Doomsday of UAC (UAC_DEAD.WAD)

DOOMSDAY OF UAC
by Leo Martin Lim

The plot: Hellspawn just attacked a UAC base. Your bosses send a truck to pick up you along with five other marines. Just outside of the complex, the invaders attack the truck. Luckily, they miss the false wall at the trailer's front, and when you come to, you spill out into the cabin, taking on the invading force all on your lonesome as your buddies are nowhere to be found. Sure, the odds suck, but someone's got to do it.

Doomsday of UAC is a single map for E1M8 by Leo Martin Lim. When I initially loaded it up, I dismissed it as some 1994 nostalgia. You start out, indeed, in the secret compartment in the semi trailer. It's a bit of a rough beginning but there's enough health to go around. From there you can clear the UAC stockyard, a missed opportunity as the crates are packed into uniform rectangles (though I admit Lim may have been playing within 1994 mapping limits). The truck and trailer are great, though, with the wheels still spinning and headlights illuminating the ground.

From there you take on the UAC complex proper. It's spacious and fairly empty. I wouldn't have minded a lot more monsters hanging around, but so it goes. There's some imaginative architecture, like the light fixture in the reception hall, or the UAC sign (advertised in the .TXT), but nothing spectacular. What looks great is when you stagger into the conference room, containing a ring of imps and other monsters, with the doors set up to look like they've just swung open. The real fun begins as a portal to Hell appears on the far wall, taking you on a surreal journey. Just choose your route wisely as the wrong path leads to imminent death.

There's a giant cavern with an invisible staircase marked by candles and a marble arena with a floating Cyberdemon that can't see you at first. Once you've grabbed the red key, you can move on to the ending sequence. There's not a whole lot left to kill, but you get treated to a nice cinematic where the tunnel ahead of you appears to cave in due to an explosion. You can run through, I think, but if you get stuck behind gawking, there's a shoot out wall that will let you bypass the obstacle, leading you to the escape shuttle. It looks pretty good, all things considered. There's a significant amount of monsters tied up in a secret area that incidentally houses the plasma rifle. It's a giant reactor complex swarming with lost souls and Imps partying in the reactor cores.

Will UAC_DEAD challenge you? Well, not really. There's so much space to dodge fireballs that the cramped semi trailer is the single hardest point of the map. As neat as the Cyberdemon battle is, he doesn't really get to move, so you can chip him down pretty handily. This map is worth playing, though. It succeeds in evoking a distinct scenario through the limited utilities Lim had available. The entire level feels deserted, but each area you visit is unmistakable and creates a very nice picture, and some of the encounters are actually neat, like the Cyberdemon fight. In other words, I highly recommend it, unless playing 1994 WADs causes you to break out in a rash.

EARTH DATE : JUNE 3, 2011.
LOCATION : MY APARTMENT, ILLINOIS.
LOCAL TIME : 07:58.

This post is part of a series on
Doomworld's Top 10 WADs of 1994

Crossing Acheron	Aliens TC
Doomsday of UAC	Galaxia
Serenity	Eternity
The Unholy Trinity	Return to Phobos
Slaughter Until Death	The Evil Unleashed