No Sleep For the Dead (NOS4DEAD.WAD)

Jan Van der Veken made a big splash in 1997 with Dawn of the Dead, an episode replacement for the original Doom, and followed through with contributions to The Darkening, The Darkening E2, The Classic Episode, and finished with the latter's sequel, Singularity Complex I. That was, of course, before No Sleep For the Dead. Released in 2016, NOS4DEAD is Veken's first mapset in more than ten years... and it's wicked cool! Jan replaces the entirety of Knee Deep in the Dead, along with a bonus map in the E2M1 slot, for another trip to the likeness of Phobos that's sure to delight Doom players from all walks of life.

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 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!

The Darkening Episode 1: The Nameless Project (DARKEN.WAD)

1998 seemed to mark the death of super cool community projects for Doom. Everyone seemed to be too busy playing Quake, realizing Warren Marshall's very public fear. So imagine when The Darkening debuted its first episode in 1999, "The Nameless Project", looking very much like Doom but with a keen eye for lighting characteristic of many of these authors' earlier works. Lighting isn't the only element borrowed from Quake. It's nothing like Iikka Kernanen's ode to the big Q in Requiem, but there's a certain aesthetic clearly echoed with the use of Shub-Niggurath slipgates and the new textures that clearly shows that Doom II wasn't the only thing on the minds of this team. Still, they managed to stop boxing Shub-Niggurath long enough to put out eleven more levels for Doom II.

Dawn of the Dead (DODEAD.WAD)

Dawn of the Dead is an episode replacement for Doom's Knee Deep in the Dead. Well, almost an episode replacement. Jan Van der Veken never finished E1M5 (at least, for this episode), so it's more like 8 maps. The story takes place on Jupiter's moon, Europa, where simple lifeforms were discovered, leading to attempts to terraform the planet (I mean, that would probably kill all the native species, but whatever). The end goal was to colonize the moon, and at the "current" time, there's a burgeoning population complete with a contingent of space marines. Of course, they managed to discover relics from a past civilization that mastered teleportation technology (sploops!) and, later, some manuscripts containing vague warnings (double sploops!). And, now, the moon's colonies have (mostly) overrun by an unknown hostile force. Owing to your expertise, you're sent in to deal with the situation.