Ancient Aliens (AALIENS.WAD)

About a year ago, I think, I was treated to some really cool screenshots from a secret skillsaw project, coming strong even after he had released Valiant in 2015. The color scheme was incredibly unique, looking somewhere between a coastal sunset and a Lisa Frank trapper keeper and using a lot of... alien imagery. It wasn't originally to be a full megaWAD but I guess a bunch of people couldn't wait to play around with the texture set. Thanks to skillsaw and friends, we now have Ancient Aliens. Released in 2016, it's a Boom-compatible megaWAD with some ZDoom / Eternity extras that only serve to enhance the experience.

50 Shades of Graytall (50SHADES.WAD)

50 Shades of Graytall is partially a joke. It's also mostly serious. Doomworld Forum superstar Marcake took Gez on his jest, creating a project with an unusual restriction, limiting the available textures to what are widely considered to be the three least attractive options - DOORTRAK, GRAYTALL, and FIREBLU. The end result is an eighteen-level megaWAD to be played in a Boom-compatible source port that attempts to deliver, again, on the promise of the Monochromatic Mapping Project. That is, to create a mapset whose limited capacity for visuals forced the authors to focus on the aspects of level design related to gameplay.

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.

Back to Saturn X E2: Tower in the Fountain of Sparks (BTSX_E2X.WAD)

It's been a little more than a year and a half, so it's about time that we saw the Back to Saturn X Episode II beta. BTSX started out as a single megaWAD, but an abundance of contributors caused an internal split into what eventually became three "episode" megaWADs. Get Out of My Stations, the "shareware" episode, made its public debut at the tail end of 2012. It got a lot of flak for its techbase stylings, but it's one of my favorite releases of the 2013 season for its impeccable visuals and light speed gameplay. Tower in the Fountain of Sparks looks to be one of the top releases of 2014, and for good reason.

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!

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.

Surge (SURGE.WAD)

Authors have been pretty good about releasing their unfinished projects as of late. Joshy's Surge was intended to be a full-fledged Scythe-like megaWAD but he found himself weary of mapping and elected to publish the seventeen levels as-is (and an unfinished MAP18 as a teaser), much like skillsaw did with Vanguard (or more recently Pawel Zarczynski's Stomper). Surge was made for Doom II, to be played in Boom-compatible engines. It doesn't muck about with a story, with its maps being the main showcase, much like Joshy and Darkwave0000's Speed of Doom. It's all about action.

Community Chest 4 (CCHEST4.WAD)

The Community Chest series is one of Doomworld's oldest institutions, with the first outing published in 2003. Now it's 2012 and between Duke Nukem Forever, Black Mesa, and the release of Community Chest 4, all signs point to the apocalypse being nigh. Doomworld forum superstar Eric "The Green Herring" Baker took full control of the project after some drama I was fortunate enough to avoid. The short story is, hey, here's Community Chest 4! It comes with a sweet-ass texture pack that's seen a lot of use prior to this release, most notably skillsaw's Vanguard from 2011 (but I know there are many more, and not just because I've seen whining about overuse of the resources).

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.