Thomas van der Velden’s Revolution! is a curious beast. With its evocative level design, lower enemy counts, and surreal story, it goes for “it” in a way that most megawads don’t.
Early on, the level design often tries to evoke the architecture and structure of real places, but it will betray those ideas very bluntly to showcase alien-looking setpieces. There’s a lot of clever bits and moments in the level design, too. The level design loses points for the middle section of the megawad which reuses a lot of foundry ideas. There are some levels that invoke switch hunts, too, although that’s only a few of them.
There’s a story here and its a little more complicated than the plot of Doom 2. The levels also inform the story a lot more frequently than Doom 2 so when I get to Map 17 (The Miners) I have context for whom the miners are.
The enemy counts only get into the triple digits once. The lower enemy counts gives this megawad the reputation of being easy and… yeah. It’s easy compared to Plutonia but that doesn’t mean there are no good enemy encounters. It’s weird how infrequent cell pickups and energy weapon pickups are. The game usually has you use the shotguns, the chaingun and rocket launcher so not only is the enemy count restrained, so is your arsenal. I had to use my plasma rifle and BFG sparingly.
I played with the Nobody Told Me About id gameplay mod but what spurred this third playthrough of Revolution! was the MIDI pack released in 2016. The new music here is pretty much all good aside from one theme I found was pretty generic. I think I would have preferred more eerie themes compared to the mostly action-oriented songs on the midi pack but it’s still a great audio veneer on this megawad.
Overall, I think this is a special megawad that makes up for its flaws by just being unique and having a clear creative impulse. It’s also recommended to people who dislike how hard and long community-made Doom megawads can get.
Early on, the level design often tries to evoke the architecture and structure of real places, but it will betray those ideas very bluntly to showcase alien-looking setpieces. There’s a lot of clever bits and moments in the level design, too. The level design loses points for the middle section of the megawad which reuses a lot of foundry ideas. There are some levels that invoke switch hunts, too, although that’s only a few of them.
There’s a story here and its a little more complicated than the plot of Doom 2. The levels also inform the story a lot more frequently than Doom 2 so when I get to Map 17 (The Miners) I have context for whom the miners are.
The enemy counts only get into the triple digits once. The lower enemy counts gives this megawad the reputation of being easy and… yeah. It’s easy compared to Plutonia but that doesn’t mean there are no good enemy encounters. It’s weird how infrequent cell pickups and energy weapon pickups are. The game usually has you use the shotguns, the chaingun and rocket launcher so not only is the enemy count restrained, so is your arsenal. I had to use my plasma rifle and BFG sparingly.
I played with the Nobody Told Me About id gameplay mod but what spurred this third playthrough of Revolution! was the MIDI pack released in 2016. The new music here is pretty much all good aside from one theme I found was pretty generic. I think I would have preferred more eerie themes compared to the mostly action-oriented songs on the midi pack but it’s still a great audio veneer on this megawad.
Overall, I think this is a special megawad that makes up for its flaws by just being unique and having a clear creative impulse. It’s also recommended to people who dislike how hard and long community-made Doom megawads can get.