Which of these six old classic megawads is best?

[Brandon D. Lade]

I tend to like to call Memento Mori, Memento Mori 2, and Requiem the "old three" when it comes to megawads. They were some of the earliest quality megawads to come out and all three of them were community efforts. But, which one do you think is the best of the bunch?

[Grazza]

Of those three, it's kinda hard to choose one, but I'd tend to go for MM2. Requiem had some astounding maps, but also some fillers, and lacked coherence to a greater degree than the MMs (IMO). I know a lot of connoisseurs prefer MM over MM2, but I liked the cleaner and more polished style of the MM2 maps. I didn't find the gameplay in some of MM2's more criticized maps (e.g. 15) to be bad at all

I also see these three as closely linked, as the Requiem team had a lot in common with the MM/MM2 team. To make a sextet of good and famous early mega(p)wads, I would add Icarus, HR and Eternal (all of which I would rank above those listed).

[Brandon D. Lade]

If a moderator wants, they can add those 3 wads to the poll. I'd have no problem with that. Or I could just kill this thread and post a new thread including all 6 wads.

HR and Eternal are definitely classic old wads (1997 or so) and they are both possibly better than the MMs or Requiem. However, I don't get this Icarus stuff - it sticks to a theme well, but I thought there were way too many weak maps to rank it above the MMs and Requiem, especially not above MM2 or Requiem. What makes you like Icarus so much? Of course, I know of others who like Icarus, and everyone has a clear right to their own opinion.

[Grazza]

I didn't really mean to suggest that the thread and poll be changed, but I have added them as you request.

Icarus is just a great wad with well-themed but varied maps that aren't overly complex and have an awful lot of replayability. Note that it was made by TeamTNT after Evilution, which explains its more polished appearance than their slightly more ramshackle commericial wad.

[Kyka]

It seems to me that HR has stood the test of time better than the other 5. I think it is the most enjoyable by 'modern' standards.

'course it is all very subjective. They are all classics.

[Brandon D. Lade]

Grazza said:

I didn't really mean to suggest that the thread and poll be changed, but I have added them as you request.

Icarus is just a great wad with well-themed but varied maps that aren't overly complex and have an awful lot of replayability. Note that it was made by TeamTNT after Evilution, which explains its more polished appearance than their slightly more ramshackle commericial wad.

Thank you for changing this poll on my request.

I am sorry (to both you and myk) that I made another similar post instead of waiting for it to be changed. I saw what you (Grazza) told me on my thread that is now in Post Hell. I just thought it would be easier if I made another post and any bad threads were simply deleted. Sorry for the comfusion.

[kristus]

I voted Eternal because that's the only one of those wads that ever really gave me anything to remember. Requiem was pretty good looking. But I always experienced the game play as tedious beyond anything I ever played before.
Never got anywhere in either of the MM wads and Icarus I found to be just more shoddy work by TeamTNT.

[myk]

I prefer the Memento Mori WADs, I would say. I don't really find either better than the other, though my appreciation of the second installment has grown. I like their less specialized naturalness and the way they play. Requiem is about as good, but sometimes it gets a bit cramped and some of its effects are neat but a bit hacky. I might like Hell Revealed a bit more than Requiem because of its slaughterfest playability. Hell Revealed is also great for multiplayer.

Icarus seems rather dull to me, but acceptable. Eternal Doom is more interesting but suffers from hackiness like Requiem, has some ugly resources and is a bit too sprawling and switch hunt oriented.

Another two that I'd include among these are Evilution and Plutonia. They are also fan community DOOM II megawads. That they run as IWADs and are distributed commercially notwithstanding. I'd put Plutonia up there with the MMs, and I find TNT more enjoyable than Eternal or Icarus, but rather uneven.

[TimeOfDeath]

I'm not that familiar with any of those wads except Eternal Doom, which has some of my favourite maps in it. So I'd vote for that for being my favourite in the list (favourite, not "the best").

[ReFracture]

Those are all solid megawads. I'd say I like Hell Revealed the most out of the bunch.

My favorite of all time is no doubt Alien Vendetta, though.

