Best zdoom maps/wads

[General Rainbow Bacon]

So what are some of the best zdoom wads/mods/maps you guys have seen?

My favorites include:

Stronghold on the Edge of Chaos
Zdoom community map project 2
Unloved
Super Sonic Doom
Doom: The Golden Souls
Soulcrusher (TC)
The Ultimate Torment and Torture

[scifista42]

Action Doom
Knee Deep in ZDoom
Ultimate Simplicity
Winter's Fury
EDIT:
Turbocharged Arcade
Adventures of Square

[Koros]

in no particular order....
Mods:
Brutal Doom
Project Brutality
Insanity's Brutality
HXRTC Project
Killing Floor Doom
Led's Generic Weapon Mod

I know this is not a Zdoom mod, but it deserves to be mentioned because its so fricking awesome!

3DGE Mod:
Duke It Out In Doom

Maps:
Ancient Aliens
Doom City
Perdition's Gate
Sunder
Sun Lust
Stardate 20X6
The Ultimate Doom II


Theres a ton more.... But that's all I can think of atm. Also note that I am not including stuff you have already mentioned above.

[scifista42]

Jimp Argon said:

Maps:
Ancient Aliens
Doom City
Perdition's Gate
Sunder
Sun Lust
Stardate 20X6
The Ultimate Doom II

Literally none of these is a ZDoom wad.

[Koros]

Zdoom GZdoom.... Don't they run the same things? I have both, but I primarily use GZ. Looking down at the floor in Zdoom makes stuff look weird and stretched. GZ is a better option anyways. But o well. I'm leaving my post up anyways. ;p

[scifista42]

Jimp Argon said:

Zdoom GZdoom.... Don't they run the same things?

They're not even GZDoom-specific wads. They're either vanilla, limit-removing or Boom compatible wads. Yes, both ZDoom and GZDoom run them, but this thread is supposed to be about wads with lowest compatibility being ZDoom - that is, wads that won't properly run in lower ports than ZDoom or GZDoom.

[Deadwing]

I liked neodoom, though I've played it in like 2008. There was also another wad from that time that I loved, it has lots of natural landscape and it used hub structure, but unfortunaly I don't remember its name.

[Nems]

I have a soft spot for PsychoPhobia.

[Demon of the Well]

Of those mentioned thus far, I'm most partial to Unloved and Winter's Fury. My fondness for Unloved is something I could probably ramble on about for quite some time, but suffice to say I've probably played through it disproportionately often relative to how long it's actually been available. Not so much lately, though....these days I guess I get a little bummed out to see it and think that its sequel (which also looked really cool from the demo) is something that realistically is never going to be completed. Winter's Fury, now, is a really shiny and polished package that does a good job of emphasizing and streamlining the arcade action of the game into a basically linear blockbuster movie package, but also with some neat/intriguing hidden stuff going on beneath the surface. The whole SSG vs. pinky thing particular to the WAD is something that still sticks in my craw a bit (and I know I'm not the only one!), but the excellent boss battles more than compensate (don't let anyone tell you to nerf/shorten them, Pyroscourge!). :D

Of stuff that's not been mentioned yet, hmm.....well....

* I quite like Cold as Hell, an expansive horror/thriller narrative with a rather unique setting that does a good job of maintaining very violent, intrinsically Doom-y gameplay while making a goodly number of sweeping changes to the combat system.

* Another favorite would be the Demons of Problematique series, pretty traditional but engaging Doom action with a few scripted twists in the context of a highly atmospheric/cinematic presentation, sort of like a vague Doom III + surrealist vibe but still using mostly stock assets, and notable for taking place mostly in Hell rather than dithering around for ages with techbase preamble stuff. A broadly similar experience I liked was the Titan series, with a bit of a different concept to each of its major iterations--Titan 2 was probably my favorite of these.

* Again in an atmospheric vein, I reckon I'll remember the Happy Time Circus WADs until my brain collapses and turns to mush under the weight of time. Actual combat in these is not always sterling, but the diegesis and mood is just so damned mordantly engrossing that it doesn't really matter.

