Extreme Weapon Pack (EWPACK.WAD)

EXTREME WEAPON PACK
by "Doggo120"

Simply not telling anyone about Extreme Weapon Pack would be the worst offense I could commit. Explaining it before you get a chance to see it yourself would be the second worst. So, gentle reader, before you skim any further, ask yourself: "Do I want to spoil the surprise for myself?" You could load this mod up in ZDoom, very quickly, and discover on your own the twisted secret behind Doggo120's 2013 masterpiece. I guess if you're allergic to ZDoom mods, you wouldn't care to try. However, I IMPLORE you to load Extreme Weapon Pack up and experience it before you take a peek at the man behind the curtain.

Swim With the Whales (SWTW.WAD)

Ribbiks loaded up two barrels of ultrahard slaughter goodness and blasted them into Doomworld in 2013. Stardate 20X6 felt like a more conventional if claustrophobic take on the genre, showering everything with the color purple. Swim With the Whales, which came out toward the tail end of the year, is a smaller outing that tackles a different shade on the color wheel - blue. This time, you're stalking through ancient, forgotten fortresses at the bottom of the ocean. The final total comes out to four levels (one "bonus") for Boom-compatible ports, the likes of which you've never seen... until now.

Stardate 20X6 (STARDAT*.WAD)

Ribbiks smashed the 2013 Cacowards wide-open with a double-shot of colorful slaughter WADs. I'm only just now getting around to playing them for the same reason it took me forever to get to dannebubinga's Combat Shock 2. I'm not nearly good enough to play newschool slaughter at a competent level, but I enjoy it as a mental exercise not unlike those puzzle levels everyone else seems to hate. One big difference is that a mapset like Stardate 20X6 has dozens of Rubik's (Ribbiks?) cubes lying about, and most of their pieces want to kill you. These challenges are thus solved under duress, adding another element to an already perplexing puzzle.

ZDoom Community Map Project: Take 2 (ZDCMP2.PK3)

ZDOOM COMMUNITY
MAP PROJECT: TAKE 2
by assorted authors

ZDoom (and GZDoom) have been firmly cemented as the modder's port of choice when it comes to changing the way Doom looks and plays. In 2004, its proponents showed off just what the engine was capable of with the ZDoom Community Map Project "Take 1", a single map with more than a dozen pairs of hands on it. Times have changed, though, and so has ZDoom, so it only stands to reason that it needs a brand new community map to show just what the port is now capable of - ZDCMP: Take 2. Essentially released in 2013 after cooking in the Realm667 crock pot for a year or so, you can play it in either ZDoom or GZDoom. You'll want to track down the most recent rev of either, though.

Unholy Realms (UR_FINAL.WAD)

I've bugged a lot of people about a lot of projects, but I think I've ridden Doomworld Forums superstar Brian "Snakes" Knox's ass more than most. Unholy Realms started up back in early 2010 and has been kicking around during the majority of Knox's mapping career, finally seeing release in 2013. It's a limit-removing megaWAD for Doom II that gets some more use out of the Community Chest 4 texture pack, now fairly well known, but still appreciated to give these works some flair beyond plain ol' vanilla textures. As far as story goes, Knox emulates his forbears with a quick blurb about sections of reality being pulled from Hell and merged in the vision of the Icon of Sin, with you setting out to end shit before it all goes to Hell.

Pirate Doom (PIRATES!.WAD)

Pirate Doom started back in mid-2012, and what a long way we've come, baby. "D" Arch got the ball rolling with some humorous sprite edits and a few levels and developed the thing into a full-blown GZDoom TC, which saw its major final touches in 2013. Every monster you know from Doom II has undergone some fantastic work to fit them into the Pirate pantheon, from the lowly zombiman to the strapping Cyberdemon, and all the action plays across a wonderfully varied 18 or so levels, giving you plenty of time to get intimate with the changes as you swash and buckle your way through a brand new adventure.

Hellbound (HELLBND.WAD)

Hellbound is the latest release from Doomworld Forums superstar Zoltán Sófalvi, aka Z86. It's a big, beautiful, limit-removing megaWAD published mid-2013 that chronicles another attempt by the forces of Hell to invade our constantly besieged world. This time, you start out at your own apartment complex when you're called in, only to find that the assault is well underway. You'll make an epic journey through the heart of the city, blown-apart UAC bases, the hostile wilderness, an outpost in the dimension that borders our world and Hell's, and then finally Hell itself. The fact that all of this is accomplished with virtually nothing but Doom and Doom II's textures is a feat in and of itself.

Kuchitsu (KUCHITSU.WAD)

Memfis is a pretty cool person who makes maps and releases them piecemeal instead of throwing together one of those hugeass megaWADs that tends to grind aspiring authors down. Kuchitsu, released early in 2013 for limit-removing ports, is therefore a little unusual as it's six levels long, serving as something of a minisode. Kuchitsu doesn't have an official story but there's kind of a tie between the levels, like taking a boat from "Lotus Island" to the docks of "Mechanical" and then fighting your way through a Doom City to an escape plane. The music that plays during the intermission is supposed to be the in-flight tune. I guess the tech-savvy Doomguy always carries a set of earphones!

