The Hardest WAD Project

[Cool_Name23]

Hello, I have been playing Doom for a few years now and wanted to emulate the experience of how Doom was originally played but playing through old WADs got me thinking about an interesting question. I alone do not have nearly enough knowledge or experience with maps to answer this question. But that is where I can receive help. My question is what was the Hardest Doom WAD of each Respective year.

 

My List so far is

1993: Doom 1 (This was the only WAD so far so it would be obvious)

1994: The Evil Unleashed (Much Harder Episode 3 for Doom 1, Not 100% certain on this one but haven't found any 1994 WADs that were harder)

1995: ??? (Not really sure here, Some people have to have a clue though.)

1996: The Plutonia Experiment (This was generally accepted to be the hardest WAD at the time and haven't found anything at that year claiming to be harder)

1997: Hell Revealed (I have not found anything harder for 1997 and a few people told me this was the hardest WAD of that year)

 

1998-2021 I have not yet begun to research but I am sure that this can be filled in pretty well especially as it gets closer to our current year.

 

For anyone who can give advice or help me further complete this list thank you.

Edited May 16, 2021 by Cool_Name23

[omx32x]

i think the hardest of them all is chillax but thats kinda cheating

by each year is going to be a hard task

[Cool_Name23]

1 hour ago, omalefico32x said:

i think the hardest of them all is chillax but thats kinda cheating

by each year is going to be a hard task

Obviously it would be difficult to find the hardest of each year but that's what im trying to figure out. Obviously they have to be possible and I'm sure this isn't something where an objective list can be created but a very accurate subjective list which is what i'm trying to do.

[roadworx]

i'm not sure it'd be entirely possible to name the single hardest of each year, especially as you get into the more recent years

 

for 1995 i'd probably go with either obituary or punisher.wad, although from what i understand punisher.wad isn't that bad. for 1998, i honestly have no idea. maybe tantrum2 or dead perfect, but i'm sure there's a lot out there that's harder

 

for 1999 i'd definitely have to go with chordg.wad tho, and probably chord3.wad for 2000

Edited May 16, 2021 by roadworx

[ReaperAA]

For 2001, I would say Alien Vendetta perhaps (most levels are not that hard, but the hardest level of AV probably surpass anything that came before it)

Edited May 16, 2021 by ReaperAA

[The BMFG]

sunlust 

[Xulgonoth]

Trying to find "the hardest wads" has one major issue - it's really hard to draw a line for which wads should be taken seriously. I have played joke-wads that are borderline impossible to beat (UAC Military Nightmare is the most obvious example), making them technically harder than any other serious wad from that year, but in a way that most people probably wouldn't find legitimate. 

 

In a similar vain you could probably find maps on Wad Archive from 95-97 where the author didn't have a clue what he was doing, made some basic geometry, and filled it with an impossible number of enemies to get by. A wad like that would definitely be hard, but once again in a very joke-wad-like way. And here it's not as simple as "joke-wads are excluded from the list", because the author was probably being serious.

[Cool_Name23]

That is a good point that some levels were taken seriously but are still near impossible because of bad modding.

[roadworx]

9 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

For 2001, I would say Alien Vendetta perhaps (most levels are not that hard, but the hardest level of AV probably surpass anything that came before it)

agreed. i really can't think of anything else that came out in 2001 that surpasses av in difficulty tbh

 

would hell revealed 2 count as 2003 or 2004? cuz it came out on the last day of 2003, and if it'd count as 2004 then idk if you'd put hr2 or deus vult in that slot

Edited May 16, 2021 by roadworx

[SLOTH MARINE (CB)]

3 minutes ago, roadworx said:

agreed. i really can't think of anything else that came out in 2001 that surpasses av in difficulty tbh

 

would hell revealed 2 count as 2003 or 2004, cuz it came out on the last day of 2003

I would say 2004 because it came out the LAST DAY of 2003, so that would mean it wouldn't be part of the 2003 roster

[roadworx]

14 minutes ago, SLOTH MARINE (CB) said:

I would say 2004 because it came out the LAST DAY of 2003, so that would mean it wouldn't be part of the 2003 roster

in that case i have zero clue as to which of those two would go in 2004, although 2003 would probably be taken by scythe

 

idk wtf came out in 2002 lmao

 

8 hours ago, Xulgonoth said:

Trying to find "the hardest wads" has one major issue - it's really hard to draw a line for which wads should be taken seriously. I have played joke-wads that are borderline impossible to beat (UAC Military Nightmare is the most obvious example), making them technically harder than any other serious wad from that year, but in a way that most people probably wouldn't find legitimate. 

