Doom Turns 13!

[Manc]

...and we're still here. Amazing isn't it? 13 years of imp scratching, pistol starting excitement and there's no sign of it letting up any time soon. As part of our new tradition here at Doomworld, we present to you the 13th Annual Cacowards! Scuba Steve came through again with another installment of the annual awards event that showcases the best of the best from each year. This time around there's no shortage of top notch quality, and if you didn't have anything better to do today we highly recommend playing through each of these fantastic WADs and leave your feedback on what YOU think may or may not have deserved such accolades.We also recommend checking out the Doom Wiki, a collaborative, comprehensive resource for all things Doom that continues to grow due to contributions from you.
Links:

• 13th Annual Cacowards
• Doom Shareware
• Doom on the Doom Wiki

[RottKing]

Hurray for Cacowards! Hurray for Doom!

[SoM]

Looks good Scuba. And what's that on the last page???

[kristus]

SoM ACCLAIM, two years late. :p

Happy birfday! Etc.
I feel old. :p

[Anarkavre]

Happy Birfday Dewm!

[Xenaero]

Happy birthday, Doom, will you have many more?

[Kaiser]

We had some awsome wads this year.

[RazTK]

DD_133 said:

Happy birthday, Doom, will you have many more?

The answer is obvious. Isn't it? ;)

[esselfortium]

Hooray! Also good that we finally have a new top story. :P

Congratulations to all the award winners, even Aufelwauffelstein, and thanks to Scuba for doing the awards!

[Joe]

Happy birfday doom.

[Tango]

Woohoo

[Dittohead]

It's crazy how fast these years go by. I remember just yesterday Doom turned 10... and about a week ago, Doom turned 5.

Fast times indeed.

[lupinx-Kassman]

Sweet! the awards are finally here! Those look pretty good.
Could have done well with the /newstuff accompanied though :P

[Dutch Doomer]

Thanks for naming me mapper of the year it was an big fat surprise.

Congratulations to all other mappers for their outstanding work.

[Cardboard Marty]

Wow, that was a nice read Scuba. Congratulations to all the "winners"! Happy 13th Doom!

[Craigs]

Woohoo! Doom has gone from preteen to young teenager! Let's hope this year goes smoothly though, as 13 doesn't tend to be a lucky number.
I KNEW Phobia The Age was going to win a cacoaward from the very second it was release. Same with Vai Victus and Hell Core.

I'll admit. I feel just a tiny bit, maybe 1/125% sorry for DarkExodus for having his wad become the worst wad for 2006.

It's a shame that Kaiser's "The Community is Falling 3" didn't make it in time for the cacoawards this year. It would have been LEGENDARY.

The Cacowards are not arranged from best to worst or vice versa? They are just the 10 best wads of the year.

>:(

[Lizardcommando]

Happy birthday Doom! Great job with the Cacowards, Scuba Steve. Quality stuff, as usual. :)

Now it's time to play the E1 maps.

[Kristian Ronge]

Happy birthday, Doom! :-)
Congratulations on a well-written article, Steve.

[Phobus]

Good reading, good wads, good awards and excellent work all round. Oh, and another good year too :P

Congratulations Dutchy! Makes me all the more glad to be on the Stronghold team with you ;)

[RjY]

Yeah I thought that was pretty good and I agree with much of it. I already had Classic Episode 2, NDCP, Vae Victus 2 and Hellcore marked down. About NDCP I'd only add that one thing I liked about it was that it was made with a resource pack, so a lot of the maps ended up sharing new textures, giving them more of a "part of a whole" feel than, say, CC2. Other than that I didn't think it was better or worse than the CCs.

Anyway I went through my notes, reviews etc. from last year and here's some stuff I think is worth mentioning. No order.

