3 Heures d' Agonie 3 (3HA3.WAD)

The Doom community has several, thriving international scenes. The French have developed over the last few years, spawning some prolific authors as well as auteurs. The front face of the FDC has been the 3 Heures d'Agonie series, which debuted in 2012 and was founded on the premise that all of the submitted maps be built over the course of three hours - give or take a few. These speedmapping megaWADs were conceived as an attempt to rejuvenate their community, which had become burnt out by the now-Quixotic construction of Necromantic Thirst. 3 Heures d'Agonie 3 is the third and purportedly final installment of the series as far as megaWADs go. It is a full, 32 map replacement for Doom II and ought to play well with any source port.

3 Heures d'Agonie 2 (3HA2.WAD)

The French Doom Community released 3 Heures d'Agonie back in 2013, a megaWAD's worth of speedmaps from a wide variety of authors, from inexperienced to guys that are established as heavy hitters in Doomworld thanks to their contributions to mapsets like Plutonia Revisited. 3 Heures d'Agonie 2 is what else but the second outpouring of hastily put-together levels from what is becoming an increasingly talented stable of individuals. This time, it's a full megaWAD for vanilla Doom II, though as could be expected there's no attached story, just raw Doom II.

Resurgence (RESURGE.WAD)

Joshy released Surge in early 2012. It was an unfinished collection of speedmaps built upon the idea of forcing the player to "surge" forward through the level's action in order to clear a spot that was safe enough to stand in. After a hiatus from mapping, Joshy picked it up again and finished the set for release in 2014, re-branding it as Resurgence. Like its progenitor and Speed of Doom, this is a megaWAD for Boom-compatible ports that emphasizes gut-busting action and intelligent, fast-on-your-feet decision making. Unlike Surge, there's actually something of a story, with you waking up from the oblivion of death and having to fight your way out of Hell and back to the realm of the living on Titan before you can put a stop to Hell's invasion. Something goes wrong on the way, of course, and you're launched into the future where Hell is completely entrenched, but it wouldn't be a Joshy map if you weren't facing overwhelming odds.

Speed of Doom (SODFINAL.WAD)

No one really knows what contemporary mapsets will enter the "canon" of Doom, but I think you could make a strong argument that Speed of Doom has been strongly woven into the rich tapestry of user-created content. I've seen at least a handful of authors citing it as an influence on their own works and plenty of players, especially in the slaughter crowd, have espoused their love of Josh "Joshy" Sealy and partner in crime Darkwave0000. It is a super-hard megaWAD for Boom compatible ports, released in 2010 after a development cycle of "speedmapping" that gave way to a year of production. That's still faster than many of the high-profile megaWADs being released today, and most of those are team projects!

3 Heures d'agonie (3HAFINAL.WAD)

Necromantic Thirst may be on hiatus but French Doomers JC and Oxyde managed to wring some maps out of their burgeoning community. Speedmaps, that is. 3 Heures d'Agonie was constructed under one general guideline; authors were to map for no longer than three hours. Of course, it's just a guideline, with some taking slightly more time in their editor of choice. 3HA is a collection, offering no major themes and no given story. It does fill all thirty-two map slots, though, to be played with Doom II in limit-removing sourceports. While there's no defined theme there are a fair bit of custom textures added so that you have something new to look at and a pretty good soundtrack to enjoy them with. 

Plutonia Revisited Community Project (PRCP.WAD)

The Plutonia Experiment was a megaWAD created by the Casali brothers for id Software as part of the Final Doom package. In the years since, it's enjoyed a more favorable legacy than its sibling, TNT Evilution, so much so that it's had two unofficial sequels, Plutonia 2 and the WAD which this review covers, Plutonia Revisited. Plutonia Revisited's scope is a bit narrower than Plutonia 2, however, as the PRCP focused on vanilla compatibility (the trend of 2011). The only flaws you'll encounter when playing the original .EXE are a few maps that invoke the savegame buffer overflow (hooray for source ports!). In fact, this project has a few instances of mapping tricks that require vanilla emulation in source ports (notably some linedef hoodoo in MAP31). Redacted 05/01/12.