X-treme is a two-level demo of a megaWAD project that Erik Alm declined to finish, released months after he published Scythe, late in 2003. If Alm had finished out the whole thing then it might have ended up as a gold standard for masochists the world over. As it stands, EAXT is whispered among consumers of ultra-hard mapsets, with the likes of gggmork theorizing whether or not it could be completed in a single segment run. As it turns out, yes, it can, but few speedrunners are willing to cut their teeth on it. The only person willing to do so on MAP02 appears to be stx-vile, whose record you can see played on Youtube.
It's no secret that Erik Alm was a speedrunner who liked to play as well as make difficult levels. This was evident as early as his contributions to Sam Woodman's One-Week Megawad, but he was popularly--or infamously, depending on how you personally took it while playing--known for the difficulty spike in Scythe's third episode. The later levels of Alm's One Bloody Night showed a further affinity for Hell Revealed-style encounters, but with a somewhat reduced scale and married with smaller, choreographed fights that point the way toward the sort of run and gun style that we take for granted in Doom's "modern" era. X-treme is more true to Alm's late-game leanings, an extreme take on Doom II gameplay that feels utterly unforgiving.
EAXT on UV's closest equivalent that I can think of is franckFRAG's Swift Death, especially its final episode, except X-treme's level spaces are much larger by comparison. You start out in danger and you're going to find death wherever you go. Incumbent monster placement as well as ambushes are designed to generate maximum levels of discomfort. There are a lot of Cyberdemons, and they're very handy as focal points for infighting if you're capable of utilizing them as such, but there's a certain paradigm that you have to both think and play in to get the most out of the resources that Alm has made available to you. If you know, you know. Personally, I wouldn't recommend X-treme on UV.
EAXT has three difficulty settings, though, and the other two are balanced for entirely different feels. HNTR will be for folks who loved the combat of Scythe's first two episodes. When you compare the scaled-down / low-stakes firefights to the scale of the installations that these levels are set in, they might feel a little empty, but the combat style is spot on for something that plays fast and fun and Alm's level design is always pleasantly clean. HMP is more for players who want something that hits back hard without feeling like a relentless barrage of sucker punches and it seems the closest in alignment to "modern" difficulty... though I wouldn't have minded a Cyberdemon or two in there. Full disclosure: the starts of these levels on HMP are still kind of hairy, but not "why am I doing this to myself" hairy.
X-treme is an interesting experiment. At first glance, it doesn't seem like its style of difficulty really flowered within the community, given that there isn't a huge niche for levels that true Doom murderheads describe as "deliberately unfun". Its ultimate legacy, though, is Death-Destiny's No Chance, which specifically mentions EAXT by name. I haven't played a single Death-Destiny level but I know NOCHANCE's reputation. It'll be interesting to see what exactly filtered down to it from EAXT in the event that, you know, I get to D-D's catalogue. Back in 2013, a slightly pre-SWTW Ribbiks (by, like, a week) distinguished Death-Destiny's difficulty style as part of a category different from X-treme.
If you love Alm's level design and you haven't tried EAXT, then you really don't have any excuse NOT to. DON'T play this on UV. At least, don't say that I didn't warn you. If you loved the first twenty maps of Scythe, particularly the early ones, then give it a go on HNTR. If you play a lot of modern Doom then you'll probably be fine on HMP once you weather the starts; the lack of Cybies may even make it feel a little undertuned. In any case, it's cool to discover yet another link between Alm and the current scene, regardless of whatever game of "telephone" might be at play from EAXT to NOCHANCE to all of its descendants.
X-TREME
(demo)
by Erik Alm
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