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Out of 500,000 people who showed up to storm Area 51, you were the person smart enough to travel back to 1997, a whole 20+ years before the US Air Force expected your arrival. Even back then, the military installation was armed to the teeth with custom high fences, guard posts and a complex interior structure of underground rooms. Armed with only your pistol, with the Mission Impossible playing in midi form you are able to Doomguy run your way inside make it inside to find 'dem aliens and rescue green plasma technology. Area 51 is a grand two level excursion that flows nicely, has a lot of content to its levels, good fights, diverse locales and some custom artwork. There is a new reskinned hover beast, barrels and rivers full of yellow glowing ooze, yellow hazmat suited foes, and plenty of text to guide you as if you were in the real facility. You'll trudge through sewers, explore pristine clean rooms, trek through some unique architecture with deep lifts, sprawling staircases, big rooms and tight corridors. This .wad is dare I say 95% good to great and a real gem from the era, but the worst parts are the early lack of ammunition that gets balanced out over time and the use of pitch black corridors. There are monster closets and a few chaingun snipers, but nothing that truly hinders the experience for more than a few moments. Everything else is an enjoyable challenge that gets punctuated every so often with a revenant or a baron here or there. These are the beasts contained, but you'll mostly be slugging it out with humans, imps, specters and pinkies.. It has withstood the test of 20 years and was still an enjoyable 40 minutes to get through today. Your results may vary. Make sure to quick save!

It's a wave based square map with four tall square structures and a taller square structure on each with bridges connecting them all and ramps going up to the top of each structure. Here's the catch, you don't gain access to the ramps until a few waves in. At first the waves are quite dull, full of scan hit enemies like shotgunners and typical zombiemen. Then it evolves into waves with pinkies, before later on it has revenants and mancubi. The waves build until the happy Mario sky turns into orange and has a spider mastermind gunning for you from the top of one of the structures. For a map, it's dull and takes a bit too long to amp up the enemies. It does get better, but I can't say it's fun being stuck in the channels between the four structures forced to wait for each sniper to line up along the cliff to shoot at you. On the plus side you won't get lost, but you won't be dazzled by the map either. It makes use of Skulltag's weapons and a few blood pinkies toward the end. Most of the stuff could have been done with other source ports. I was suckered in by the Mario name and there's a Mario song midi here, and colorful walls, but that's the only Mario content. Someone needs to add proper textures to make it feel more like Mario.

Are you up for a brutal, non stop challenge through detailed, but bland environments? The Secret Energy doesn't let up, so it's either a low health slaughter map or a speed runner's dream to get from switch to switch, all while enemies constantly spawn in with each button press. There's little health for such meaty enemies and even on the easiest difficulty, it's a slog to kill them all. To balance out the lower health, there are less hitscan enemies that seem to be relegated to a few chain gunners that can get distracted in a sea of madness. It feels like a punishing experience from the first room. It fills with imps, then pinkies, then flying enemies, then revenants and a cyber demon. The entire map is like that. Enter a room and it will flood in via waves. Each wave opens up something new and you need to find where that new thing is. Is it a switch on a wall? Is it a switch inside of a pillar? Did a door just open up? Are you supposed to go back into the main corridors of the complex? At least on my first play through, I felt there was a poor flow to the level. The place is so big and centralized, you might miss where you need to go next. No arrows, the switches are around corners and walls inside of rooms that may or may not have opened. The game has its detail, but detail with greens, browns, a few blue wires across the floors, perhaps to guide you to the next area. It was all lost on me and blurred together into a jumble. While the structures of each new room was different, it's the color scheme and darkness that stayed the same. Give it a try. There is something redeemable in here for those hardcore enough to endure the first room, let alone the entire map.

Believe the hype, Sand Chain is indeed a terrible map. Not terrible like oh this must be someone's first map or designed by a team of kinder gardeners and their friend in second grade who can use DoomBuilder, I'm talking hall of mirror walls, coupled with the fact you can go through the game's exit switches. The map is short and sweet, which only adds to how terrible it is. The level is a single hallway with... get this... a bend! Oh stay with me here... and then after that bend, there is a bank of switches! Yeah, that's it. The level isn't meant for Nightmare, but it should become everyone's first accomplishment of, "I can beat this level on nightmare." I suppose in an artistic way, the hall of mirror affect on all walls is to disorient the player, so they miss the big twist at the end. Thus costing speed runners valuable seconds on their first play through. The big twist being the bend. Other than that, there are plenty of shotgun shells, shotgun troopers and health to ensure you make it to the end of this brutal and rigorous test of endurance over the course of 5 - 30 seconds. This is the level that has become famous, because everyone needs to play it themselves to add their two cents of "it's crap" to the pile of reviews that will no doubt entice more people to play this game. It's a gorgeous display of everything wrong without the annoyance of having to play it for longer than a full minute. Complete with someone from an aol email to spice up it's true 1995 feel... despite being made in 2009. * slow clap * You've done it. You've found a new twist on terrible.