#onemandoom

[doom-nerdo-666]

A blog known for reviewing Doom wads is Onemandoom, who also ran the Doomwads Tumblr account.

It could be good for anyone looking for wad recommendations.

[doomwads]

AOL Girls Museum

Game: Doom II Year: 1998 Source Port: Any Specs: MAP01 Gameplay Mods: None Author: "Capone” idgames | doomwiki | onemandoom

A digital gallery full of processed images of women that were found on AOL with handles attached. I haven’t done the work to decipher whether they were posted by the women themselves or by their significant others. There’s even a bit of a check-in desk and security shack. At its most deliciously deviant, monsters actually emerge from the recessed portraits.

Click here if you’d like to read my full review.

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette (2002): Caverns of Darkness

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Damn...

#3: Caverns of Darkness

Main author(s): The Chaos Crew (original WAD)/ Christoph Oelckers AKA Graf Zahl (ZDoom patch)

Release date: April 22nd, 2002 (the original version)/November 15th, 2008 (ZDoom patch)

Version(s) played: Original WAD with ZDoom patch

Required port compatibility: Eternity Engine-based custom engine/(G)ZDoom

Levels: 12 (10 standard ones and 2 secret ones)

Looks like I just found the first surprise of the 2002 roster. One, the fact that this WAD managed to properly launch is a miracle. Two, it ended up better than I originally thought. But I’ll get to that later.

Starting off with the fact that this WAD is actually playable on ZDoom/GZDoom due to the GZDoom’s creator himself, Graf Zahl, creating a modified version of this WAD made from ZDoom 2.0.96 in 2005, then in 2008 creating a special patch that will allow the original WAD to be played with ZDoom (and later GZDoom) itself. Bless this Gigachad, folks! For we are about to dig straight into Hell itself.

So what’s the story in this WAD? Honestly, I’m not really sure. All info I got about it was from the ONEMANDOOM blog so you will have to take it with a grain of salt.

So the story of Caverns of Darkness takes place six years after the events of Doom II. All is fine and dandy on Earth until you are sent into some owned by UAC (because if someone must fuck everything up it’s them) to secure the demonic invasion happening here. Then some shit happens and you end up, for the better, as the only person to fix this demonic shithole.

By the way, I’m using GZDoom 4.8.2 from now on because I can now properly make screenshots for the text screens instead of doing mental gymnastics with 4.8.0 being broken with this feature.

Caverns of Darkness looks incredible. It amazes me how this WAD can ooze with beauty with its industrial mine style. There are so many tiny, detailed things in this WAD (which fans tend to call these Doom cute) that I had to make a separate file for screenshots of these.

You start up near the dam, close to the mines, looking rather normal despite the corpses evrywhere, but as you go further the locations end up becoming more and more oppressed, showing more signs of the demonic corruption alongside ruins of chapels and churches that could’ve been build by medieval Christians.

It goes up to eleven in the latter half of the WAD as you descend further and further, with facilities turning into something not made by human hand, culminating with the last two levels looking like an actual demonic mining operation and some kind of trial grounds with Satan’s temple respectively.

Unfortunately, there isn’t really new music. Almost all the levels use music tracks from Doom I and II which is kind of a shame since the first map, Surface, uses a track created by Justus Johnson which is pretty damn good. It’s a real bummer that only this map got the custom music track. This WAD would benefit from more of these.

This WAD might get a bit complicated when trying to finish its levels. While there are some visual cues to hint you where to go next, there are times when the architecture of the levels might slightly stagnate your process due to how some of the levels are laid out. Doesn’t help with the fact that most of them are really big.

Caverns of Darkness turns skulls into other-colored keycards (the last time it happened from what I can remember was with Hell Factory from 2000). Blue and yellow skulls are turned into green and black keycards respectively.

What about the red skull, you might ask? Well, it’s not used. But out of curiosity I summoned it and turns out it would’ve been the purple keycard if it was used in WAD.

