aargh

Difficult for all the wrong reasons: - Not enough amunition, at least when pistol starting. - Very few medikits; it's common to fight a tough fight with 3 % of health and no medikit in sight. - And there's a hitscanning chaingunner on every. Single. Corner. This turns the gameplay into a boring quickload fest.

Fun, scripted campaign with a story and nice Quake-ish environments! However, the wad is extremely easy on UV (on par with vanilla Doom, maybe even easier). This makes it a bit boring. I had two problems with unopenable doors on maps 09 & 10 but I'm not sure if it wasn't caused by other mods.

Nice, tight level design. E1M8 was an amazing puzzle map. It's surprisingly difficult for a Doom 1 WAD, but for wrong reasons: constant ambushes, monsters teleporting right behind you. Also, there is a serious lack of medikits. Fights with 5 % health and hitscanners all around are common. Still, it was quite fun.

Artifact didn't age well. Confusing layouts, bland combat. Infuriating teleport "puzzles" in level 3. And probably the worst Icon of Sin fight I've ever seen.

This wad didn't age well. It's too simple, too easy (easier than vanilla) and pretty boring by today's standards. However, some of the latter levels are quite fun and the boss level is interesting. Mod compatibility: Fully compatible with Brutal Doom or Project Brutality.

Skillsaw is a genius. This is a legendary megawad with amazing level design, unique visual style and tones of new ideas. Levels are very non-linear, mostly arena-like. After every ten levels you lose all your weapons and start over, making berserk packs much more useful. One complaint: There's just too many teleporter ambushes. Brutal compatibility: The map pack is playable with Brutal Doom/Project Brutality, only with some minor graphical glitches, except for around three maps by the end of the game that contain too many monsters for the scripts to handle. Had to iddqd through a few encounters on those maps because FPS dropped to single digits.

Easy, relaxing megawad with very small, but well-designed maps. I played it with Project Brutality to add some extra difficulty and it worked perfectly.

Rather dated miniwad. Most maps are not balanced well, with either too much or too little enemies and/or ammo. Map04 is overly complicated with confusing maze of corridors and unintuitive usage of switches and trigger lines.

Pretty good megawad with a slaughter-ish second half. It has balanced difficulty, with most encounters being fair and playable. Very few ambushes! Also, it's surprisingly good with Project Brutality, for its powerful weapons and enhanced enemies. Only the two secret levels were too difficult to play with PB and in two more levels I had to iddqd through the beginning to get the monster count down and the framerate up to two digits. The rest was fine and entertaining because the gameplay was much faster than in vanilla.

Slaughtermap for beginners. Simple but effective level design, impressive architecture, great lighting. Arch-viles are a bit overused. Played with Meatgrinder mod.

Pros: Straightforward, lot of action, no button madness. Plays smooth. Classic Doom feeling. Cons: Lots of invisible lines blocking monsters. Lots of hitscanners and not enough health packs.

Yes, this is a legendary megawad. Yes, there is a lot of positives to say about it. But I can't ignore the button madness present in many levels. In the second half of the game this gets utterly insane - you WILL spend most of the time bashing and shooting every inch of every wall to find yet another hidden switch to be able to progress. Many switches open hidden doors in an unrelated location on the other side of the level without even telling you. Some levels have switches completely invisible and one of them even hides switches in random decoration sprites like trees. I'm sorry but this was no fun and in the end it ruined the entire megawad for me.

It misses that "something extra" that id maps had. Something that you remember those maps for. But maybe it's not fair to compare because the original always has the advantage of nostalgia.

Crude, simple, yet surprisingly inventive for 1994. There's a lot of switches and the layout is very non-linear and sometimes quite confusing. In one level I had to idclip to the exit because I had no idea how to get there otherwise. Overall, this was a nice nostalgic experience. Difficulty: easy. Mods: Project Brutality 3, UDV.