Are any of these megawads good?

[Jaws In Space]

I've seen a few "list your favorite megawads" threads pop up here on Doomworld & I notice that the same megawads pop up over & over again. I've wondered if those megawads truly are the best or do they just keep on showing up because they are simply what most people are familiar with. I've made a list of as many megawads that I could find that I have either never heard of or I simply don't know anything about them. So from the list of megawads below which ones are megawads that are good that I, & probably many people, are missing out on.

1995-04-15 ILLUSORY

1996-01-xx JOW: Jason Wainman's 30 Levels of Doom II
1996-04-04 Big Crappy Shit Megawad
1996-08-01 32
1996-08-25 Hell in Hell

1997-xx-xx 32 Hours in Pain
1997-03-27 Doom 32
1997-08-29 Beyond The Hell
1997-11-07 PIR WAD

1998-01-01 Doom 2099 Addon
1998-03-26 THE ABYSS
1998-04-24 Project X
1998-05-15 The Last Revenger
1998-06-04 Herian
1998-10-19 Mars War
1998-12-02 codename HYENA killermachine

1999-xx-xx Nightmares of loki
1999-03-11 Vengeance
1999-04-28 The Ultimate NMD
1999-05-18 The SpawnSQuads
1999-05-28 Squonker 2

2000-01-24 Herian 2
2000-04-26 Final Fantasy Doom (version 2)
2000-09-10 Phouse: "The great arena"
2000-10-09 TOONS for Doom 2
2000-10-10 The SpawnSQuad 2000
2000-11-19 The World of Deth - From Heaven to Hell
2000-12-20 DSV3-War

2001-02-07 Project Mars Base
2001-07-08 ARCADE
2001-12-14 Fragport

2002-07-29 DSV Episode 4: The Revolution

2003-08-16 Garrulismo

2004-06-10 Daniel Level Serie 02
2004-06-22 Death in the ass of the Universe

2006-xx-xx PIR 2
2006-02-20 Armadosia: The Mad Corridor
2006-05-08 NeoDoom
2006-05-13 Mega Trickster's Mistake Unreality With Stupid
2006-06-16 Tarakannik

2007-04-xx Ultimate Doom 2
2007-10-02 The Last Joke

2008-06-16 ZPack - Random Maps for ZDoom

2009-08-25 Hell Awakened
2009-08-25 Mini-level Megawad
2009-09-08 Heroes' Tales
2009-10-30 Necropia Zone

2010-04-05 Star Wars: Chibi Rebellion
2010-09-24 Prayers of Armageddon

2011-02-26 Tarakannik 2

2012-03-08 Survive in Hell
2012-05-18 Zones of Fear
2012-07-26 Expired License
2012-12-27 Castle Doom

2013-04-10 Dark Tartarus: Dead Tonight
2013-06-25 Damnation
2013-06-25 Doom 2 in a Nutshell
2013-12-16 Dance

2014-02-14 And The Bloodshed Began
2014-07-22 Doom IIII
2014-09-09 ESP

2015-06-17 Restoring Deimos
2015-06-17 Endless Torture
2015-09-09 Pinochestein 3D edicion GL

2016-03-29 The DOOM Tribute Project
2016-04-15 Cabro's Legacy
2016-09-17 The Journey
2016-10-05 DEMISE
2016-11-03 Doom: Damnation

[Fuzzball]

+1 for the big crappy shit megawad

[Fonze]

Cabro's Legacy featured many, many beautiful-looking levels but they didn't always play the best. Still, it's definitely worth a shot, if for nothing else: as a source of inspiration. Don't pay too much mind to the /newstuff review on this one.