* Also on my mind, there's Phocas Island 2, a peculiar Hexen-meets-Doom-meets-adventure-title affair with a heavy emphasis on exploration and good deal of diegetic depth, including a hidden 'true' completionist ending (the original Phocas Island is also interesting, if far less ambitious, and a heavily flawed/unworked creation from a gameplay balance standpoint). Going even further down that track, there's Junko, which on the surface is a lot more traditionally Doom-y but in terms of progression is farther down the adventure game track than anything I've played in years and years. I suspect most players will find it too unapproachable (it's massive, nonlinear, sometimes cryptic, and gives you very little idea as to what you're actually supposed to be doing at any point), but it really captured my imagination once I got deeper into it. Sort of says it all that it has a secret second half that you'll only ever see if it occurs to you to do something totally gonzo at a pivotal moment.

* Finally, for all this stuff that's just coming off the top of my head, I'll suppose I'll always be a fan of Virgil's Claustrophobia: The Walls Close In, which is by far the oldest of all the WADs mentioned here except perhaps for Super Sonic Doom. The name accurately represents the concept--in some ways it was a WAD vastly ahead of its time as far as its approach to pressuring players goes. It includes something of a fleshed out if rather hammy story told through those inimitably awkward ZDoom 'cutscenes', and I imagine to a modern eye it probably looks quite dated, but it will always have my undying affection for its zany custom/scripted bossfights if nothing else, something which few WADs before or since have explored to such a degree (Winter's Fury notwithstanding!), and which IMO still remains probably the single best design potential that (G)ZDoom offers to the singleplayer part of the core Doom gameplay.

Surely there's other stuff as well--certain Vadermaps will no doubt get a mention, etc.--but the above are personal favorites perhaps somewhat less likely to get a mention these days. Kind of telling how relatively old most of these WADs are....it really is striking just how sweepingly the ZDoom community has switched over to focusing on gameplay mods rather than map/mapset creation, though I guess there's always been at least one big ZDoom project in that vein knocking around at any given time (currently there's "Wolfendoom: Blade of Agony", for instance).

[Pencil of Doom]

Sure, why not?
Action Doom and it's sequel
Unloved
Stronghold on the Edge of Chaos
Doom:The Golden Souls
Ghoul's Forest and it's sequels
Encrypter
Pirate Doom
Harmony
Foreverhood
Neodoom
Turbocharged Arcade
BDHoEStarterPack
Community is Falling and it's sequels
DWForums and it's sequels
Hungarian Warfare
ZCMP and it's sequel
Pinochestein
Swanky Moppets(yes i'm talking about that TC)
Spicy Evil Spaghetti
Lighthouse
Ashes TC
Wolfen
Necrosis
Resurrection of Chaos
And Serpent:Resurrection

There's more, but these are my top favorites.

[Albertoni]

J.B.R said:

Foreverhood

If there was a way to give reputation in this forum, you'd have gotten a point from me. Foreverhood is incredibly, incredibly atmospheric and beautiful.



I'd like to drop Trailblazer here. It might make the game too easy, but damn if it isn't fun to play.

[7hm]

J.B.R said:

Pinochestein

This is one of the worst piles of crap I've ever played.

For my favorites, definitely Pirate Doom and Adventures of Square (if a total conversion like this counts).

[Voros]

Hacx 2.0 is damn cool. Too bad its still unfinished.

Also:
CIF3
Smooth Doom
IMPatience
SgtmarkIV's After the Holocaust and The Ultimate Icon of Sin maps.
H-Doom (what, its impressive for a Doom mod)

I hear the Starter Pack's Hell on Earth is nice too.

[Doomkid]

While it's not a mapset, Hunter's Moon for GZDoom deserves a mention.

[Koros]

Doomkid said:

While it's not a mapset, Hunter's Moon for GZDoom deserves a mention.

^ Agreed. I should have mentioned that one in my post.

[Spectre01]

I'm just gonna say that Hell on Earth SP is the best zdoom megawad of all time.

[Ancalagon]

Dark tartarus

Best
Wad
Ever

[Angry Saint]

J.B.R said:

Lighthouse

Is it my Lighthouse? I ask because I released it 3 days ago and seems strange it is already a "best of".

