Sena

Storm the UAC Military Base by REBELVODKA (2023) Considering the author's username, and the fact they describe their WAD as "godlike" in the textfile, I'm not really sure why they're trying to invoke Columbine. But it doesn't really matter, this is a quite standard Doom 1 techbase level, with some good detailing in a lot of places, though it also has a couple rooms that are of the kind you only really see from more novice mappers, empty hallways that don't really connect anything, and cubic rooms that contain 1-2 enemies that are dispatched with zero trouble, some of which are also dead ends. It's fairly short, not as much so for me because I had to take the (longer than usual) elevator a total of three times to finally clear the level, but compared to a lot of other basic techbases that are half its length, it manages to establish itself and create a sense of character. 6/10. https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/sounds/rob-will I didn't bother to load this one, but it's a Robin Williams sound pack. Not sure why they made it, but it's out there.

I'd say one critical difference is that DE has dashes, airborne ledges to climb onto, Quake 3 style jumppads, and I only played Ultrakill for about an hour, but it has a slide option which increases speed and a combo meter. These games have deliberate abilities given to the player to encourage them to move quickly, whereas classic Doom doesn't, for the most part the game's pace is only as fast as you want it to be, maybe there are some people out there who prefer to play with autorun disabled, I wouldn't count it out.

Pigeon Speedmapping Session 1 -- Operation Health by various (17 maps, 2017) Uncharacteristically for a speedmap WAD, if there is one unifying element of these maps, it is their consistency. On the whole, it's quite middle of the road, with no levels that really stood out to me any more than the others, as while Walter's MAP03 may have threatened to the ruin the balance by giving full weapons and ammo, most the maps rarely have anything higher in HP count than an arachnotron, which also makes these levels typically quick to run through, even when accounting for the moments that heighten the action and demand your full attention. There's enough variety in visual theming and architecture between the levels to keep things interesting, a good experience from a multi-part speedmapping series I'd never heard of. 7/10.

An Evening Stroll in Venice by Hebridean Isle (2016) This level's only got 100 enemies, and although it was good enough that in some ways it left me wanting more, I have no issues with the experience I was given, since it is clear that while they could've extended it for its own sake, the shorter length means that there is no filler, and every aspect of its creation was done with clear intent. It is thoroughly gimmicky, making use of a box to escape a la that bit near the start of Half Life 2, custom door animations, and a bunch of other ZDoom quirks, but they all work without issue, and are not ostentatious as gimmicks sometimes are, because the length of the level means they are only used one time, allowing for them to be put out there, and then to move on. This application is put to especially good effect in the final battle sequence, wherein the main courtyard area that the player has slowly found ways to creatively open up in different ways can be used to its full extent, and it's at this moment that it occurred to me just how expansive this level really was. I'll have to give this an 8/10, which is definitely the highest anyone's ever rated a WAD with Terry's face in it.

Demon Prince Sings the Blues by Memfis (2015) This map describes itself as having "intelligent monster placement", which seems to be a community term that passed me by, since I've never heard anyone make claims to the contrary at any time before. Regardless, if there is one aspect of the level that came across to me as particularly thoughtful, it was its ammo placement, as despite having a habit of being being too careful with my ammo use, this level spread out its limited supply enough that I had to quickly make difficult decisions about which enemies to engage and with what weapon. The level is fairly short, taking place in one central arena which is open enough that playing it safe and boring isn't much of an option, which means that one mistake can compound into more if you're not careful, and this is probably where the concept of intelligent monster placement comes in. It's a level that gives little breathing room, but unlike the more grandiose slaughtermaps that sort of description may evoke, its contained nature means that zero of its enemies are wasted, each enemy you choose to engage has consequences for you as a player, which correspondingly makes for a level that is satisfying to play, as your successes and failures feel entirely as though they are the result of your actions. 8/10.

Bloody Rust by various (6 maps, 2017) These maps are quite small, around 50 enemies each. Correspondingly, they are carefully considered and contain no real wasted space, as claustrophobic combat encounters that give you minimal room to retreat or reposition during a fight appears to be have been a guiding design philosophy. I wouldn't be able to contest that they are well-designed, but with this intention, coupled with the reliance on revenants (only 50 enemies per level, and I'm sure I must have seen more than 10 in MAP02) and chaingunners, makes for a WAD that I can respect, but one I have a hard time bringing myself to enjoy on a personal level. 6/10.

Went out for lunch last week

Haven't actually touched the game in a couple weeks, but a few days ago I dreamed I was playing the game, fighting several arachnotrons who had some MIRV type attack that would split into multiple projectiles, and now I'm dehydrated.

