CRINGE! (CRING666.WAD)

In the Doom community, Mark Klem is known primarily for his musical contributions. He was responsible for the entire score of the original Memento Mori but had a major role in the soundtracks of other classic projects like Requiem, S.T.R.A.I.N., and MM2. He made maps, too, for the same megaWADs as his good friend Eric Sargent. However their partnership began it made its official debut with CRINGE!, an episode two replacement for the original Doom. Released toward the tail end of 1994 (and uploaded specifically to the /idgames archive in 1995), it is a perfect example of the raw weirdness perpetuated during the community's early years. I suspect that the majority of modern players will hate it with a passion. The ones who don't, though, may be drawn into its unearthly delights.

The Shores of Hell replacement lacks a story but it does have two supporting .WADs. CRINGE6 is the main package and contains all of the levels and the utilitarian resources like TITLEPIC, the sky, and status bar. CRINGE2 has rest of the graphical replacements. A lot of the new stuff - particularly the weapon and enemy sprites - are basically garish recolors. You won't get the full 1994 experience without them, though, which includes a ridiculous Baron wearing sunglasses and violent embellishments to the death animations. Oh, and the Baby Cyberdemon, which changes the look and sound but not the mannerisms of the Spiderdemon.

CRINGE3 consists of a handful of new audio effects. They're either brand new or slightly distorted / reverbed remasters of existing things. I'm not sure who voiced the DSSGCOCK sound ("Time to die, friend." but it's deliciously dorky. I assume that it was Klem himself. I like the new plasma gun and teleporter noises. The latter seems especially chunky. The most drastic changes were made to the cacodemon. It's a much subtler monster now since it no longer hisses / squeals on sight and has no trumpeting fanfare for its demise. The Cyberdemon gets a resounding echo to its death which gives a bit of gravity to your victory. It would probably be annoying if you had to fight any more than one at a time, though.

Most of the folks that hated CRINGE! on /idgames were also quick to point out its excellent music. Just about all of these tracks appeared later as part of Klem's Memento Mori soundtrack, the main exceptions being the tunes for E2M8 and E2M9. If you're interested in the compositional history of one of the community's classic composers then you ought to give these a listen. I can't say that E2M9 sounds familiar. It's a bluesy, simple tune based on a syncopated riff. The drum fills make it sound like it's about to take off on several occasions but it never really explodes in the same way as Mark's later stuff. E2M8's arrangement is super obnoxious and sounds like rapid-fire exotic instrumentation plotted out on the cusp of a full blues chord progression. I swear that I've heard the bridge section before, though. It has a slow, sweeping, and almost apocalyptic feel. I may just have those guitar tones seared into my brain, though.

The graphics and sound replacements could have been tacky additions to an otherwise rock-solid 1994 set but CRINGE! cannot help but be divisive. Klem's level design is for the most part highly compact, labyrinthine, and loaded with both required secrets and death traps. Sargent's sole entry, "Secret Level: Salvation" (E2M9), is along the same lines but executed over a sprawling layout and sans killer sector machinery. "Cancer" (E2M3) is a great example of the forces at work. The blue key on full display and it isn't very hard to figure out how to get it since it has windows on two of its sides. Its purpose is initially inscrutable, though, because it opens up a barrier in the path to the exit. Not the one which reveals the route, mind you. You'll have to wallhump your way to that one on your own.

E2M9 is an exception for being more accommodating to the player but "Your Last Breath" (E2M7) marks the biggest break with the PWAD's design philosophy. It's still a huge level and full of nested secrets for you to get lost in but you are required to visit very little of its square footage. If you have no idea where to go and are just exploring it for the first time, though, then it's a pretty daunting adventure and no less dickish in its metaphorical pitfalls. I tried out a pacifist run for funsies and pulled out an exit in a little more than a minute with the bare minimum of effort. I'm surprised to see that only one person has recorded on it per the Doomed Speed Demo Archives but Mark's obscure sector machinery can only present itself as a significant obstacle toward the average player's interest.

The encounter design consists of fairly typical room and corridor clearing interspersed with the occasional bout of peak pressure, usually brought on by cramming a ton of demons into the player's limited space. The painted blue devils are almost certainly CRINGE!'s MVP and are a major element of nearly all of my standout encounters. Even if said fights fall in the realm of surprise traps that will have some players crying "Bullshit!" The sunglasses-clad Barons try to steal the show but the navy nightmares feel lethal here in the same fashion as cacodemons in modern OG Doom mapsets. I suspect that part of this is a result of Mark's cramped indoor layouts not playing well to the cacos' strengths.  It could just as easily be favoritism, though. Blue is the color of the episode and it was given primarily to them.

