to implement the skill levels for very casual players is absolutely nice and very much appreciated. As I wrote elsewhere, it’s the first wad I’ve played which, sometimes, gave me the feeling I was improving at this game. Of course, going deeper into the maps remembered me the trip is still long but, you know, we all have to start somewhere…
While evoking this wad, it seems that I always speak of learning things but, once again, don’t get me wrong : the maps are wonderful, the secret fight in each one of them with the change of palette is great idea, I think that, with Magnolia’s first map, I owe this mapset my best pacifist souvenirs… Everything is fun and rewarding in this place !
For the joke, I’ve also played Entropy by Nirvana (another one of his that I praise) and it was this map who made me stop full cheat. One day, starting the level on ITYTD, I forgot to iddad and manage, without any harm, to go through the entrance, have the rocket launcher and even go through the big imp, shotgunners, hell knights fight that follow (with some wounds). I finally died at the small square room (yellow key one, I think) with the cyberdemon and HK or Barons on sides. It was my « why not trying something else » moment.

 

 

Tangerine Nightmare : if wads were French literature book’s style (not theme), Sunder could be Chateaubriand’s « Mémoires d’outre-tombe » (Grandiloquent, precise, romantic, death-oriented) (with, for the happy few joke, a slice of Flaubert’s « Bouvard et Pécuchet »), Sunlust would be Stendhal’s « La chartreuse de Parme » (adventurous, seemingly intuitive but with great preparative work, travelling, cruel, ironic but with a true smile)(plus, Stendhal loved mathematics and I’m pretty sure that, at least, Ribbiks does also), Fractured Worlds go with Dumas’s « Trois mousquetaires » (full of plots, friendship, liveliness, heroism)… maybe Going down would be the most difficult to identify to only one style… There is something of Lautréamont’s horrific, surrealistic’s « Chant de Maldoror » but also a teint of Céline for the counter—balance in down-to-earth irony…
Anyway, why ? Why that ?
Because, my story with Tangerine Nightmare is quite like my story with Proust’s « Du côté de chez Swann ». When I started to read Proust’s book, I felt after three pages that it was so evocative, so deep in emotion (and sometimes abstract’s ones) that I’ve been forced to stop… And it took me one year to read the 400 pages of the book.
Believe it or not, I felt the same way with Tangerine nightmare. The atmosphere, from start, was so precise and evocative I had to stop after level 1, then one month later after level 2 etc etc. It took me almost 10 months to finish it. I happen to even praise the credits level !
I usually don’t like very much new monster’s sprites in Doom but here, to my own astonishment, it instantly worked. Every midi is smartly chosen, every map is a little island in an infinite orange ocean, never felt the power of silence in doom as in map 06 (after this harsh start where, step after step, you realize that anywhere you try to hide, any angle you choose, there will be an imp, or a chain gunner, or a revenant or a mancubus to shoot you). Map 07 is my favorite genuine adventure map (my favorite depressive adventure map being Anagnorisis from Eviternity).
You know what, I’m French. People tend to think that French always love, without even trying to argue, what come from France. It’s a lie, a mistake. Facing this French project I’ve always tried to find the failures, sometimes even absurdly convincing myself that «Ok, this map was great, but maybe it’s the last one of this kind »…
Tangerine Nightmare beat me : It’s great from A to Z.
Bravo ! 

 

Mostly because, since last year, I began to play wads without cheating so I want to stick to wads I've "beaten". This doesn't mean I changed my mind about the ones above though... But also because I restrict myself to wads that are not in the top 50 here.

When I say "beaten", it never means "beaten UVmax", I always try to kill everyone and find all secrets but only with these skill levels :

 

- ITYTD (single segment, with saves or savescumm)

- HNTR (single segment, with saves or savescumm)

- HMP (single segment, with saves or savescumm)

 

I have an attraction for maps that are really difficult on UV but with some work on skill level, wads that are real memorable adventures, from single level wads to highly atmosphere-consistent megawads. Even if I'm slow, it happens to pay (beating Magnolia map 03, even ITYTD savescumm, was unimaginable  for me one year ago and, for the anecdote, I've played these days a map which start with you facing a mancubus and, on your left and on your right, two (short) lines of imps and said to myself "let's go infight, it's just an easier version of the (teleporting) red key pacifist fight from Magnolia map 01" when one year ago I would have shit my pants).