Only saw it show up in one game, and even then I never saw anyone use it over the Bren, but I still like it

I don't know if you can say it's not even tangentially related if there's an Xbox game pass code (or something) right there on the bag. Doritos and Mountain Dew being "gamer fuel" is something that goes back at least a decade.

Doom Zephyr Demo by Wes "PumpkinSmasher"Rath (9 maps, 2003) Checking the author's page on the wiki, it looks like the full version never came out. Anyway, this feels pretty flavourless and overall boring, its architecture is of the same flat, monotextured sort that characterised Wolfenstein, and dealing with these flat corridors generates the same sort of response from me as they did in Wolfenstein, and adding curved edges to an otherwise plain room doesn't really do much to help make it more exciting, especially with how rigidly it sticks to the room-corridor-room format. In what I assume is an attempt to imitate Half Life, its levels end at random points, which works a lot better in Half Life since it is meant to be all one seamless experience, but when a random door ends a single, contained level, it feels arbitrary and, rather plainly, like an unsatisfying way to end a level. Its visual theming also feels pretty trapped, in a single level, they'll have the same types (e.g. only using STARTAN, SILVER1 and SUPPORT1 within a given level), but between the levels there is so much randomness that it feels like something you'd get out of a speedmapping compilation. The real problem with its room-corridor-room format is there is no large lobby area to separate them, meaning the whole WAD often feels claustrophobic, and it really feels like one big mess, which also exasperates the issue of its endings feeling random. It harkens back to that classic Wolfenstein problem of trying to figure out which of the identical doors, located within the identical rooms, is the correct one. It also has some bizarre ZDoom features, like a swimming area that only lasts for about 10 seconds and feels entirely pointless, and picking up a blue skull key, which is actually used for the yellow door - I have no explanation for that one. Its gameplay feels very bland too, heavy on hitscanners and light on health packs, but I think playing this highlighted the prevalence of the term "Doom clone" to me. Many games that came after Doom had competent enemy design and shooting mechanics, but without the proper visual theming and interesting level design that characterised Doom, they just feel like weak imitators, and in this regard, I will say that the official id maps even at their worst still carried themselves with evocative architecture and being plainly interesting to walk through. This WAD had one or two rooms that actually experimented and felt like they had something going on, but if I cared that much about one room, I'd just watch the Tommy Wiseau movie. 4/10.

HOMER by me :-) [sic] (1996) This one's classically old and bad in that unquantifiable 90s way. It's not difficult, the exclusive use of E1 enemies can ensure that, but it is definitely painful to get through, being forced to move through all the random areas that are pitch-black for no discernible reason, plus its general mazelike layout. Apart from its appetite for darkness and jagged edges, it looks like any other techbase from the era that lacks any memorable aspects of atmosphere or visual theming - its most original area is its wide courtyard which is littered with explosive barrels, but when they're spread too far apart to all collectively explode, then I don't really see the point. And there is no point, there is only one point to the whole WAD, which is that the automap makes out Homer's face, which was certainly not worth embarking on this odyssey for. 3/10.

J. Edgar, to my knowledge it's the only DiCaprio film following his Titanic stardom that didn't make a profit, but I thought it was pretty good maybe an interesting case, people can abide by a purely murderous antihero like Walter White, but someone like Hoover who uses creeping legalism and bureaucracy as a weapon instead makes it harder for people to tell whose side the movie's on, which I suspect was the reason for its critical failure

Maps by my 6 Year Old Son by Dylan Ellis Bourke (5 maps, 2012) There's one thing that stands out when playing these, and it's that classic newbie look - big, rectangular rooms, no props and minimal alternate texturing, and the levels are on the whole fairly easy, not quite to the extent you can just run through and ignore everything, but running through and just launching a BFG shot as soon as your path is blocked is a strategy that can get you through most of this WAD, especially when accounting for the placement of some quite unneeded invincibility spheres, although I wonder if that can be taken as an indication that these levels were actually playtested, something that I suspect is not the case for the far less palatable maps lying in the depths of the archive. Unlike some levels that make use of one texture at a time, these maps are short, and change up their look with each new level, so it is never grating. It's a bit unusual to not end with the IoS level, but this set captures the gameplay quirks of Doom well enough, and even if they look nothing like any id level, the fundamental gameplay experience they provide isn't actually that far off. 6/10.

Do you mean to tell me that "artificial intelligence" is unable to spot and correct a basic spelling error, something that was added to MS Word at least 20 years ago?