The secret levels are interesting. The first one, Symbol of Grace, is basically a small map with the place untouched by demons and with an item in the chapel that will help you tremendously. The second one, The Stand, takes you to the arena with another chapel in the middle (implied to be the same one from the last secret level) where (usually) every 20-30 seconds, a new wave of demons and items is summoned, basically putting you into some kind of gauntlet (which won’t be the only one happening I might add >:]).

And if you play the WAD without Pistol-starting all the maps, it is worth visiting at least the first secret level, since inside of the chapel is something slotted as weapon 8: The Holy Cross.

You pick it up and think to yourself: What the fuck is this? All I can do now is punch. Am I supposed to bring this ornament somewhere? And then you punch some demon while holding it and the realization comes in: You turned into One Punch Man. Literally. With this cross in your hand, you can pummel any demon with one hit. Even freaking Cyberdemons. Just remember that this artifact has the power to do this only 100 times, so use it wisely.

As for the other interesting stuff that happens on the maps:

Hell & High Water is a small map underwater where you have to wear a Rad suit to survive from drowning and do platforming to pass it (only 5 enemies on Hurt Me Plenty).

Hydrosfear makes you move the black key from one place to another in order to grab it.

Command Control has many interesting things, and to tell you one of these, when entering the building behind the green door, after walking for a while you will end up jumpscared (which may lead you to one of the secrets if you immediately go back).

And Lava Processing has one moment where before grabbing the red key you witness Baron of Hell being reanimated by some kind of machine.

There are other things to mention but we would be here forever. I will only add that it’s too dark while being underwater. One of the moments in Six Feet Under has you also do it but the underwater segment looks much brighter compared to the rest of the times it happens. It would be great if it was like this with the rest of these moments.

I think this WAD is placed somewhere in the middle when it comes to its difficulty. Most of the time it was rather easy for me but there were still moments when it was hard, I guess, like the infamous area in Hellmine that surrounds the room with the blue key in a center of it. But as I said earlier, if you managed to get the Holy Cross along with other secrets across this WAD, you can turn some of the toughest moments into a joke.

While technically there aren’t new monsters, Caverns of Darkness makes some adjustments to create new behavior for the enemies:

Some of the Hitscanners can now burst into the Lost Soul instead of the ammo for your guns. This might make you slightly paranoid, not knowing which one of these twats will give you more ammo or more annoyance.

Some of the Hell Knights are completely invisible, making fighting them a total bitch. Whoever made that decision should be forced to play the map with 100 of these bullshits. I wonder what would he say to that.

Some of the enemies are passing through everything like ghosts but unlike the Arch-vile-bug ghosts, you can kill them like any other demon.

Sometimes a Cyberdemon, when he’s low on health, will start firing BFG blast instead of the third rocket.

Some Zombiemen can fire rockets now, which feels weird since the authors could just use the Bazooka Man from Obituary and it would make the situation slightly better.

There is even one instance on Ultra Violence on MAP09, where after killing Spiderdemon, an Arachnotron would pop out of her.

While I didn’t encounter any game-breaking bugs, there were few of them. For instance, one of the parts of the cave in the yellow key area from Six Feet Under is tagged like it requires red key, and by pressing it you can make a thin part of a wall slide down to the ground like it’s some kind of long stick that blocks the way to the Rocket Launcher.

I don’t know if it’s actually a bug, but I couldn’t teleport into one location that is required to get one of the secrets in Command Control. But something tells me it might be a fault of the Revenant being in that location, blocking me from teleporting, bloody wanker.

Also, the frame around green and purple keycards are completely black, making it look like a photo of an item instead of actual item.

There are also some other bugs connected to ZDoom patch, mentioned in the text file that comes with it, such as barrels moving on the conveyor belt going off the railroads after a while at the end of Surface and Cyberdemons in the black key area not dying in Caverns of Darkness (level) if you don’t have enabled infinitely tall actors (I thought that they were stuck in these tubes on purpose, without killing them).

And that’s all I can say about Caverns of Darkness. Another very good WAD worth checking out, and with the ZDoom patch, even more people can have a chance to check it out without the overcomplicated launching of the original WAD and without using the DOS to play it.

Next time, we will take a look at the ZDoom WAD that takes place in the Antarctic.