[40oz]

Ive been enjoying The Journey so far but I still have a lot more to play. Big crappy shit megawad is good for a bit of a laugh. After a couple levels the joke gets a little tired. I liked Garrulosimo when I first played it. I'm not sure it has aged very well. Survive in hell is pretty cool. Armadosia is good. And the bloodshed began is very good. ESP is near impossible to play for most players but the maps are works of art of the highest caliber. I have fuzzy memories of some of the other stuff and don't recall ever getting very far into any of them before getting bored of them. I might try an ironman a few of them some day just to see what they're all about.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Of that list I have recollections of trying Herian, World of Deth, and Garrulismo (and I have the first two set to look at on my HD). Didn't play any of them past the first ten or so levels (if that), but that's par for the course for me where megawads are concerned.

Herian's a janky partial conversion with Heretic/Hexen stuff (no DeHackEd, just reskins). "Interesting" but kind of weird level designs; the sort of thing I might look at for inspiration but not necessarily enjoy playing because of too many experimental ideas that didn't pan out in a good way.

World of Deth is quite hard from the start and I maybe only cleared the first level or two. What I've seen of it has a very much "oldschool Doom 2" look to it and I'd say it's definitely the most "traditional" of the three but it's also kind of "unfriendly" as it were (you go up stairs, a load of shotgunners are waiting on all sides to ambush you, you open a door and a Baron's right there in a cramped space, you go for a key and find it's a damaging sector you can't climb out of because you didn't hit the switch to raise it first, that sort of thing).

Garrulismo uses a lot of SS Nazis but otherwise had pretty good design as I recall. I don't have this one installed at the moment though, so I'm not going to check further right now.

So yeah, I'd probably put those as "passable". "Good" is going to be a matter of what your tastes are for all three of them.

[Nems]

Herian/2 still puzzles me as to why/how they got to be in the top 100 WADs of all time when the damn things have been unplayable for me. :x

DSV...those bring back memories. D: I wish Kaiser would update them so they worked properly in modern ports or give permission to let others update them. DSV4 specifically could/would benefit from receiving an update like Armadosia: The Mad Corridor got.

Speaking of, I liked Armadosia: The Mad Corridor even if it does suffer from Eternal Doom III/excessive backtracking and switch hunt syndrome.

I also liked World of Deth but it was also one of the first ten or so megaWAD's I ever downloaded from Doomworld when I first found the site so I'm probably a wee bit biased.

Play Ultimate NMD. 'nuff said.

Fragport is also pretty cool. Map 32 can still go fuck itself though.

Ultimate Doom 2 also suffers from massive excessive backtracking and switch hunt syndrome in some levels but overall I was okay with it.

I liked ZPack but I'm also a sucker for levels that show off what (G)ZDoom can do so I'm biased in that regard. :V

Play Hell Awakened. Good shit. Hopefully the author will get around to finishing Hell Awakened 2.

Doom Tribute Project is the bee's knees too. A must-play, in my opinion.

NeoDoom...whoo boy that's...an acquired taste. It's definitely not for everyone. If you're able to look past some of its...eccentricities, it can be a good time. You may need to find a version/patch that nerfs the Vixen enemies. I remember a long time ago those being a massive pain in the fucking ass to fight and not in a good way.

Vengeance is also pretty good, in my opinion.

Dark Taratus is great if you wanna use Russian Overkill because it's all slaughtermaps, all the time. :V

[Doomkid]

I don't think I completed them fully, but I played at least 2/3rds of both MarsWar and Fragport years ago and was genuinely entertained, I'll have to give them another spin some time. PIR WAD is really boring square rooms with excessive powerups, iirc. Sorta generic and uninteresting.

