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What are some doom wads/mods that have not aged well?


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In other words, what is a list of fan-made projects made by devs be it wads or mods in this community that were once or still are highly praised by gamers in the scene that have either by a subjective opinion that is valid or objectively are not as good as critics view it, be it by design that is no longer satisfactory by pro standards, or artistic merits that are no longer wanted or an aesthetic turn-off by people that spend a considerable amount of time playing these creations. Art is timeless to most people, but if a component is a thing of the past or simply not wanted by the fanbase, it meets this thread.

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12 minutes ago, ChaseC7527 said:

those GOD. DAMNED. MASTER LEVELS!

i've never played them cuz I heard nothing but bad things about them. maximum doom has too many amateur wads from what I can tell to even download.

 

speaking of old maps, hell revealed 1 and 2 and any other wad critically acclaimed that spams demons every time you walk into room is kind of a chore to play nowadays, especially with what the community has learned with balance and difficulty along with good looking scenery. hell revealed looks very bad by today's standards but the enemy placement can be good. 2 is leagues better in visuals but the traps it spawns and constant holding down the BFG makes it very repetitive. I remember quitting on either level 12 or 13 with the mancubas on the totems because it just became ridiculous. so easy to die in the megawad. 

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32 minutes ago, Bernie said:

i've never played them cuz I heard nothing but bad things about them. maximum doom has too many amateur wads from what I can tell to even download.

 

speaking of old maps, hell revealed 1 and 2 and any other wad critically acclaimed that spams demons every time you walk into room is kind of a chore to play nowadays, especially with what the community has learned with balance and difficulty along with good looking scenery. hell revealed looks very bad by today's standards but the enemy placement can be good. 2 is leagues better in visuals but the traps it spawns and constant holding down the BFG makes it very repetitive. I remember quitting on either level 12 or 13 with the mancubas on the totems because it just became ridiculous. so easy to die in the megawad. 

yeah, I don't think anybody ever liked the master levels.

It's map 13, looks like a pile of steaming horse shit. the only thing i like about it is the 3d bridge thing they got in the center, that's cool for a boom doom map.

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53 minutes ago, Bernie said:

i've never played them cuz I heard nothing but bad things about them. maximum doom has too many amateur wads from what I can tell to even download.

 

speaking of old maps, hell revealed 1 and 2 and any other wad critically acclaimed that spams demons every time you walk into room is kind of a chore to play nowadays, especially with what the community has learned with balance and difficulty along with good looking scenery. hell revealed looks very bad by today's standards but the enemy placement can be good. 2 is leagues better in visuals but the traps it spawns and constant holding down the BFG makes it very repetitive. I remember quitting on either level 12 or 13 with the mancubas on the totems because it just became ridiculous. so easy to die in the megawad. 

holy shit i'd never heard of maximum doom until you said that so i looked it up and its got 3461 maps. talk about quantity over quality.

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25 minutes ago, ChaseC7527 said:

holy shit i'd never heard of maximum doom until you said that so i looked it up and its got 3461 maps. talk about quantity over quality.

the final episode in Ultimate Doom can also be regarded as the weakest part of a doom title. not just because of it's difficulty, but the enemy placement as well makes it more frustrating then fun.

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9 minutes ago, Bernie said:

the final episode in Ultimate Doom can also be regarded as the weakest part of a doom title. not just because of it's difficulty, but the enemy placement as well makes it more frustrating then fun.

pump the brakes champ, E4 is the shit, it may be a pain in the ass but imo it's great. maybe I pay more attention to the aesthetics but the maps weren't "weak" they just required technique and multiple tries. Maybe I just love a good challenge, but for me it's the atmosphere of a map that really makes it.

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I would say the Zombies TC. For the time it released, it was one of the first ever “TCs” for Doom II that attempted to basically be a game of its own. It is heavily based on Dawn of the Dead, but there’s some parts that are based around Day of the Dead. There’s a lot of good effects used too in the TC, to make it appear as if you’re traveling multiple floors, falling into the mall from the roof, etc. but the level design is really a product of the 90s. Some of this is because I feel the team tried too hard to make the levels feel like areas from the film, splashed a bunch of zombies all over the place, instead of trying to make the levels more engaging and interesting.
 

However, the team definitely had a group of talented young people, and I’ve always wondered whatever happened with them after Zombies TC. The graphics, music, etc. is still quite impressive. They used the same methods Id software used to make most of the sprites with, and the music is a nice midi soundtrack heavily inspired by the films it is based on. So it isn’t what I’d ever consider bad, it just hasn’t aged well and will likely not impress people who are unfamiliar with it.

Edited by DNSKILL5

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Not aging well doesn’t always mean it is bad or should not be played, it mostly means it might not hold up as much as it does in one’s mind for people who have nostalgia over it and try returning back to it years later. Sometimes it just takes a minute to lower your expectations, take off the nostalgia vision goggles, and take it for what it is, what it represents from the past, and try to relive the memories of the past in a new light. 

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Games are not milk, they do not age. :-)
 

People will change their opinions over the years, and things will go out of trends over the years. That's all. It's not about the games, it's about yourself!