See you all then.

Bye!

[doomwads]

Mayhem 1500 MAP06: Castle Bathory

Game: Doom II Year: 2016 Port: Boom-Compatible Specs: MAP01-MAP34 Gameplay Mods: None Author: various (MAP06 by Mike MacDee aka “Impie”) idgames | doomwiki | onemandoom

[doomwads]

Deus Vult MAP04: End of Days

Game: Doom II Year: 2004 Source Port: Boom Specs: MAP01-MAP05 Gameplay Mods: None Author: Huy Pham aka “Doom Marine” idgames | doomwiki | onemandoom

[doomwads]

Void and Rainbow

Game: Doom II Year: 2017 Port: GZDoom 3.2.0 Specs: MAP01, MAP02 Gameplay Mods: New weapons, monsters, higher jump & longer hang time Author: "Serious_MOod" dwforums | onemandoom | doomwiki

[doomwads]

10 Years of ONEMANDOOM

My WAD review blog, ONEMANDOOM, has been open for 10 years today. I wish I could say that it was open consecutively during that time but after getting married and having a few kids it has been officially relegated to a backseat passion. I’m still updating, though! Stop by and read up on one of the 830+ WADs (and mods) that I’ve played.

[doomwads]

SIGIL E5M8: Halls of Perdition

Game: Doom Year: 2019 Port: Limit-Removing (MAPINFO if you want to play it as an additional, fifth episode) Specs: E5M1-E5M9 (E3M1-E3M9 for non-MAPINFO ports) Gameplay Mods: None Author: John Romero idgames | doomwiki | onemandoom

[doomwads]

IdleDoom: Tech Breakthrough

Game: Doom II Year: 2017 Source Port: GZDoom Specs: MAP01 Gameplay Mods: Entirely new style of play Author: “Albertoni” idgames | onemandoom

“Why risk my own ass,” you say, “when we can use teleportation technology to bring the demons to an automated killing field?”

“Interesting,” your bosses say. “We’ll give you a low-powered teleporter and a single slow-ass pistol turret. If your experiment works, though, we’ll give you more funding.”

You do not shoot the demons in IdleDoom. You can increase the rate at which they are brought to the field; the strength of what is brought; the strength of the weapon used; how often the turret fires; and how many turrets you have firing. Yes; it’s basically an idle game without you having to do any of that initial clicking. IdleDoom is a brilliant proof of concept but unlike most idle games (excepting, perhaps, the originals like A Dark Room) it actually has an end once you’ve purchased every upgrade.

Click here if you’d like to read my full review.

[doomwads]

Doom 64

Game: Doom 64 Year: 1997 Source Port: Doom64 EX, GEC Specs: MAP01-MAP32 Gameplay Mods: Altered monsters and a few weapon alterations Author: Randy Estrella, Tim Heydelaar, and Danny Lewis doomwiki | onemandoom

A Nintendo 64 exclusive rendition, Doom 64 has been touted as the unofficial Doom III. This is mostly due to the addition of another weapon, the alien laser (now officially the Unmaker), as well as various engine improvements that include colored sector lighting and - most importantly - scripting. A few of Doom II’s most hated monsters fail to appear, those being the chaingunner, revenant, and arch-vile, but the alterations to the pain elemental and lost soul turn the former into a fear factory and the latter into goddamn murder hornets.

Doom 64 is not the logical extension of Doom II’s gameplay that the community thinks of given the direction that it’s taken over the past twenty-seven years but this is thinking of time as a straight arrow. It’s perfectly natural given the predilections of its designers who had recently played - and adored! - Raven Software’s Hexen. There are dart traps, homing missile turret traps, and at its most puzzling a level where you must get key codes from disparate corners of the map and enter them in at a central location. Some of the early, techbase levels have the sort of wonderful scripted light cycles that you would expect to see in Sunlust but with a superb atmosphere. I also absolutely adore the haunting, alien soundtrack of Aubrey Hodges. I didn’t know how much that I’d come to love Doom 64 - I could not get into the Absolution TC a few years after it was first released - but I’m glad to have finally jumped in.

