Maximum Matt

Is that a character from Phantom Hearts or something?

Can you just imagine a Doom movie with Event Horizon-style oppressiveness and gore, but with Avatar-grade special effects and action?? And, like some scenes would literally look like recognizable rooms from the OG levels?!?!? Hell yea

And I think we have to talk about how these tracks may have a bit more impact to them when they're not used more than once in an IWAD - that they evoke the 'feel' of a certain level that is not 'shared', if ya know what I mean. So (not counting Episode 4), of the tracks featured above, only E1M5, and E2M2, 4 and 6 are completely unique in Doom I - that may be a factor in some people feeling that Episode 2 is the creepiest one. (And of course, stupid me decided to vote for the E1M7 track, that despite its oppressive and plodding sound that I really like (kettledrumsfuckyea), is the only track featured in every episode. I guess I would pick E2M2 or 6 for best 'unique' Doom track.) (also, Tower Of Babel track should be an option)

"Episode 1(b): The Tricky Pit Fuel Circle"

Dude demons can totally climb stairs - you're probably thinking about wads that have monster-blocking linedefs or something

I dunno, the E4M3 torch secrets seemed pretty deliberate, I think ol' Mr. Green was a bit ahead of all us when it came to void glides and stuff - after all, he left a clue by spamming all those secret sectors in the staircase nearby, if that ain't him winking at us I don't know what is. All that needs to happen is for someone to work out how to glide back IN to a level FROM the void, and be able to do it multiple times, and that one's dusted. And as for map30 Pacifist, that one's only a matter of time

Knee-Deep In The Dead (the book) kinda described every level in the first two episodes, except for Military Base, or at the very least name-checked them - there was some weird stuff I can still remember, like how Flynn (Doomguy) had to swim through nukage under a wall or something at the start of Phobos Labs, for example. Or how there was one room completely filled with zombies, and he pretended to be one to get past them and it almost worked until the last second. Or the weirdest bit I can remember was that each level was going lower and lower down an underground complex, but when they got to the Anomaly, there was like a crack in the wall that let sunlight through (never explained). The weird architecture in Episode two is depicted as well, like the red inverted cross in E2M1, the crate maze and marble of E2M2 and the 'flesh blocks' of E2M3 (which the characters hypothesize is how the bad guys make their enemies), the dark halls of E2M6 and a real confusing bit about the 'spawning vats', which are described as things that create all the monsters for the invasion, and the characters guess that there's more rooms like these elsewhere, and they destroy it somehow (I can't remember, it was too long ago, all I know it was poorly described). The Tower Of Babel was described as being a huge indoor tank, that had low gravity in one section, where they trick the cyberdemon to walk onto and it gets launched into the air so the good guys can kill it easily, then they find like a hole in the ground with a ladder down into episode 3. yeah. Only the first two levels, the secret level and the final level are described in the Inferno chapters, and honestly there's a lot of freaky shit there I don't even wanna describe - the author(s) I suppose were starting to get a bit loose with the lore here, or just getting tired of slavishly describing every level. In short, the book sucks, but I still wanna track down at least the Hell On Earth book, because I've heard it's even weirder :-)

Yeah, why does it need two doors? They are the ol' thirty-second timed ones, right?

Nah. PIZZA shapes

Have to combine the demon's alert sound with Doomguy's death-scream

Definitely, there's some textures you just miss in Doom II

Sa da tay! And it's actually - doOm

Yeah, that texture of "ROMERO" written in blood. And of course this - Godly.

But how is that actually pronounced?? Correct. Okay, that's the next poll - is it Doom II, Doom 2, Doom Two, Doom ][, Doom The Second, Romero Doom, Better Doom, Worse Doom, Doom Di Doom Doom Doom, or SSG Doom?!?

Doom II.

Maximum Doom must have at least fifty assorted E1M1 reworkings/violations, and nearly as many for Map01. For my money, MIC2.wad is the weirdest E1M1 mangling, followed by RAGE1, which is E1M1, Map01 and Map02 jammed together. Then there's BASE2, that has rooms lifted from E1M6, E2M2, E2M7 and E3M3; WICKED2, which has callbacks to E1M1 and 9, E2M3, E3M3 and 7; then there's stuff like RAMBO2 that remixes the progression for E2M5 and JUMP2, that turns E3M6 into an indoors DM level. The corrupting of OG levels is a fascinating part of Max Doom - IIRC, all the maps of Episode I get abused many, many times (in various single level wads as well as in episode replacements), but curiously for E2 and 3, only the boss maps, E2M1, E2M9, and E3M1 show up as being common fodder for re-imaginings. Also nothing from E4, even though Ultimate Doom was released in April '95 and this collection came out in December. It seems as though this collection was amassed before the release of UDoom, as in the E1M1 reworkings there is never that switch in the first room that opens to the courtyard. And just in general, I always loved the audacity of old-school mappers to decide to chuck three cyberdemons into Hangar for no reason other than they could.

Requiem II: Memento Mori Zero

I'll write the foreword then

Don't forget that one step in the demon room that is textured differently

There is an arrow pointing to it, if you notice...

This one is the shizzz -

Christopher Buteau should get off his laurels and lounging in all the money TNT made for him and make a megawad, purely him. The dichotomy of the guy who made Habitat AND the first map of Icarus should be showed off for all the world to see, he at least owes us that. Jim Flynn should too, for he is a lord. And Drake should get back into mapping, it's clear at this point his music career ain't going that well

Phillip

Aracnotron has great movement and sound, and are surprisingly deadly