Edited by Noiser

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1 minute ago, Noiser said:

Games are not milk, they do not age. :-)

yes they are. in fact, i am drinking game juice rn. pls stop spreading misinformation, otherwise i will be forced 2 take drastic action!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

dipshit jokes aside, i have to agree with what others in this thread said. if it's good, then it's good; just because a map doesn't follow modern trends doesn't necessarily mean that it has "aged poorly". however, there definitely are wads that, while bad both now and back then, did have some novel ideas/approaches/whatever that may have overshadowed the more negative aspects of the wad upon their initial release.

 

a good example of this would be hell revealed 2. upon launch, it was seen as being this super hard wad designed with the intention of killing the player at every other step. the thing is tho, as time went on, people got a lot better and wads that were both much harder and much more well-designed started coming out. this caused the mass-realization that, hey, this wad was actually never good, and we were all just blindsided by the difficulty and the sheer amount of 3d bridges that were crammed into the wad.

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I'd say some Hell to Pay sprite replacements didn't age well. It looks goofy(or rather something that's done in 90's) these days and I rather see traditional sprites instead or something close to it. I imagine with tools we have these days, it wouldn't too hard to remake them. 

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On 2/13/2023 at 2:00 AM, roadworx said:

a good example of this would be hell revealed 2. upon launch, it was seen as being this super hard wad designed with the intention of killing the player at every other step. the thing is tho, as time went on, people got a lot better and wads that were both much harder and much more well-designed started coming out. this caused the mass-realization that, hey, this wad was actually never good, and we were all just blindsided by the difficulty and the sheer amount of 3d bridges that were crammed into the wad.


Then you must ask yourself: What people got better? How much better? Skill levels are very different from player to player, because it's related to how much they spend time on the game and with what attitude they improved their skills (saveless runs, UV, pistol start, etc).

I think these kind of discussions always boils down to "it didn't aged well because I don't like it", to be honest. I know people who still likes Hell Revealed 2 and I know those who changed their opinion. We are always changing our tastes after all. However, I don't think art would age by what we understand as subjective matter. Things just go out of trends. And if we are taking that route - letting art be defined by whats popular or not, then even Doom wasn't "aged well", because no matter what we think here on Doomworld, it's not what the majority of people think out there.

Edited by Noiser

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16 hours ago, roadworx said:

yes they are. in fact, i am drinking game juice rn. pls stop spreading misinformation, otherwise i will be forced 2 take drastic action!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

dipshit jokes aside, i have to agree with what others in this thread said. if it's good, then it's good; just because a map doesn't follow modern trends doesn't necessarily mean that it has "aged poorly". however, there definitely are wads that, while bad both now and back then, did have some novel ideas/approaches/whatever that may have overshadowed the more negative aspects of the wad upon their initial release.

 

a good example of this would be hell revealed 2. upon launch, it was seen as being this super hard wad designed with the intention of killing the player at every other step. the thing is tho, as time went on, people got a lot better and wads that were both much harder and much more well-designed started coming out. this caused the mass-realization that, hey, this wad was actually never good, and we were all just blindsided by the difficulty and the sheer amount of 3d bridges that were crammed into the wad.

I second that. Hell Revealed 2 sucks. Some of the monster placements are absolutely sadistic even on the lower difficulties. 

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19 hours ago, DNSKILL5 said:

Not aging well doesn’t always mean it is bad or should not be played, it mostly means it might not hold up as much as it does in one’s mind for people who have nostalgia over it and try returning back to it years later. Sometimes it just takes a minute to lower your expectations, take off the nostalgia vision goggles, and take it for what it is, what it represents from the past, and try to relive the memories of the past in a new light. 

the people saying that a game can not age in this thread even by playing it for what it is have obviously never sank some time into revisiting goldeneye 007 or the last 3rd of system shock 2.

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40 minutes ago, Bernie said:

the people saying that a game can not age in this thread even by playing it for what it is have obviously never sank some time into revisiting goldeneye 007 or the last 3rd of system shock 2.

Meh, let them keep their neutral stance on the subject, and I assure you they would basically say the same thing if you asked “what wads have stood the test of time?” or any other question that could potentially have differing opinions of what is good and bad from someone else’s point of view. 

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Eternal Doom is such wad for me. I can't deny it's influence on the more exploratory and experimental side of Doom mapping, plus texture replacements gave it a unique look (I'd say it's the best looking 90s wad). The maps by Cranium and Jim Flynn are memorable and still fun to play  

 

The rest though, feels dated. The combat is not good even compared to its contemporaries. Making a huge arena with only a handful of monsters is not something that would fly nowadays. Also, the maps rest of the maps tend to be sprawling, cryptic and/or monotonous.

 

Play Epic 2 for a superior iteration of an adventure wad.

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Eternal Doom may have its problems, but they were well known even when it was new. The project clearly ran out of steam half way through - the first 12 or so maps are generally quite good but the rest was very, very spotty. So in essence, people today think the same about this map set as 20 years ago.