Click here if you’d like to read my full review.

[doomwads]

Templum Dormiens Dei

Game: Heretic Year: 2017 Source Port: ZDoom Specs: E1M1 Gameplay Mods: New monsters Author: "Vordakk” aka “Stormwalker” idgames | onemandoom

[doomwads]

Phobos: Anomaly Reborn

Game: Doom Year: 2003 Source Port: Boom-compatible Specs: E1M1-E1M9 Gameplay Mods: None Author: Christopher Lutz idgames | doomwiki | onemandoom

Chris Lutz followed up the cinematic universe of Caverns of Darkness - and his re-imagining of the original Doom’s E3 - with a sequel to Knee Deep in the Dead that uses Boom’s higher limits and capacity for voodoo doll scripting. P:AR has been described as fetishistic in its detailing. I understand the sensibilities behind this sentiment but it’s an impressive work in its architecture and environments. I love the ruins that the UAC dug into - the last bits obviously evocative of the void in Caverns of Darkness - and it’s an impressive example of DoomCute realism with all of its midtexture work. The most creative bits involve the voodoo doll scripting, one of which allows you to watch a sluice fill up with water, starting with a puddle and eventually floating the crates in the depression up to the top.

Click here if you’d like to read my full review.

[doomwads]

Remains

Game: Doom II Year: 2019 Source Port: GZDoom Specs: MAP01, MAP02 Gameplay Mods: Slight gameplay alterations Author: "Serious_MOod” idgames | onemandoom

A highly-atmospheric mini-adventure that was born out of a resource pack for a megaWAD whose contributors never really came together. The sound design is pretty freakin’ good and has some ambient noise actors that are backed by a drone soundtrack that I’m told comes from VTM: Bloodlines. The combat is relatively low-key, involves some swimming, and has a handful of slight mechanical tweaks.

Click here if you’d like to read my full review.

[doomwads]

Doom 2 Minor Sprite Fixing Project

Game: Doom / Doom II Year: 2012 Source Port: Any Specs: Graphical alterations to sprites Gameplay Mods: None Author: “Revenant100″ idgames | onemandoom

This project was originally created to polish the existing Doom II assets in terms of cleaning up things like stray pixels and sprite orientation issues. Somewhere along the way John Romero released the non-mirrored rotations for some monsters - particularly zombies - so they also feature. The last little bit is a minor DeHackEd patch that changes inconsistencies on when monsters are lit up - or not - for their attacks.

Click here if you’d like to read my full review.

[doomwads]

CRINGE!

Game: Doom Year: 1994 Source Port: Any Specs: E2M1-E2M9 Gameplay Mods: None Author: Mark Klem and Eric Sargent idgames | doomwiki | onemandoom

Mark Klem was always a wicked cool composer but my knowledge of him was essentially limited to music and his few contributions to Memento Mori I & II. Enter CRINGE!, his debut release with a secret level from Eric Sargent. This mapset is full of wild and weird abstract level design and moments of player hostility that include - among other things - a tube-like shield that seals the player onto a damage floor after pressing an innocuous switch. It’s delightfully dickish if you find that aspect of ‘94 level design fun(ny). Many of the maps feature obtuse progression which can be found at its most dense level in E2M3, “Cancer”. Player beware - you’re in for a scare!

Click here if you’d like to read my full review.

[doomwads]

Brigandine

Game: Doom II Year: 2017 Source Port: Limit-removing Specs: MAP01 Gameplay Mods: None Author: Alun Bestor aka “Viggles” dwforums | doomwiki | onemandoom

From the 2015 Cacoward winner for Breach comes 2017 Cacoward winner Brigandine. This isn’t the hotly anticipated Breach pt. 2, though, but rather an entirely different adventure. This is a stunning Pandemonium, or perhaps a warped and demon-infested section of city. Bestor’s detailing and architecture are as before incredible (with a lot of world-building around the level’s exterior) and the flow is buttery smooth due to a desire by the author to make a level that would be just as fun to play in deathmatch. Give it a peep, if only just to look.

Click here if you’d like to read my full review.