Klem has some really cool architectural ideas and they even extend to the mazes. However, none of the maps gel as a cohesive whole. They have that 90s patchwork thing going on where they feel as though they were assembled in a dream by a subconscious intellect. This is exacerbated by the recolored graphical patches and highly selective texture alignment. CRINGE! lacks the exceptional visual noise of anotak's Lilith but it does have a strange aura of existing beyond the boundaries of "acceptable" level design. Travelling down each haunted leg plunges further into quickly unravelling reality not unlike the carefully crafted glitch universes of Axiom Verge.

Happ was presumably inspired by the "hidden worlds" of the original Metroid. These emergent environments were a happy accident of the game cobbling together rooms on the fly based on pre-existing level data. The end result was a hodgepodge of palette-swapped rooms that were even more hostile to navigation than Nintendo's original design. You could find yourself trapped in a slice of a vertical shaft, the bottom looping forever to the top and vice versa. Klem's recolors in CRINGE2 supply the familiar yet alien feel but vanilla Doom is incapable of automagically producing maps by guessing what the player ought to be seeing.

The innocent indifference of Metroid is instead supplanted by Klem's very human touch. The author wants to confuse, trap, and kill you. The first bit is perennially evident in his labyrinthine layouts and level progression but the other two come in infrequent but powerful moments. "Evil Bliss" (E2M5) is an outstanding example. There is a switch that requires you to venture out into some nukage to press it. If you linger for but a moment then a player-sized sheath will cheekily descend around you, allowing the damage floor to do its job. You get another taste of this phenomenon in "Damnation of the Dead" (E2M6). Pushing a particular button next to some goodies causes a dam wall sporting Baphomet eyes to rise up behind you and watch you melt in your impotence.

The presentation of Metroid's procedurally flawed spaces was a result of the Nintendo's limited tools. The fact that its "hidden worlds" exist at all is a serendipitous circumstance. It would be too much to ask for any sort of logic to their arrangement. CRINGE! is obviously a product of Mark's (and Eric's) imagination. KlemCo actively spurns the player's interest through its obfuscated progression but their twisted universe was designed to be explored. While it is possible to find yourself trapped and then dead not long after, you will never be irretrievably stuck and incapable of reaching the exit. The final encounter of the episode even affords you the opportunity to peek behind the boss's curtain. It's an optional and perilous adventure but allows you to see the relatively simple mechanics at play. There's no other way to glimpse the Cyberdemon recolor, either. At least, within the confines of the mapset itself.

For good or ill, Mark Klem's earliest work is a galvanized representation of some of the most-maligned aspects of 1994 PWADs. I love it but I wouldn't recommend it to the community at large. You will know by its description whether or not CRINGE! is personally worth your time. If secret doors, laser-focused deathtraps, and garish color schemes are your sort of thing then you might give this one a shot. If not, well, try the tens of thousands of other levels out there, many of which were polished to the path of least resistance.

For the extra graphics, you'll need CRINGE2.WAD.

For the new sounds, you'll need CRINGE3.WAD.

CRINGE!

by Mark Klem and Eric Sargent

E2M1	The Beginning
by Mark Klem
	Selling hard on 1994. This is an irregular jumble of super-long corridors at odd angles as well as strange room shapes. It shows off most of the weird stuff that you can expect to see from the recolors. It's ugly as sin but the author shows a pretty good grasp of utilizing 3D space with the four-way branching hallway in the northwest corner of the map. One of the curves doubles back and crosses over all of them for an alternate route to the cacodemon / lift room. The combat isn't all that thrilling yet but the demon / corridor atrium is a bona fide kill zone.

Carnage	E2M2
by Mark Klem
I favor this one a bit more. Nothing like starting out in a wide-open room with a huge spiral staircase to nowhere in the middle. The author's architecture has a lot more character here, whether it's the maze / lift to the northeast or the painstaking north-central sewer tunnels. A lot of its square footage and monster count is tied up in a long network of rat burrows stretching along the level's southern edge. The zombie / shotgun guy / imp mix could be deadly when starting out but it's not especially dangerous. The big surprise is the debut of the baby cyberdemon. If you forgot that the set doesn't have a DeHackEd patch then you might not know what to expect.