Fuel Devourer (FUELDEVR.WAD)

FUEL DEVOURER
by "C4tnt" and "Archi"

The Russian Doom community has a little institution called the First-try Demo Contest. The basic idea is that someone makes a map that no one's ever seen before and then presents it to contestants at a predetermined time, who then record first-try demos trying to complete the map. If you're not familiar with FDAs, the point is to basically start recording your virgin playthrough of a level, deaths and all, until you reach the exit. Fuel Devourer was the level developed for FDC#11, released afterward in 2013 by its architects, iddqd.ru superstars C4tnt and Archi.

Forsaken Overlook (FSKNOVLK.WAD)

FORSAKEN OVERLOOK
by Matt Tropiano

Forsaken Overlook, published in 2013, is part of the Doomworld "Secret Santa" project, arranged by one Brian "Snakes" Knox. The idea was to randomly pair off participating authors in a gift-maker to gift-receiver relationship, where the gift-maker created a single level in the target author's style. The results are then posted anonymously in the project thread, with players able to guess the target author before Snakes pulls the veil back and exposes the charade. In this particular case, the role of "Santa" was played by Doom veteran Matt Tropiano, and his recipient was "LupinX-Kassman" of Community Chest 4 fame. Tropiano did a job of studying his quarry, also producing a document that documents his entire creative process, which you can find and read in the .ZIP. A fascinating read, especially for other authors, I'm sure. The result, intended for Boom-compatible ports, plays in the MAP01 slot.

Doom 2 the Way id Did (D2TWID)

Doom 2 the Way id Did is a sequel to, well, the incredibly popular Doom the Way id Did, of course. Headed up by Doomworld forum superstar Alfonzo after the release of the latter, D2TWiD aimed to mimic the styles of the architects of Doom II. John Romero, American McGee, and Sandy Petersen are the headliners, of course. I think Shawn Green and Tom Hall were considered, but if they're represented, it's probably in Tom Hall's sprawling base layouts. As was the case with DTWiD, there is no change in the "story" of Doom II. Just load it up and ask yourself - if one of these levels had shown up instead of one of the originals, would you even have noticed? What if you mashed the two PWADs together - would anything seem out of place?

Interception (INTERCEP.WAD)

Interception started around the height of vanilla megaWAD madness, back in 2011. Matt534Dog wanted to make a megaWAD, and there was enough enthusiasm knocking about that everyone not working on their top secret projects said "Hell yeah!" and started pouring in the maps. Then on release, the Doomworld MegaWAD Club played it, undergoing a sort of playtesting by fire, after which the PWAD underwent some significant changes. The super double ultimate final release happened sometime in 2013, but there are still a few game-breaking bugs to stamp out. Funny, unless you're playing it and run across them, trying to find out whether you just don't have the solution or whether the puzzle itself is inherently broken.

Soulcrusher (SCMAIN.ZIP)

Soulcrusher is basically a brand new game for the GZDoom engine by Przemek "Alter-zero" Zimny, aka Afterworldruler. Well, it has some resources cribbed from a few other things, most notably Freedoom, but the only real traces of Doom you'll find are in some of the now familiar sound effects. Soulcrusher's initial scope was larger, numbering at more than the nine maps that form the entirety of its gameplay (at least four), plus plenty of alternate exits that would change the way later levels played out, but Zimny lost his graphic artist, one Pawel "NMN" Zarczyinski. Without a replacement, he completed the project for release rather than have it languish in obscurity, which I'm grateful for. The story:

Hadephobia (H_PHOBIA.WAD)

Hadephobia started a long, long time ago under the banner of "Progressive Fiction". It was something of a conceptual community project. Basically, someone started by making a map, writing a bit of a story to go along with it, and then passing it on to the next person, who would do likewise, and repeat until they had finished a full-fledged Doom II megaWAD for Boom-compatible ports. The story is a little scatterbrained at times as far as the finer details, but the main idea should seem familiar. After all the agony of the Doom games, you continue to have nightmares, some kind of psychic link with Hell which dubs you as a Hadephobe. The bad dreams start to get even worse and you're sure an invasion is imminent, but the UAC locks you up in a distant asylum, out of sight and out of mind. You're the boy / girl who cried Doom, though, and when another invasion breaks loose, you must fight for your life.

Back to Saturn X E1: Get Out of My Stations (BTSX_E1.WAD)

I hear whispers every month, people bemoaning a lack of output in the Doom community. It's like all the mappers have had their output drastically cut off, leaving only eager newbies to make the megaWADs of the future. Or, you know, some dastardly villain had many of the authors we know and love working in secret. But no longer! Now, we get Back to Saturn X. I thought it was going to be a slammin' Doom II megaWAD of stuff to blast through, but there's more. There's so much more. Back to Saturn X went from megaWAD to triple megaWAD, seeing release in three "episodes" filled by eager authors. This review concerns the first episode, Get Out of My Stations.