[kmxexii]

1997-xx-xx 32 Hours in Pain - not Kristian's best, but playing as Doomguy's wife is amusing. better than 20 Days in Hell tho
1998-06-04 Herian - much more obtuse than Eternal Doom. not recommended
2000-01-24 Herian 2 - not quite as obtuse as Herian! still a pain at times tho
2009-08-25 Hell Awakened - I thought this is actually a 2011 release? it's got some cool stuff, but don't play it on UV.
2009-09-08 Heroes' Tales - Russian speedmaps and jarringly hard Shadowman levels.
2010-04-05 Star Wars: Chibi Rebellion - omg play this play this play this. it's not like doom at all, but PLAY IT
2010-09-24 Prayers of Armageddon - don't play this.
2012-03-08 Survive in Hell - lots of slaughter-lite stuff. MAP33 is a Minecraft map, complete with creepers. play that at the very least.
2012-05-18 Zones of Fear - generally okay but jaeden's levels are a total chore on UV. probably fun on HMP.
2014-02-14 And The Bloodshed Began - French speedmaps (r.i.p. subject_119 :<). just smile and fire away.

[Jaws In Space]

kmxexii said:

2009-08-25 Hell Awakened - I thought this is actually a 2011 release? it's got some cool stuff, but don't play it on UV.

There were multiple release dates listed in the text file, I chose the earliest listed dates when making this list.

[Angry Saint]

Nems said:

Herian/2 still puzzles me as to why/how they got to be in the top 100 WADs of all time when the damn things have been unplayable for me. :x

The same here. I think I couldn't go past level 2. Maybe wrong zdoom version?

[purist]

I think I've played mini level megawad. If it's the one I'm thinking of it was fun to as through.

[MFG38]

kmxexii said:

2010-09-24 Prayers of Armageddon - don't play this.

Glad that you have the same thoughts as I personally do.

[Phade102]

I'd recommend Fragport. It's a very old wad, but went for more realistic looking enviroments than the original doom 2. Might not be the most AMAZING wad, but there are some damn good quality levels in there.

[40oz]

I just played through JOW a few days ago. If you played the first map, you played them all. Once you get to MAP02 you realize the mapper is completely tapped out of ideas and there are a lot of obvious repeating patterns in the design. Yet, the author persists to create enormous mostly flat orthogonal mazes of corridors and rooms connected by doors, and you need all three keys to exit each level. All Hell Barons, cyberdemon and mastermind fights are prefaced with way too many invulnerability spheres, megasphere and BFG + lots of cells.

There's usually 200-300 monsters in every map, revenants are super rare, but zombiemen, imps, ss nazis and commander keens are abundant, and arachnatrons and mancs are often stuck to walls. Every map starts with a supershotgun a backpack and tons of shells and every map exits with maxed out ammo for sure. You spend a majority of the time just plowing through easy monsters and then navigating the Automap to figure out where you haven't been yet. The way the keys are located on polar opposite coordinates of where its door is makes you sure to check everything on the map before you can exit.

I wouldn't recommend it for anyone.

[Memfis]

From my memory, Fragport has too many large areas where avoiding attacks is so trivial. And the author LOVES randomly opening closets with like 10 hell knights, even though they pose no threat.

[Phade102]

Memfis said:

From my memory, Fragport has too many large areas where avoiding attacks is so trivial. And the author LOVES randomly opening closets with like 10 hell knights, even though they pose no threat.

That was pretty common with the older wads though. its not for everyone, its a decent wad though.

[gaspe]

I quite liked Fragport. I think it could be considered as an ancestor of Hellbound somehow. It doesn't play great but it works as a sort of a more relaxed adventure in Doom 2.
I'm playing The Last Revenger and Armadosia now. Armadosia is very cool.
On The Last Revenger I'm progressing slowly. The levels are all rather big and very obscure, and few parts are even broken. Many times there's also a large use of copy-paste. The sounds are replaced, some of the monster noise are russian speaking I guess, others are more hilarious. I think it's really an acquired taste if you want to endure it. Though it's interesting becuase it has a logic behind it, even if a weird one.
I'm tempted to play Herian 1/2, they looked interesting as something close to Eternal Doom, but kmxexii's reviews of them aren't reassuring.

[40oz]

For the record I'm usually not very unapologetic when it comes to doom maps but JOW just has way too much of an auto-generated Wolf3D maps feel that I'm not convinced the creator really had any intention of making anything cool outside of reaching that 30-map megawad qualification.