BTW, did anyone like "The Prometheus Experiment"?

[scifista42]

J.B.R said:

Pirate Doom

I knew I forgot something important* in my post.

* As in, subjectively important for me, as something that I have played and really really liked.

[Lila Feuer]

I adore Unloved and am annoyed that the sequel will never be finished.

[Tristan]

Zdcmp2, winters fury, threshold of pain and kdizd

[Grain of Salt]

I don't play that many zdoom wads, but I quite like TimeofDeath's "Expired License".

[Pencil of Doom]

Angry Saint said:

Is it my Lighthouse? I ask because I released it 3 days ago and seems strange it is already a "best of".

Yes, it is, i like your map.

[Da Werecat]

The City of The Damned: Apocalypse for its well-realized "Blood meets Silent Hill" experience. The combat is a bit frustrating at times, and one puzzle in particular has a much less elegant solution than you might think, but I consider this to be the most immersive work of Tormentor667.

Unloved. This wad is less of a survival horror and more of a classic Doom experience, but its oppressive atmosphere and hub-based progression centered on a house you can't escape make its inspiration pretty clear as well. If those weren't enough, it actually borrows a music track from Silent Hill 2.

Phocas Island 2. I'd probably forget about this one, if it wasn't mentioned. Thinking about it, it's been a long time since I played anything interesting for ZDoom, so I probably don't remember most of the good ones. This one is pretty unpolished and buggy, but it was fascinating to play such an adventuresque wad for a change. And a little jelly-inducing, because I had plans for something like this myself. It's 2016 now, and that project is still made of plans.

Final Neodoom. In this day and age the original Neodoom feels rather naive, but still charming. Some argued that the sequel has lost some of the aforementioned charm, but I think it's a simple matter of bringing the levels much closer to the modern standarts of advanced mapping. This should be Daniel's magnum opus (rapey combat notwithstanding), but I don't think it received a lot of attention, at least on Doomworld.

Pirate Doom. It just made me smile, and always had something new and interesting to show.

It seems that Legacy of Suffering doesn't have a very good reputation nowadays, but it actually won a Cacoward. It all depends on whether you tolerate claustrophobic arena combat (and questionable English).

Demon of the Well said:

Going even further down that track, there's Junko, which on the surface is a lot more traditionally Doom-y but in terms of progression is farther down the adventure game track than anything I've played in years and years.

Have you played Crapi? Junko is something of a sequel to it, and they share the same philosophy, as much as I could tell from my brief experience with the latter.

[Angry Saint]

J.B.R said:

Yes, it is, i like your map.

Thank you!

[dugan]

Assault on Tei Tenga is great, if you haven't played it.

[scifista42]

^ UAC Military Nightmare is great if you don't play it.

[Koros]

scifista42 said:

^ UAC Military Nightmare is great if you don't play it.

So watching it is great then right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9oFvS6YpnM

[General Rainbow Bacon]

Where can I DL "Final Neodoom"? I must have slept through that post when it came out.

Edit:

I also need links to:

Hungarian Warfare
Encrypter
Harmony
Foreverhood
Wolfen
Necrosis
Resurrection of Chaos
Serpent Resurrection

Those all sound really cool.

[Cynical]

Demon of the Well said:

* Finally, for all this stuff that's just coming off the top of my head, I'll suppose I'll always be a fan of Virgil's Claustrophobia: The Walls Close In, which is by far the oldest of all the WADs mentioned here except perhaps for Super Sonic Doom. The name accurately represents the concept--in some ways it was a WAD vastly ahead of its time as far as its approach to pressuring players goes. It includes something of a fleshed out if rather hammy story told through those inimitably awkward ZDoom 'cutscenes', and I imagine to a modern eye it probably looks quite dated, but it will always have my undying affection for its zany custom/scripted bossfights if nothing else, something which few WADs before or since have explored to such a degree (Winter's Fury notwithstanding!), and which IMO still remains probably the single best design potential that (G)ZDoom offers to the singleplayer part of the core Doom gameplay.

Came here to post this.