Something Wicked This Way Comes (WICKED_1.WAD)

SOMETHING WICKED

THIS WAY COMES

by "Rex Claussen"

Rex kicked off 2002 with an idiosyncrasy from the year before, officially releasing Invictus to /idgames. This was a vanilla level for the original Doom where most of Rex's works since his debut had been for ZDoom and, for a long stride, leveraged assets from post-Doom FPS games like Hexen II, Half-Life, the Quake series, and Dark Forces. The Invictus upload was paired with a vanilla Doom II level that kicked off a new Rex trend: Something Wicked This Way Comes. This is a MAP10 replacement, also released in early 2002, and while it didn't profess to be the beginning of something broader, he would go on to author a grand total of nine individual Wicked levels, sort of capping things off with the pseudo-prequel, By the Pricking of My Thumbs....

There is no overarching story to the Wicked series or anything resembling a narrative in its various .TXTs. The primary motivation for crafting these maps appears to have been to make classically-textured levels for play in vanilla Doom II. It seems that Rex's Fear series, which debuted in late 2003, was invented among similar lines for source port experiments limit-removing or otherwise. WICKED_1 could easily take place during the Hell on Earth campaign or be some sort of bastion of Hellspawn left behind on post-Icon Terra. For that matter, it might as well be one of any number of extraterrestrial outposts that we see in so much .TXT flash fiction.

Something Wicked This Way Comes is a rock-solid techbase level that is large and non-linear. The entire base is open to exploration from the get-go. There's a yellow key door, behind which is the exit, but you could easily find the key itself before seeing the door depending on how you decide to branch out of the starting area. There are combat shotguns in two separate locations and theoretically two rocket launchers... though one of them is ensconced in a secret closet. Because it's non-linear and attempts to give the player more or less total freedom outside of health and ammo concerns, the level only features two setpiece encounters, the vast majority of the combat being incidental.

The two pitched battles consist of 1) a large monster closet full of imps unloading into the elevated area surrounding the outdoor crate yard once you grab the non-secret rocket launcher and 2) like, uh, one revenant teleporting in to say hi when you grab the yellow key. This isn't to say that the incidental combat won't be challenging. There are plenty of moments of mild-panic, like the throaty burble of the arch-vile or going round the corner smack into a pain elemental. Zombies are EVERYWHERE and Claussen has included plenty of apertures for them to shoot at you through. The sewer section has an unusually high monster density.

I mentioned ammo concerns earlier. Rex was sure to point out in the .TXT--and you can't miss it because the player starts on top of it--that you begin the game with a chainsaw. While this is a big, open base, it has a mild survival horror vibe as there isn't a lot of ammo just lying around. If you go in blasting, you're liable to run out of ammo awfully quick. Use the chainsaw when you can and save those double-barreled shell blasts (or even the single ones!) for the cacodemons, the Hell knights, and other beefy foes. Keep your eyes peeled on the automap; the secret (and semi-secret) walls stick out like a sore thumb.

Aesthetically this map gives me strong Quake II in Doom II vibes. There's a lot of abstract-but-functional machinery and computer equipment; several areas bedded down with crates, one of which feels unusually well-organized, with crates also secreted throughout the base; and the ribbed northeast building façade. As an evolution from much of Claussen's previous level design, I prefer it to the more stodgy realism found in much of his pre-Invictus work insofar as it makes for a more interesting space to explore. For a moment, I thought that I was remembering more Claussen attempting to emulate Half-Life with Paranoia, but as I refreshed my memory of Rex's pre-2002 output I remembered more than ever that realism dominated much of it.

Also, it's time to address--with love--Claussen's prefabs. Why let good geometry go to waste? Rex is one of the greats when it comes to stealing from himself. This won't be evident to a casual player unless you are marathoning his levels, which I did back when I did my first run at his work. It's been awhile but, with Invictus fresh on my mind, I saw that WICKED_1's southwestern spiral staircase appears to be copy-pasted if re-oriented from INVICTUS. Remembering my adventures in self-plagiarism from 2017, I did some cursory comparisons to some of Rex's past works and saw that this staircase first cropped up in MAP02 and MAP05 of Paranoia. I guess I was a bit hasty in declaring Invictus to be prefab-free.

There's more, though! The three stacks of crates in the warehouse have been cribbed from Phoenix Rising's MAP02 / MAP04, with one of them moved to make for three parallel rows. The cool-looking sewer section is also mostly from Paranoia, MAP05 specifically, embellished a bit but with the same basic shape and branching tunnels. The cool-looking lightcasting crate room that houses the yellow key? Well, that would be from none other than Temple of the Ancients's MAP10. I didn't see anything else while I was paging through his back catalogue, but I welcome anyone to join in on Rexspotting.

I like the change in direction in Something Wicked This Way Comes. I see that the rest of the maps in the set might not deliver the same sort of nonlinear, abstract complex vibe, but I'm here for them. God willing, I'll see you in WICKED_2: The Search For More Upcycling.

DOUBLE, DOUBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE;

FIRE BURN AND CAULDRON BUBBLE.

DOUBLE, DOUBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE;

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES!