MEM_OLD1 (MEM_OLD1.WAD)

MEM_OLD1

by "Memfis"

I almost feel guilty characterizing Memfis as a fan of the community's golden age. It's hard not to, though, when he wears his heart on his sleeve while releasing map packs like Requimem, MM2MEM01, and Icarumem. I haven't gotten to the latter two yet but MEM_OLD1 hails from the same period of the author's career. It's a something between worlds, though, since he appears to be evoking Icarus: Alien Vanguard in some regards while referencing the more esoteric content of user levels through select resource use. It was posted on the forums back in 2011 but didn't make it to /idgames until the Great Archive Dump of 2014. Some folks will be happy to know that this limit-removing level is actually an E1M1 replacement for the original trilogy.

Doom can always use more spaceship levels and Memfis must have though the same while he was building this. Well, err, it's more likely to be station, not to imply any depth in functional differences between the two when both have to be represented by vanilla's mechanics. The author declined to include any motivational story fragments so you're free to imagine any context of your choosing. The goal is to escape, though, since the level ends after you step foot inside a docked ship. Maybe it's the same exact one that you arrived in and you were investigating a distress signal when the monsters ambushed you.

Anyway, the setting is an abstract space station. I recognize some of the textures (the silver-plated computer panels) as coming from Icarus but I'm fairly sure that the tiles are part of Eternal Doom's set. I also recognize the Pepsi machine from Doom City in one of the breakrooms. The author further swings the pendulum toward the less structured side of the early days by using a MIDI of Escape From New York's main theme as the soundtrack. A deeper cut than the evergreen Terminator score, of course, but Memfis has always been about celebrating the less-codified aspects of the community's history.

The layout is fun to explore. The deck that you're on has a lot of height variation and even goes so far as to put some computers in a pit in the middle of the room. You can go adventure in several different directions and you'll need to hit each one in order to get the three keys to open up the dock. One of the legs feels like a nice little homage to the original trilogy with the blue carpet and upper tech tunnel. I appreciated Memfis's use of force-fields; allowing the player to sneak behind one and turn it off as a secret is a great touch. The escape ship is Hell of DoomCute as is the engines "activating" once you get inside.

Combat isn't terribly exciting because it's the original Doom and your opposition is limited to shareware monsters. Was this the starter map for a larger project, I wonder? There are no lost souls, no cacodemons, no Barons, and very few demons or sergeants. This makes working with the pistol and chainsaw pretty bearable, though, and you still have a shotgun if you go looking high and low. None of the gunplay really stands out but it's a fun setting to play through and the potential threat vs. pistol precision is one of the author's defining tropes. The slower pace also helps to make a level featuring nought but forty-five monsters more of a happening.

MEM_OLD1 is a fun little play and a must-see if you enjoy Doom in space. It may not feel very meaty due to the prevalence of plain zombimen and imps but I've had worse pit stops during the continuing adventures of Doomguy.

SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING OLD
SOMETHING BORROWED, NOTHING TOLD