 

If I had to nominate one project that hasn't aged well for me at all and where my opinion has completely shifted to the negative over time it'd be Cleimos 2. It may have felt innovative when it was made 28 years ago, and I surely enjoyed it when I was younger, but these days it just feels like one annoying gimmick map after the other. The fun has long been drained from this one.

 

Edited by Professor Hastig

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Memento Mori.

 

You know that classic 90s feel, but take out much of the detail and more colorful nature of modern wads? That's probably why not many people speak fondly of it  anymore.

 

I would bring up Community Chest and Community Chest 2, but the thing is that they weren't necessarily that highly regarded in their time, though they each had that one map.

 

Someone mentioned Icarus and that's honestly true. Some maps are fine, but others are just boring and short or use too much of one texture like SHAWN. It sort of fit the spaceship theme but it also makes it quite dreary to revisit.

 

 

Hell Revealed goes without saying, and people really only started to realize just how much around the time Slaughterfest started (mostly, I refuse to believe it only goes back to Stardate 20X6

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Re: Hell Revealed

 

HR and HR 2 are quite an intersting pair of WADs for this thread. Around years 2016-2018 it felt like those WADs have aged poorly.

 

But nowadays, in the years 2021 and beyond, those WADs feel much more intriguing.

 

Today, there is no single "one true way" to make a challenging/ultra-challenging WAD. There is quite a lot of variation in this design space. Even Fractured Worlds, a WAD of only 8 maps, includes quite a few different styles within it. For another example, consider the Wormwood series, where every second map feels like a genre of its own!

 

Ok, this is cool and all, but how this all connected to HR duology?

 

Well, it so happens that some Hell Revealed setpieces stand out even today! It is true that those WADs include quite a lot of jank. But their un-inhibited approach to difficult designs also leads to some really cool moemnts! The whole Playground from HR 2 is quite something even today. And HR 2 map 07 has some quite good moments, like the whole transition from mancubi to arachnotrons.

 

This is definitely a hot take, but I think that Hell Revealed WADs aged like a good liquor. Don't try to swallow a whole mug of Hell Revealed at once, and you're likely to find quite a few intersting details in those mapsets! At the very least, many parts of those WADs could be used for quite memroable modern re-interpritations.

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I think the trend of large late-2000s-early-2010s slaughtermaps that all used the same extremely brown and bland quake/gothic textures fared poorly, but arguably they never died out completely and instead wads like Stardate 20x6 mutated the style by keeping the same bland brown base but sticking a lot of glowing neon crap on top of it to give it some visual pop, which of course went on to become the house wine of slaughter visuals right up to the present.

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13 minutes ago, BoxY said:

I think the trend of large late-2000s-early-2010s slaughtermaps that all used the same extremely brown and bland quake/gothic textures fared poorly, but arguably they never died out completely and instead wads like Stardate 20x6 mutated the style by keeping the same bland brown base but sticking a lot of glowing neon crap on top of it to give it some visual pop, which of course went on to become the house wine of slaughter visuals right up to the present.

 

Those are not the same lineage and that's not what happened.  

 

It goes: 

 

Sunder map13 "Obsidian Nightmare" -> Stardate 20x6 -> modern slaughter in that style

 

Sunder map11 "The Furnace" -> phml's Quake-like maps from around that era (not a common style anymore) 

 

Some of the other Quake-like maps are just kinda boxes with Quake textures.

 

Obsidian Nightmare basically has the same detail style as these modern striplight wads, so that was already a fully formed style circa 2010. 

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Icarus Alien Vangaurd was a wtf type of experience for me. Especially how on some of them I had to either give up and look up someones play through because of those weird teleport puzzles or by some sheer luck I somehow found a room I wasn't sure of and ended up progressing normally.

 

 

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On 2/13/2023 at 5:05 AM, Herr Dethnout said:

All wads are a product of his time, if it was good before then is good now.

 

I think, it is not as simple as you say.

 

At the time of its release Scythe 2 was truly a unique piece of map-making. Nothing could have matched that WAD in its time of release.

Nowadays Scythe 2 is still a very good WAD, but there others like it:

Speed of Doom, Ancient Aliens, 1000 lines 3, Sunlust, Eviternity, 180 Minutes Pour Vivre, Valiant, Ozonia - that's just off the top of my head! In this context, one can easily discuss the weaknesses of Scythe 2 in comparison to those other WADs - and Scythe 2 is no longer an absolute champion in its genre.

 

So even a Scythe 2 fan can argue that Scythe 2 did age poorly: from "definitely the absolutely best thing" to "very, very, very good". Does this count for the purpose of this thread? That's a good question about semantics, which is important to keep in mind, IMO.

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A lot of popular wads from the 2000's aged like milk because there was a trend to make over-detailed corridor-heavy maps with doors which tend to contradict the doom's spirit. Just check the wad "Hedrox" which got a cacoward in 2005 and you'll understand what I mean.

 

Almost all maps from the 90's didn't age well but I think the 2000's era brought a lot of terrible mapping tropes which I'm happy modern mappers got rid of.

 

HeDRoX_MAP01.png

Edited by Roofi

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