Eriguns 1 is a great vanilla+ weapon hack. There aren’t any super big changes– just tweaks/enhancements that carry the spirit of DOOM. The new pistol replacement can be fired real fast if you click the fire button quicky enough. I think most of the other weapon changes are cosmetic although the SSG has single shot capability now.

There are a couple new weapons that come from the Extended mode. One drops from the spidermon and the other from the cyberdemon. The spiderdemon drops the GATLING gun. It has some windup but it’s more powerful than the chaingun (or the assault rifle that replaces the chaingun in this mod). It chews up ammo quicker though. The dual rocket launcher that drops from the cyberdemon fires two rockets at once so it can be a very dangerous weapon if used improperly but when I’m swimming in rockets, I prefer the extra fire rate. There’s also the auto-shotgun but I don’t know how to get one of those without cheating.

Eriguns 2 is a very different beast. This version of the mod switches the arsenal of DOOM 2 with a hellish dark fantasy set of weapons. This new set works pretty well with the vanilla DOOM template even if there’s some awkwardness with one kind of weapon– like let’s say the chaingun– is replaced with the Mauler, which is essentially the SSG of Eriguns 2.

The pistol replacement– your initial weapon– uses magma charges, which is the cells replacement of the wad. Depending on the mapset, there’s a chance that you can run out of ammo with the weapons you got. Additionally, only a handful of weapons with gunfire that can travel through “windows”. The nailgun (the chaingun replacement) is stopped by walls that hitscan weapons could pass through in vanilla DOOM, which was annoying.

The weapons are clever, though. One of the SSG replacements shoots mines on enemies and surfaces and you use the alt-fire to detonate them. The Soulcaster (the rocket launcher replacement) fires a laser shot that can be charged for more damage and if it hits an enemy and kills them, that enemy will release a ghostly explosion that can damage others nearby and if any of those enemies are killed by it, they release an explosion, too! The weapons here are very cool and tricky.

I think most DOOMers have forgotten about both Ergiuns mods but the first one is a great vanilla+ mod while the second is a great twist on the normal weaponset that deserves to mentioned in the same sentence as Final Doomer. I won’t be forgetting these mods anytime soon.

Remnant is an exploration of an impressive medieval complex amidst a beautiful, verdant land. The level is large and getting around can be a little confusing but the venues are distinct and expressive. I love the contrast of the orderly man-made buildings with the naturalistic wilderness that the hellish fortress is built around. The level is detail without being too busy.

The setpieces are beautiful, and that's not just thanks to the wad using the OTEX resource pack that Eviternity was built from. The grassy hues are subdued but enchanting. There's a regality to both architecture and nature as well. It's a pretty wad!

The combat encounters are usually pretty good and thoughtful. Sometimes the game throws a scrambled assortment of enemies at you that usually break down into a festival of infighting, but mostly the combat is tough (very tough on UV) and inspires the player to strategize and use caution.

I had tried this one before and fell off and had even forgotten that I had played this one but I came back to this one on a whim and turns out this is a pretty special single-level wad!

Equinox is one of the most celebrated wads of the early era of DOOM mapping. Its environments are detailed and while I was playing I came across a large valley with lava pooled at the bottom and a wall in the tech facility blown open and I realized there was a story to this place and that’s not a feeling I get often with DOOM wads.

Furthermore, the wad makes use of recurring environments including a teleportation station that serves as an intermission level between the main episodes. There’s a connective essence between levels that makes this wad feel like a campaign instead of a collection of maps.

I liked the early parts of the wad where you are making due with a pistol and shotgun and mowing down dozens of infantry and imps. Even with using a gameplay mod, it was challenging but snappy. This is the rare wad that doesn’t shower the player with ammo. Even with the mod, I had to break out the chainsaw a few times to keep some shells in my satchel for when I needed them. Rooms are stuffed with enemies which is pretty inelegant but it provides ample opportunities for infighting. In fact, that seems to be the point. On Map 9, I let 100 enemies tear each other apart while I ran off to other parts of the level.

The last map is very notable for it’s overwhelming number of enemies. It got to a point where I assumed you were supposed to strategize around not killing a lot of them and that’s when I realized that the map was made by BPRD, creator of the Mucus Flow and by god did that make a lot of sense!

As for the levels visually, I don’t like that silvery moonbase aesthetic and found the corpses peppered everywhere to be a bad design choice. I didn’t like the look of this wad. It’s special, though. I don’t know if it’s a mega-recommend but it’s a slight recommend for it’s unique design choices and overall cohesiveness.

It should be known that Supercharge was meant to be a resource pack firstly and a gameplay mod secondly. That said, as a gameplay mod it's pretty solid. Also the new graphics might misdirect players, it's a rather vanilla experience.

There are more things tweaked in this mod than there are things changed drastically. Weapons are giving faster firing speeds and some add in reload systems, but function the same. The player is at "diagonal" speed at all times.

One of the big changes is the instant weapon switching speed. There's apparently tricks you can do to chain shots together using the quick weapon changing speed but I was never able to pull it off and I don't get the impression that it does much anyway.

The mod changes enemy graphics too but if someone told me that the enemies' behaviour and attacks were mostly unchanged, I'd believe them. There's a lot of switched-up sound effects too that I don't like but maybe I need to get used to them.

Overall, I could come back to this wad if I wanted something that was mostly true to classic Doom but enough of a change if I needed something fresh.