E2M3	Cancer
by Mark Klem
	Tight, rectilinear, and weird. The fullbright, misaligned textures, and holes in the ground - when combined with the rest of the replacements - give this level a glitchy aesthetic. The author makes a bunch of weird design decisions, from the cacodemon box intersection to a straight staircase to nowhere. Player beware - it has two mandatory secrets. The blue key is pretty easy to figure out since there are only two directions that you could possibly approach it from. The door to the long and coiled hallway leading to the exit, not so much. It doesn't feel particularly rewarding to run through the serpent's tail... except for your first shot of the Baron. Oh, the way the exit switch has been hidden is dangerously DoomCute.

Dementia	E2M4
by Mark Klem
While this isn't quite as weird as "Cancer", it applies some of the same principles like dense, nested secrets and hidden keys. Much of the map consists of a long series of elevated catwalks in narrow tunnels. It's cute, especially the bridge-out BFG. The lost souls lurking in the deep provide most of the map's surprises. The courtyard to the west - locked down by a Baby Cyberdemon - gives the level a greater sense of place over the abstract. The tightly-coiled grid staircase leading to the exit is one of those authorial indulgences that will wear a bit thin for some players. They probably left this episode before E2M4, though.

E2M5	Evil Bliss
by Mark Klem
	This Klabyrinth distinguishes itself through some interesting architecture set pieces on the order of the spiral staircase from "Carnage". The central hall with the horned bat looks wicked cool, especially on the automap. It's also fairly trappy. The lukewarm lock-in with the teleporting imps is an early example but the demon mosh pit stands out as a dangerous and congested highlight. My favorite "Fuck you" to the player is a sleeve that drops around a switch located in some nukage. Press it and if you're too slow you'll get trapped and melt. As far as weird stuff goes I'm a fan of those single-person elevator tubes that take you to the tech dungeon and exit, respectively.

Secret Level: Salvation	E2M9
by Eric Sargent
Klem's partner in crime isn't that far off the mark as far as required secrets go but the insanity is less tightly wound, here. I enjoy the larger, open spaces. The enormous sense of scale in the key door atrium is a classic '94 element. A large portion of the level is picking your way through a joint tech- and crate-maze with strobe lights and the like. Eric needs you to do a lot of rudimentary secret hunting but his stuff is much easier to suss out than Mark's. The one exception requires you to backtrack to a newly revealed section in order to find the blue key. Sargent has a pretty good grip on combat and throws mixed monster packs at you as well as semi-threatening lost souls. The architecture is for the most part pretty basic but the first teleporter puzzle room and secret chain at the blue key look neat.

E2M6	Damnation of the Dead
by Mark Klem
	Another deathtrap dungeon, the most elaborate being the weird crusher / cycling platform room to the northeast. Favorite bits include the six different hallways converging in a nukage chamber and the opposed staircases in the southern-central portion of the level. The latter area also figures into a fairly elaborate teleporter puzzle. One of the most devious segments has four exit doors. All of them are fake, of course, but two of them must be used in order to finish the level. In another classic Klem moment the author gives you the yellow key right near the finish. Except its door, if you can even remember, is located far away at the beginning of the level. You do get fun times with weapons, though. Everything non-BFG is available plus a ton of ammo.

Ticket to Hell	E2M7
by Mark Klem
This level's centerpiece is essentially an Express Elevator to Hell setup. You don't start out there and can easily get lost in the twisting passages branching to the west of the starting area. When you find it, though, you'll have seven new directions to take. Only two of them are required and you can get to the second from the first. If you know the score then you can actually blaze through pretty quick, your biggest obstacle being the demons waiting for you in the crate room. You'll miss out on so much weird shit, though, like the sprawling toxic channel or twisty strobe skull staircase. Perhaps the weirdest of all is a sector construction that looks like a giant plucked bird. When poked and prodded it will reward you with a plasma gun.

E2M8	Your Last Breath
by Mark Klem
	It's short so the inevitable mazes and puzzles won't feel quite so raw. MK is also at the top of his game with visual experiments. The soul-wall maze looks freakin' awesome but it has walkover lines to turn the lights on and off. The backlight is all you really need. The animated walls that flash from black to blue are interesting, at least. There are two ways to confront the Cyberdemon but only one of them involves actually seeing the tacky recolor. I think that the latter's more tricky insofar as the maneuvering required to pick up its own personal invul artifact instead of the soul sphere.

TRUE GRIT