New for 2006:

Death Tormention 3 - End of last year really but excellent. E4M5, a massive green and red brick castle over a lava lake, in particular is outstanding.
base.wad - There are a lot of different versions of this enormous E1 base map. My favourite was easily the version dated 12th April which I believe is still the one in /idgames. In fact I usually like all of bejiitas_wrath's maps, and I wonder where he's disappeared off to.
Horror in the Caribbean Sea - Some would say bland and underdetailed, but there's something about this map that makes it great fun to run around... Maybe the large scale architecture, or the fact it's so open. Feels like Moon2000.
Ogre Labs - A abandoned base with rooftop gardens and a hell portal, one of the best environmental sound effects ever, what more could you want? This one I must admit was a really surprising omission from the awards, not even a runner up, oh well.
Mapgame - Played a beta release of this detailed and fun E1/E2 style episode. Once rf gets all the zdoomisms out of it it'll be a classic ;)
The Spire 2 - Immense, detailed map, notable for some extremely large height differences, and also because of 3000 monsters it took me over an hour to kill the first 1500 and then about 4 minutes for the rest :)
Testing Facility - My notes at the time read "this will be one of the maps of the year", what more can I say :)
High/Low 1 - Another complex E1/E2 base map from a master of the genre.

Stupid stuff that I couldn't help but like:

Congestion 64 - Greatest parody in the history of Doom mapping. Would be great for speedrunning if it weren't for that 5-minute door on MAP14 ;)
Holy Hell - Doom 2 City/Hell map, random theme changes with some really garish places. 20,000 monsters. Could be a parody of Deus Vult, has to be a joke - but surprisingly addictive for goof-off speedrunning with god mode and super weapons on.

Rereleases and other old stuff that I only got around to this year: (obviously wouldn't qualify for this year's awards but I figured I'd mention them)

Extremal Doom - Decent megawad of old school maps.
Selfish Episode - I remember playing three of these maps years ago but all the others were new to me and good fun.
2complex.wad - A base/industrial themed map with 1000 monsters, but at about the monster density of the Doom 2 IWAD. That gives you an idea of how big this map is. Now consider that almost every inch of it is covered in a bizarre kind of higgeldy-piggeldy detail. This thing is twisted genius, although I guarantee you will get lost.
Vrack 2 and Vrack 3 - You all know these by now but my computer at the time couldn't cope with 2b
CH_Retro episode - I played the original CH_retro.wad but somehow forgot about the episode. Well, it's just as good as I thought it'd be.

[Scuba Steve]

yeah, rjy, I think almost all of those were in my txt file of prospective wads. Tough calls with so many good wads.

[esselfortium]

RjY said:

Testing Facility[/b] - My notes at the time read "this will be one of the maps of the year", what more can I say :)

Thanks, I'm honored to hear that! To be honest I wish I had spent more time working on certain parts of it that look weird or bland compared to the rest, but people seem to like it so *shrugs* :D

[MikeyScoots]

Good pick on the awards. Too bad I couldn't contribute this year due to family/job issues and schooling. Congrats to Dutch Devil as well.
Hopefully I'll get back into mapping in '07.

[DOOM Anomaly]

Happy birthday Doomy. :D

Don't forget the cake! :D

Haha, the Cacoawards are always something to enjoy reading each year. :D Thank you everyone who brings them to us. :D The creators and map-makers. :D

[Linguica]

Good job yet again Steve, however I felt obligated to use my Presidential Mulligan to insert Xaser's TurboCharged ARCADE! under the Mockaward section, since I liked it so much and you bitched about a dearth of decent comedy WADs this year.

[Belial]

Congrats Dutch. Wasn't really that unexpected IMO.

As for the rest of the awards, business as usual.

[Scuba Steve]

I had never played TCA until now. This is what happens when newstuff gets backed up :(

[Graf Zahl]

Interesting. 3 of the ten awarded WADs were reviewed in the first /newstuff this year...

[Th0r]

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/Sammydawg/blowing20out20candles-thumb.jpg

shitty pic i know >_<

yay paint

[lupinx-Kassman]

I think untitled.wad should have been in the mockaward section. That or The Archives Are Doomed.