 

In a similar vain you could probably find maps on Wad Archive from 95-97 where the author didn't have a clue what he was doing, made some basic geometry, and filled it with an impossible number of enemies to get by. A wad like that would definitely be hard, but once again in a very joke-wad-like way. And here it's not as simple as "joke-wads are excluded from the list", because the author was probably being serious.

we could narrow it down to "stuff that isn't shit"

Edited May 16, 2021 by roadworx

[Xulgonoth]

10 minutes ago, roadworx said:

we could narrow it down to "stuff that isn't shit"

Well, the issue with that is everyone giving you widely different answers to what is and isn't shit. Even Hell Revealed is incredibly divisive in this way and it's already on the list.

[Andromeda]

I've never seen anyone say Hell Revealed is shit. Sure it hasn't aged particularly well, but it's far from shit.

[roadworx]

2 minutes ago, Xulgonoth said:

Well, the issue with that is everyone giving you widely different answers to what is and isn't shit. Even Hell Revealed is incredibly divisive in this way and it's already on the list.

hell revealed aged  t e r r i b l y  but i haven't seen anyone outright calling it shit

[omx32x]

3 minutes ago, Andromeda said:

I've never seen anyone say Hell Revealed is shit. Sure it hasn't aged particularly well, but it's far from shit.

I wouldnt say it us bad but man the baron overuse really makes the combat boring some times its still a great wad to play co op though

[Xulgonoth]

In my experience it's usually people who are relatively new to Doom and have no idea what they're getting into with HR, or people who just don't realise the maps weren't made to be UV-maxed who call it shit.

[roadworx]

1 minute ago, Xulgonoth said:

In my experience it's usually people who are relatively new to Doom and have no idea what they're getting into with HR, or people who just don't realise the maps weren't made to be UV-maxed who call it shit.

i'd say that if it was competently made for the time (which hr definitely was), with actual thought put into it and not plagiarized (like holy hell revealed and chillax) then it's not shit

[baja blast rd.]

A good approach is to narrow it down to wads people have actually tried to beat, and wads someone with knowhow might say are reasonably possible. That captures everything reasonable, excludes troll maps or the "1000 archviles in a 512x512 box with no exit" sort, and avoids the very subjective judgments about whether something is "shit" or not. 

 

It is also a more interesting list. Like, Very Hard (a 2016 TAS-only wad with a very subtle name) exists, but I think people would care more about a list that showed an "easier" very hard 2016 wad that someone has beaten. 

 

For that, enlisting the help of the niche/slaughter community is the way to go: players like Ancalagon, Lucky_Edie, Daerik, and MrZzul would be able to fill in many years if they stumble across this thread. For older years ('90s, early '00s), a demo historian type might be able to help, especially if they were in the community back then and followed discussions about runs. 

[roadworx]

7 minutes ago, rd. said:

A good approach is to narrow it down to wads people have actually tried to beat, and wads someone with knowhow might say are reasonably possible. That captures everything reasonable, and excludes troll maps or the "1000 archviles in a 512x512 box with no exit" sort.

 

It is also a more interesting list if limited to wads good players have thought of as beatable. Like, Very Hard (a 2016 TAS-only wad with unsubtle gameplay and an even less subtle name) exists, but I think people would care more about a list that showed an "easier" very hard 2016 wad that someone has beaten. 

 

For that, enlisting the help of the niche/slaughter community is the way to go: players like Ancalagon, Lucky_Edie, Daerik, and MrZZul would be able to fill in many years if they stumble across this thread. For older years ('90s, early '00s), a demo historian type might be able to help, especially if they were in the community back then and followed the discussions about maps. 

having a set of criteria like this and some other stuff probably would make it more appealing to people, you're right

 

would these work?

- beatable by humans

- not a jokewad

- not incredibly amateurish

[Xulgonoth]

2 minutes ago, roadworx said:

i'd say that if it was competently made for the time

 

3 minutes ago, roadworx said:

- not incredibly amateurish

Then you're excluding what I like to call "accidental brilliance". It doesn't happen often, I'm not going to deny that, but you can have maps that are designed in a glaringly amateurish way, but still have something to them that makes them actually fun to go through. Probably the wildest example I can think of is ARG1LOHB.WAD, an old deathmatch level that wasn't really made to be played in single-player, but it's surprisingly fun to try to route and UV-max.
If you want more examples that someone else may have actually played, I can think of Community Chest 3 MAP28, Zones of Fear MAP11, or Icarus MAP18.

