I was very curious about Perdition's Gate for 2 reasons. One: because it was one of the few retail expansions for Doom 2, and 2: it was worked on by Mackey McCandlish. McCandlish is a level designer who many know as a Doom and Quake mapper, but I know as one of the lead level designers on Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, one of my favorite FPSs of all time.

Judging from his work here, however, I'm afraid he's a much better CoD mapper than Doom mapper, IMO. I assume this was a rushed project, considering how around the half way point, the maps started getting short. Real short. Like, map 24 only had 20(!) monsters in it. They weren't even Arch Viles or Cyberdemons. Just mostly imps and shotgunners. I normally don't complain about short maps. If anything, a lot of PWADs kind of annoy me with how overly ambitious and long they are. Some short but sweet maps aren't a bad thing. But these are just nothing burgers. Many of these maps can be beaten in under a minute! Some of the maps in the last 3rd consist of only a single room! It's just plain boring.

It's clear to me PD was rushed as they probably wanted to get this on store shelves ASAP. The problem is that rushed wads like this are rarely worth playing. There are polished WADs that have been worked on for over a decade now that you can get for free!

The sad truth is, there's really no reason to hunt down Perdition's Gate (it's not on the ID Archive, assuming for legal reasons) outside of historical purposes, or morbid curiosity.

Reviewed on Dec 20, 2023


3 Comments


4 months ago

Definitely not one to play for McCandlish's maps. I think Tom & Dave Mustaine do solid work throughout the first half of the WAD, but it all gets very brown and workmanlike afterward. At least Tom improved with his subsequent work as lead designer at Hipnotic/Ritual (Quake: Scourge of Armagon, SiN Gold, etc.)

4 months ago

@PasokonDeacon Very true! Mustaine also had one of the few maps in the Doom 2 Master Levels that I quite liked. The first few maps in this weren't half bad either. If PD had maintained that quality, it would have been solid overall.

4 months ago

oh and Scourge of Armagon is my favorite of the Quake expansions as well