[CrazyDoomguy]

Jaws In Space said:

2006-06-16 Tarakannik

I did a run, you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwdIpbrpAnE&list=PLEPyMLS_ZtycZqKTjY8yBWgRELjQhblEE

[Xaser]

To chuck another +1 in the pile, Chibi Rebellion is fantastic and rather under-appreciated these days.

[geo]

32 hours in pain? Sounds like a horrid childbirth.

[kmxexii]

geo said:

32 hours in pain? Sounds like a horrid childbirth.

20 days in hell: 21 maps with a vaguely abstract plutonic theme full of death traps and definitely meant to be played continuously. you were walking out at night with your wife when a mugger shoots you and you die. Hell claims your soul and says it will release you if you can survive for 20 days.

32 hours in pain: 32 maps with a vaguely TNT / evilution theme. Hell lied, so Doomguy's wife Serena takes a 32 hour journey to rescue her husband as he suffers unspeakable torment.

1 day of hellish revenge: 3 maps. Much more "advanced" than 32 hours. Doomguy decides to go back to Hell so that he can sleep at night after being tortured at Hell's mercy.

[baja blast rd.]

40oz said:

I just played through JOW a few days ago. If you played the first map, you played them all. Once you get to MAP02 you realize the mapper is completely tapped out of ideas and there are a lot of obvious repeating patterns in the design. Yet, the author persists to create enormous mostly flat orthogonal mazes of corridors and rooms connected by doors, and you need all three keys to exit each level. All Hell Barons, cyberdemon and mastermind fights are prefaced with way too many invulnerability spheres, megasphere and BFG + lots of cells.

There's usually 200-300 monsters in every map, revenants are super rare, but zombiemen, imps, ss nazis and commander keens are abundant, and arachnatrons and mancs are often stuck to walls. Every map starts with a supershotgun a backpack and tons of shells and every map exits with maxed out ammo for sure. You spend a majority of the time just plowing through easy monsters and then navigating the Automap to figure out where you haven't been yet. The way the keys are located on polar opposite coordinates of where its door is makes you sure to check everything on the map before you can exit.

I wouldn't recommend it for anyone.

I recorded an FDA for map22, which the random number generator gave me. This level is terrible in theory but I had fun blasting through monsters, and I was also laughing quite often at many design decisions, so that was entertaining.

[Master O]

kmxexii said:

32 hours in pain: 32 maps with a vaguely TNT / evilution theme. Hell lied, so Doomguy's wife Serena takes a 32 hour journey to rescue her husband as he suffers unspeakable torment.

Lol, Doomguy's wife?

[Lila Feuer]

I've played Vengeance, it's one of the few full replacements for The Ultimate Doom out there and IIRC it was pretty solid and had a good atmosphere.

[VGA]

rdwpa said:

I recorded an FDA for map22, which the random number generator gave me. This level is terrible in theory but I had fun blasting through monsters, and I was also laughing quite often at many design decisions, so that was entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjUNH1HoeIU

Lol what the hell is that? Even good ol' slige could create better maps that that!

Soulspheres in every room ftw!

[kmxexii]

Master O said:

Lol, Doomguy's wife?

i never noticed it before but they are totally giving each other dogey looks

[baja blast rd.]

VGA said:

Lol what the hell is that? Even good ol' slige could create better maps that that!

Soulspheres in every room ftw!

Haha I had that thought too, and also that recent versions of OBLIGE totally blow this out of the water.

[Reisal]

Vengeance is decent, TOONS is weird but playable (didn't play) and Endless Torture is pretty good (former and latter are seen on my channel)

[VGA]

rdwpa said:

Haha I had that thought too, and also that recent versions of OBLIGE totally blow this out of the water.

OBLIGE is great! There should be a community project where the mappers start with an interesting OBLIGE map as a base and polish and detail it.

Maybe with the Valiant modifications and new monster, too.