 

Magnolia (Map 01 & 02 ITYTD with some saves, Map 03 ITYTD savescumm helped by Decino playthrough for the route) 4

Jack builds a techbase (Map 01 UV (yeah... I know), Map 02 ITYTD with saves, Map 03 still not finished (even with the gzdoom berserk bug at the beginning) 3

 

Flesharmonic (Some on HMP, some HMP with saves, mostly HNTR or ITYTD (with or without saves (savescumm for the big boss map)) 4

Tangerine Nightmare (same) 4

Le gars qui a fait Doom (sometimes HMP, mostly HNTR with saves) 3

 

Mutabor (HMP savescumm but here, from what I understood, HNTR is very different and not necessarily easier) 4

Altitude (HMP with saves) 3

 

Uroboros (after the first map : ITYTD with saves (savescumm when there is platforming)) 3

 

PPPP (ITYTD savescumm with lots of coming back to the megasphere field) 4

The Room Below (ITYTD savescumm) 3

ESP3 (supposed to be co-op, beat the first map ITYTD, the others are for the delirium) 2

Event Horizon (ITYTD savescumm mostly because of heavy platforming, helped by Kinetic beverage playthrough for the route) 3

Zzul bases (Map 01 HMP, Map 02 HMP with saves, Map 03 ITYTD with saves and without the big room secret) 4

 

Down the drain (Mostly HMP or HMP with saves, some HNTR, didn’t beat map 31) 3

The Egg of Human Endeavors (HMP with saves) 4

 

Zeppelin Armada (some HMP, some HNTR, last map ITYTD with saves) 2

 

And one last :

 

The excavation : HMP with saves 2

 

 

Edited May 7 by apichatpong

[Monsieur E]

subject to change more cool stuff I play and replay

10 - Zzul Bases
10 - Swim with the Whales 
10 - Magnolia
10 - Stardate 20x7
5 - Sunlust
5 - Dimensions 
3 - Doom 2 
1 - Hell Revealed 
1 - Eternal Doom

[LegendaryEevee]

10 - Going Down

9 - Epic 2

8 - The Unholy Trinity

7 - Revolution!

6 - Cyberdreams

5 - Earth

4 - Final Doom CE (Playstation)

3 - Ancient Aliens

2 - Lost Civilization

1 - Eviternity

 

[Ar_e_en]

Seems fun. Here's my list:

 

7 points - Running Late 2
7 points - Xerxesia 
7 points - Memoirs of Magic
7 points - The Adventures of Square 
6 points - Bauhaus
4 points - REKKR
3 points - Eviternity II
3 points - Eviternity
3 points - Lost Civilization
3 points - Austrian Avian Association
2 points - Scythe 2
2 points - Swim With The Whales
1 points - TNT: Threevilution 

[Andromeda]

I'd like to withdraw my votes for the time being.

 

On 12/27/2022 at 1:25 AM, Andromeda said:

Fractured Worlds - 10 points

Stardate 20X6 - 9 points

Ray Mohawk 2 - 8 points

Stardate 20X7 - 7 points

Haste - 6 points

Crumpets - 5 points

Uprising - 4 points

Rush - 3 points

Sunlust - 2 points

Speed of Doom - 1 point

Edited May 11 by Andromeda

[m8f]

On 5/12/2024 at 6:38 AM, Andromeda said:

I'd like to withdraw my votes for the time being. 

Done.

 

To voters: when voting for a new wad, please add a link to it. It helps a lot.

[TheLippyServer]

I'll put in my first vote, why not.

 

10 points - A.L.T.

 

8 points - Speed of Doom

 

7 points - Resurgence

 

6 points - 3 Heures d'Agonie 3

6 points - Swift Death

 

4 points - Going Down

4 points - 180 Minutes Pour Vivre

4 points - 3 Heures d'Agonie 2

 

3 points - Japanese Community Project

3 points - Sunlust

[Azure_Horror]

Updating my votes:

10 - Ozonia

10 - Eviternity II

10 - 180 Minutes Pour Vivre

5 - Beed's attempt at a cool arsenal (weapon mod by @Beed28, link)

5 - Struggle

3 - Overboard

3 - Eviternity 1

2 - Vesper (weapon mod by @Xaser)

2 - Uprising

1 - Fractured Worlds

1 - Ray Mohawk 2

1 - Wormwood ]|[: The Horror

1 - Doom: Negative One - Beyond the experiment

1 - Plutonia Experiment

 

Vote Explanation:

55 votes is too little, so almost all things recieved less points, than they deserve in my heart.

Hardest hit pWAD - Eviternity 1 (it is very close to the top 3 in my heart, but - it already has 366 points total in this thread) and Fractured Worlds.
 

Detailed explantions

Spoiler

Ozonia - the closest thing to Eviternity Sequel before Eviternity 2 itself. And a closest thing to pWAD imagined perfectly and realised flawlesly.

Eviternity 2 - best music score I heard. Insane amount of new ideas put to use, and insane ammount of old ideas perfected (final boss, racing map 33, parallel world map 35 - just to name a few). Very cool level settings. Crazy good difficulty curve (but maybe Eviternity 1 is slightly better in difficulty curve department...).

180 Minutes Pour Vivre - slightly nudges good old Doom visuals to Demon depictions of XVI-XVIII centuries, creating a laconic, but super-deep collection of visual and folklore references. Has an organic difficulty curve from "IWAD-friendly" to "Welcome to Sunder", which is insane! Has huge variation of different level concepts.