[tatsurd-cacocaco]

I like Memento Mori very much.
Certainly there are a lot of excellent maps on MM, MM2, and Requiem, so I can't put one above the the others by only maps' design. However, I prefer mmmus to the others. (These muisc are not resources from other games but original) Esp, I like music of map 9, 11, and 14 on mmmus. As a result, Memento Mori is better than the others for me.

Btw, Memento Mori is my favorite wad in second in all wads. (1st is Alien Vendetta)

I felt HR outrageously difficult a long time ago. I haven't play this wad after this. However, because I want to watch HR's TAS movie, I will play it again before watching the demo. I could enjoy playing HR2, AV, and KS, so I might be able to enjoy playing HR now.

[Creaphis]

Hell Revealed is the only one of those wads I haven't finished.

[lupinx-Kassman]

Alien Vendetta, although there are a few other classic megawads which I don't see on the list, and thought were quite enjoyable.

[myk]

AV is classic in style but it's not an "old classic" or part of the true classic era. This would be before source ports had any impact.

[ReFracture]

myk said:

AV is classic in style but it's not an "old classic" or part of the true classic era. This would be before source ports had any impact.

I don't see how the impact of source ports has much to do with it. AV is vanilla compatible.

[Espi]

I've played all of them, but Eternal Doom is the only one that I can remember individual maps from. Though that could possibly be because you would spend hours in some of them. =p

[Graf Zahl]

Clearly Eternal Doom. It was the only one on the list that tried to do something genuinely different.

[Fletcher`]

Heroes 2 for doom2.

[Kyka]

Mike.Reiner said:

I don't see how the impact of source ports has much to do with it. AV is vanilla compatible.

It is vanilla compatible, but many of the levels will crash if you try to save your game, which makes it pretty frustrating to play on vanilla, especially if a number of the levels consecutively are too big to save...

Heh.I remember before I knew anything about sourceports, I spent literally days trying to play through sections of AV, and each time I got to a new level, I would think "At last, Now I can save..." only to have the game crash again, coz the new level would be too big to save. So then I would have to play through several earlier levels, plus the one that I had just done to the next level, only to have the same thing happen. Now that I think about it, AV was the reason I discovered sourceports and first started using them.

[tatsurd-cacocaco]

I always used Doom95 and rejected source ports before releasing Alien Vendetta. However, AV works very slow on Doom95 (why?), then I was unwilling to start using ZDoom, I adopted to it soon though.

[Scuba Steve]

rf` said:

Heroes 2 for doom2.

To be honest, I have incredibly fond memories of Heroes 2. The music to E2M8 is brilliant and it was the first time I had seen many of the tricks in vanilla maps.

[ReFracture]

Kyka said:

It is vanilla compatible, but many of the levels will crash if you try to save your game, which makes it pretty frustrating to play on vanilla, especially if a number of the levels consecutively are too big to save...

This I was unaware of... hm.

[40oz]

I liked the first set of maps in Eternal Doom. The rest of the wad got junky from there.

[Florian]

The one that is not on that list: HellCore.

My god that is the best megawad ever!

[alexz721]

I go with HR followed closely by MM2.

[Torn]

Hell Revealed

[Pure Hellspawn]

Alien Vendetta (well it's 6 years old and is classic). Of the ones on the list, I choose Hell Revealed.

[myk]

Mike.Reiner said:
I don't see how the impact of source ports has much to do with it. AV is vanilla compatible.

The detail, size and other aspects of its levels would have been hard to imitate early on for various reasons, including tools, knowledge of the technical aspects of the DOOM games (because of the source release but also the years of COMPET-N experience and the like), as well as processor power. Even gameplay is affected, after so many years of looking up details and specifics. Port stuff also affected what people would expect from a WAD in other respects, such as how much detail and where to place it.

WADs like Alien Vendetta, The Darkening II, Suspended in Dusk and Plutonia 2 can all be set apart from early WADs due to this.

tatsurd-cacocaco said:
However, AV works very slow on Doom95 (why?)

It should crash due to the MIDI files, which Doom95 can't play.

[Brandon D. Lade]

What makes so many people like Hell Revealed the best even though some other wads on the list, most notably Eternal and Requiem and probably MM2 as well, contain much bigger levels and superior architecture to HR?

[myk]

Since when does bigger mean better? (Aside from cocks, of course.)

In any case, that those WADs contain better architecture than HR is your opinion, not some sort of objective fact.