10 Sectors (10SECTOR.WAD)

Way back when in the year 2000, while the rest of us were fighting off Y2K, Doomworld hosted a contest. The goal was to create a Boom map using no more than ten sectors. The idea has more merit than one might think at first, as - to quote DoomWiki - "[a] sector does not have to be a single polygon. For instance, two squares can be separate and non-contiguous, but still be part of the same sector." What this meant for 10 Sectors was a ton of maps that had a bunch of "sectors" that only had ten different combinations of ceiling and floor flat, height, light, tag, and type. A whopping 146 entries were submitted, and the cream of the crop were selected and deposited into this, the 10 Sectors megaWAD.

The Classic Episode (CLASS_EP.WAD)

Jan Van der Veken showed his love for the original Doom back in 1997, when he authored Dawn of the Dead. The Classic Episode began life as a series of solo releases that Veken worked on whenever he got bored with mapping for The Darkening E1 and it sort of caught on with his teammates. Jan eventually collected the individual releases and, after adding two more, released the package as this in 2000, though not in the order you'd expect. He updated the release two years later - version 2.0 - with various balance tweaks and level changes, and that's the version that I'm reviewing. Since the scope of the project was somewhat incidental, there's no attempt to tie these levels together with any kind of story, just a note that the authors were attempting to mimic the atmosphere of Doom as accurately as possible.

The Hell Factory Hub One (HELLFACT.WAD)

Tei Tenga made manifest some of the promises of the ZDoom engine's early features, like hubs, cutscenes, and text dialogue. Tomi Rajala's Hell Factory, released in 2000, developed these concepts, albeit in a fashion similar to Quake II, to give Doom II players something more action-oriented to sink their teeth into. It's got four different areas that you'll travel between, comprising the first "hub" of Tomi's Hell Factory. But, uh, the later hubs were never finished / released, so this open-ended adventure is the only thing we have.

Containment Area (CONTAIN.WAD)

CONTAINMENT AREA
by J.C. "Sailor Scout" Bengtson

Doom has had no shortage of tributes since its release. Most players attempt to echo the designs of Knee Deep in the Dead, the episode most memorable to them, but there are others... Containment Area is an unmistakable homage to the E2M2 level by the same name, a MAP12 replacement for Doom II by one J.C. Bengtson, aka Sailor Scout. CONTAIN isn't for OG Doom; it's a massive remake for Boom-compatible ports, mainly for some moving floors and the six key setup. Actually, there are some SFX for ZDoom that you'll miss out on if you use something else (the steps sound eerily like crunching bones), but the ambiance is a sideshow to the 666 monsters on UV. It should prove to be a test of several aspects, patience for some and skill for others.

Painful Evil (PAINEVIL.WAD)

PAINFUL EVIL
by Tomi Rajala

Swedish Doomer Tomi Rajala didn't have a lot of single-player works to his name besides his top 10 entries and his abandoned Back to Hell megaWAD, but he had Painful Evil, released late in 2000 for limit-removing ports. It's a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, and draws from the episode four aesthetic with blood, marble, metal, wood, and brick, all in spades. As is usually the case, he doesn't muck around with any kind of setup, just mentioning that it was actually one of his first levels, just touched up for release with new areas and detailing. To be honest, given the quality of the rest of the finished product, it's hard to believe that he just waved his hand over it, but I'll take his word for it.

Atomic Tomb (AT.WAD)

ATOMIC TOMB
by Brad "Vorpal" Spencer

Brad Spencer, one of the chief contributors to the now legendary Alien Vendetta, published Atomic Tomb way back in 2000. It's is a super-fast OG Doom level, replacing E1M1, and meant to be played in Boom-compatible source ports. His lip service style story says that you're one of the marines stationed on Mars after Deimos vanishes and Hell invades, circa the original trilogy. It's up to you to fight off the invasion as all your fellow marines are slain.

CHORD3 (CHORD3.WAD)

CHORD3
by Malcolm Sailor

Malcolm Sailor's CHORD series is renowned for its uncompromising brutality. It only stands to reason that his swan song for Doom, CHORD3, is the nastiest down and dirty level in the family. It's a MAP27 replacement for Doom II, meant for limit-removing ports. It's also a return, of sorts, to the themes explored in CHORD1 and CHORD2, the first two being Promethean explorations of the style that would dominate what was (is?) in his mind the pinnacle of his authorial career. To that end, CHORD3 begins in a Hellish mansion, much like the aforementioned levels, but plumbs new depths as Sailor takes you on a strange journey.

The Darkening Episode 2 (DARKEN2.WAD)

In 1999, The Darkening team released the first episode of what was to presumably be more. In 2000, a clearly exhausted Ola Björling pushed the second episode out the door. We got twelve more levels for Doom II, an impressive set of brand-new textures to play around in (though not WITH for many years), and a complementary deathmatch-oriented episode. Gone was the voluminous prose in the .TXT, eliminating any story connections between Darkening's E1 and E2, eerily echoing the relationship between id's Quake and Quake II, a comparison even more relevant when one realizes that the aesthetics of the new textures (and bits of level design) clearly evoke Quake II where DARKEN's borrowed from Quake. The other downer was the announcement that there would be no third episode as the authors had either given up on mapping for Doom or moved on to other games. Amusingly, Jan and Adam are still around and mapping, along with Travers from the original episode. Keep it strong, guys!