Great thing, to be short.

Beed's attempt at a cool arsenal - Just a fun weapon mod on its own. Adds to weapon variety considerably. And it also instantly moves any pWAD combat into more frantic and quick direction. Finally, a variation of Quake-2 / Doom-2016 BFG is a sight to behold in things like bigger maps of Speed of Doom...

Struggle - I like the arsenal, the new monsters, and the final boss (really! it is a bit flawed, but it's super cool nontheless). Level strcuture is cool too.

Overboard - it is Overboard. New game plus alone is one hell of an idea. And the unparralleded monster mobility is crazy too. All this does not touch the setting, or the plot...

Eviternity 1 - Very cool level settings, wonderfull difficulty curve, solid new monsters, good veriety in level concepts and types (watch out for map 19 though! It's great, but also huge and kinda merciless). Personally speaking, this pwad has the best final boss for Doom I have ever seen... 

Vesper - another grand weapon mod, like Beed's attempt at a cool arsenal. Things are super-diffirent, but also feel very-very familiar (excpet the Rocket Launcher. In Vesper, slot 5 is a devastation incanate, ruthless to both friend and foe alike)... If you want to spice normal gameplay - Vesper is wonderful. But if you need a pile of bigger guns to bruteforce through an starvation-type of a heavy challenge map - Vesper may prove a bit insufficient...

Uprising - a love letter to both modern classics (inclidunig Evitenity, or Doom 2016, or Struggle, or Going Down) and the good old Doom 1-2 Wads. With a huge roster of novel customised enemies too. Has my favorite Hell Noble variant. And the best use of unlimited super-bfg.

Fractured Worlds - 1000 hp cybers need to be on the list somewhere... And this insanely well balanced pWAD is a perfect place to give them a shout-out. As far as "beatiful Slaughter-maps" genre of pWADs goes - Fractured Worlds has no equals imho. Art side of thing is great, slaughter is there, and quite imaginative, and the balancing is simply groundshattering (all 4 'non-nightmare' difficulties are properly distinguished, and each offers its own level of challenge.)

Ray Mohawk 2 - best guns ever, unlimited power incarnate. And a series of maps to match. Fully eleminates the fear of "Oh no, I don't have enough firepower for this" from slaughter-esque combat.

Wormwood III: The Horror - map 02 is mysterious and strange, map 03 is super-mega-insanely non-linear. And everything is beatiful. And arachnotrons have ate the mancubi to aqquire their power. And also there are insatkill floors in -complevel 9. Crazy Stuff!

Doom: Negative One - Beyond the experiment - the ultimate community project, IMO. Kamikaze lost souls also leave an impression. And there is also the unexpected IOS setup on one of the final maps.

Plutonia Experiment - too obnoxious in some ways, but still - for a 1997 WAD, Plutonia aged phenomenally! It's feels like a firts step towards Challenge + Atmoshpere map tropes of XXI century. And it has very manageable IOS setup, for which it desrves quite some praise IMO.

 

Edited June 8 by Azure_Horror

[Li'l devil]

On 4/30/2024 at 12:22 AM, Li'l devil said:

Played AV and reevaluated other wads (and removed Plutonia because on replay I realized I don't really like it), so I felt a strong need to change scores again, heh.

 

10 - Alien Vendetta

10 - Memento Mori

10 - TNT: Evilution
10 - Memento Mori II

7 - STRAIN

5 - Requiem

3 - Icarus: Alien Vanguard

Yet another vote update, heh. Added Armadosia, reevaluated other wads because I realized I want to play nearly all of them just as much.

 

6 - Memento Mori

6 - TNT: Evilution
6 - Memento Mori II

6 - Requiem

6 - Alien Vendetta

6 - Icarus: Alien Vanguard

6 - 2002 A Doom Odyssey

6 - Knee-Deep in Knee-Deep in ZDoom

5 - Armadosia

2 - STRAIN

 

Edit: now also added 2002 ADO and KDiKDiZD. Reranked things again. Really hard to rank wads to get exactly 55 points!!!

 

Edit: looks like no one has voted for KDiKDiZD yet. Here's the wiki link.

Edited June 17 by Li'l devil

[MundyC]

Here's where I am right now. Likely to change as I finish more WADs, LOL

 

10 - Struggle: Antaresian Legacy

9 - Scythe 2

8 - Comatose

7 - Grove

6 - Hell Ground

5 - Ray Mohawk 2

4 - Maskim Xul

3 - Overboard

2 - Equinox

1 - Going Down

[m8f]

On 5/18/2024 at 10:53 PM, TheLippyServer said:

I'll put in my first vote, why not.

Sorry, made you wait for a month before the vote got in. Updated the list now (along with other voters).