But we're kinda just getting back to what I was trying to say earlier. All of these criteria to exclude/include maps by are relative depending on who you ask and you would always manage to find maps that are sort of on the borderline, so wherever you'd draw the line, someone would probably complain.

[roadworx]

13 minutes ago, Xulgonoth said:

But we're kinda just getting back to what I was trying to say earlier. All of these criteria to exclude/include maps by are relative depending on who you ask and you would always manage to find maps that are sort of on the borderline, so wherever you'd draw the line, someone would probably complain.

if someone complains then they can explain to op why they think differently, and they can change it if they see said explanation as being reasonable

 

also, beatable by humans and whether something is a jokewad or not is objective, not subjective, so that's not gonna be up for debate

Edited May 16, 2021 by roadworx

[Xulgonoth]

22 minutes ago, roadworx said:

beatable by humans and whether something is a jokewad or not is objective, not subjective

I don't really agree with that. Yeah, you have the extreme examples of impossible maps or jokewads where you can't make an argument for them being anything else, but what if you have an encounter that even Killer5 or Ancalagon would be able to beat in one out of several hundred tries? It would be technically beatable by a human, but with the skill and RNG required, you could absolutely make the argument that it's not really. As for jokewads, would you classify Experiencing Nirvana/NoYe, Lilith.pk3, Stove Pipe, or even this old thing of mine as jokewads/jokemaps? Whatever your answer is to any of them, you could absolutely find someone to make an argument for the opposite.

[Chip]

In like 2017, wasn't Dimensions widely accepted as the Hardest WAD ever? 

 

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Okuplok shaughter map

[Nefelibeta]

Anyway I did some diggings, all of these are placed according to Doomwiki, so correct me if there's something harder in that year. Also there will be biases since I've only played a couple of these lmao

 

1993: Doom 1

1994: The Evil Unleashed

1995: punisher.wad

1996: The Plutonia Experiment

1997: Hell Revealed

1998: ???

1999: chordg.wad

2000: chord3.wad

2001: Alien Vendetta 

2002: ???

2003: Hell Revealed II

2004: ???

2005: Scythe 2

2006: Holy Hell 

2007: ???

2008: No Chance
2009: Sunder(old ver.)

2010: Speed of Doom

2011: Combat Shock

2012: Combat Shock 2 / Okuplok(nobody has beaten it tho lol)

2013: Swim with the Whales

2014: Resurgence

2015: Sunlust

2016: Holy Hell Revealed / Italo Doom

2017: Dimensions

2018: Magnolia(UV)

2019: Finely Crafted Fetish Film

2020: Abandon

2021: Alpha Major

2022: Poogers / Dance on the Water

Edited August 23, 2022 by Nefelibeta

[El Inferno]

2009 Old Sunder

 

2011 Combat Shock?

 

2012 I think okuplok would be eligible for this list even though a max demo doesn't seem realistic. Also Dark Tartarus 

 

2013 sf2012 is also pretty hard, not sure how to compare a single map (swtw03) to a whole 35 map megawad

 

2016 Holy Hell Revealed, Italo

 

2018 sf3?

 

2019 Entropy? not sure how it would compare to fcff

 

2020 Abandon? Not too familiar with smax but at least every single map of it has a max demo.

 

2021 Fractured Worlds is another contender. Alpha Major is harder than any particular map of FW I guess but it might still be harder as a set.

Also zzul bases.

[Nefelibeta]

5 minutes ago, El Inferno said:

stuff

Edited, OP says the hardest WAD so I guess it's a bit problematic to include 2 for one year, but it's whatever.

[out_of_service]

The hardest WAD Project? Some say that NUTS.WAD is eternal. I hope our incredibly late answers helped you out!

Edited August 23, 2022 by Piper Maru

[Kinetic]

3 hours ago, El Inferno said:

2019 Entropy? not sure how it would compare to fcff

From personal experience, Entropy was much easier to max than fcff Map07, fcff07 from a max standpoint alone makes fcff harder than Entropy to me (yes, even excluding the rocket jumps).

 

Also, for 2022, so far I'd go with Dance on the Water as being the hardest, no maps are even close to easy within their respective genre of gameplay style

Edited August 23, 2022 by KineticBeverage

[Nefelibeta]

53 minutes ago, KineticBeverage said:

Also, for 2022, so far I'd go with Dance on the Water as being the hardest, no maps are even close to easy within their respective genre of gameplay style

I placed Pooger there mostly because of Map15, Map29 and Map31. Probably not the wisest choice. :)

 

Now the only thing to do is to wait until people who actually played 90s wads and 00s wads. damn