Miasma is a mammoth of a single level wad. The limey towers of the level are intricate and its complex is detailed with there being several interconnected corridors with windows and paths between them to make the place feel alive. There was a moment where I was walking down a corridor and I didn't realize that knights were tossing in fireballs behind me.

There's a non-linear nature to the map, too. There are plenty of optional areas and I would recommend tracking down a BFG before tackling the final tower. I didn't so that part was really hard for me, even with the Supercharge mod.

I've played this wad a few times but this is the first time I finished it. It's probably in my top 10 for recommended single-level wads. Get lost in its neon structures and blistering fights.

Combat Shock is a sledgehammer of a slaughter wad. There are four maps here totalling in about 7000 enemies.

The highlight to this wad is the large slaughterfests where either a door opens and there's a centurion of monsters or monsters start warping in. These fights are often deceptively smart with its specialized monster placement or its carefully-crafted terrain features. The interstitial fights are often simple, almost like they are meant for moments of relaxation between the juggernaut encounters that the wad is known for.

The level design is intricate and detailed without being too busy and makes visually distinctive uses out of vanillas textures. I was playing with a weapon mod and I would be lying if I said its BFG equivalent didn't sand down a lot of the wad's difficulty edge with me literally running through crowds of imps and knights and turning them into spaghetti sauce. I wasn't pushed up against the wall by armies of foes like I would have had I stuck to the vanilla weaponset but I think my judgment on this wad is fair.

Speed of Doom is a pretty great wad. It’s challenging from the start with its tricky monster encounters but this early part of the wad allows it to show off its snappy level design. The level use vanilla sets but are evocative. They find the balance between simplicity and detail.

It doesn’t take long for the wad to pick up with higher enemy counts and larger monster closets. The secret levels halfway through the wad, one of those levels sporting 1000+ enemies on the UV difficulty, are an omen for the wad’s final leg. By the last “episode”, the wad has evolved into a slaughterfest, but there are few combat arenas that aren’t bespoke.

The climax of the wad is an ultra-hard sortie into seas of monsters, with Twilight Massacre being a hellish field of unrelenting BFG fire. I have played this wad before but I wasn’t able to finish the final level because my gameplay mod and the 2000+ enemies made the game stall. I played vanilla this time so there was no slowdown even as I dashed through the black abyss of the game’s final level.

I get why this is regarded as a classic megawad although I think the years have dulled its sheen though. Newer, flashier megawads have come in its wake. I prefer the humble chaos of Speed of Doom, though, and by finishing this megawad again, I can see the influence that this wad had over the mapping community years after.

Bloody Steel stands out with its decayed industrial environments. The mapping is very detailed and busy with terrain features but not to the point where its hard to make out the layout of the level. I cared more for the modern environments than the time-travelling that happens later in the wad but altogether I thought the journey was cool.

Sometimes it could be hard to figure out where to go. A switch on one side of the map opens a gate on the other, so to speak. This didn't happen too often, though, and you can intuit what switch opens what. I had an easier time with this one compared to several years ago when I first played it and got stuck on the final level.

I played this with Project Brutality which was pretty great for these realistic and gritty environments. Regardless if you play vanilla, this is guaranteed a map wad that demands mouselook with all the verticality in the environments.

This was a nice megawad to return to, with this playthrough being my third time around. The levels are snappy– they don’t usually take too long nor involve sloggy switch hunting.

The first act of the megawad has the player go through levels that feel like real places. There’s a sense of progression because the levels connect to each other. The second act takes some real Plutonia influence and this is where the wad changes gears. Many levels are open-ended and open hot with enemies immediately spotting you and attacking. There’s not really any safe spaces so you have to carve out a spot in the level to get a grip on the situation. I love that Doom level trope and this wad has it for most of the backhalf.

I played this megawad with a weapon mod that stomped down the difficulty like a pop can but I don’t think that impaired my judgment of this wad’s solid level design and brisk enemy encounters. The music was okay but aside from the “Congo” theme from map 13, none of it struck out to me. It didn’t take me out of the game, though, as it was pretty decent midi score.

Nobody Told Me About id is a solid gameplay mod for Doom. It takes the iconography of Doom and puts a Build-style layer on it. Weapons are faster and deadlier, movement is quicker, and you can store items to use them when you need. There’s an additional layer of gore with enemies being blown back with a shotgun blast or exploding into gibs when exploded.

It doesn’t do anything specific that hasn’t been done in other mods but it comes together well and the package comes together nicely. The speed of combat, the detail to the gore– it feels very good. This could become a new default mod for me.

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.

Admittedly, a lot of my problems with this wad is that it's a Doom 1 wad. That means a smaller enemy roster than what I'm used to and no super shotgun, although I mitigated that problem by using a weapon mod.

I'm also not a big fan of huge levels with big enemy counts. Even if I was tearing through them with a cool shotgun and assault rifle, it got exhausting quickly. I got through four levels and wanted to drop the playthrough. I feel even more confident in the opinion that this wasn't a great idea for a community wad, in the end.

The thing about Doom 2 In Name Only is that the concept came out better in that version. Doom 2's levels had very specific names that were barely reflected in the levels itself. In the first Doom, levels like Command Control and Central Processing have very tech-basey names so the level the mappers make for those levels are just bigger, more detailed techbases.

I was really looking forward to this one but quickly grew impatient. This is probably really good in someone's eyes– that person isn't me.