Out of Phase III: One Cloudy Afternoon (OPHASE3.WAD)

OUT OF PHASE III

ONE CLOUDY AFTERNOON

by Karthik Abhiram Krishna

2002 was KA's year. He made a technical leap forward with The Other Side of Phobos, a stylistic one in Congestion Control (featured in Doomworld's Top 100 WADs of All Time), and put a nice bow on his Out of Phase series. OPHASE3 is of course the third release of the trilogy, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. Looking through the .TXTs it's clear that he was working with his brother Varun at this time as well as a team for a project called The Ninth Gate which would have been a full E4 replacement. The roster included Tobias Münch, Pablo Dictter, and Damian Lee (aka Lexus Alyus) so he also appears to have fallen in with good company.

Out of Phase II (OPHASE2.WAD)

It's 2002 and I have one map left to go before Karthik gets his shit together to make the sort of level that I would expect to see in Doomworld's Top 100 WADs of All Time. Out of Phase was a paradigm shift from the awkward construction of Ick and Chaos Punch. Its sequel, OPHASE2, has more of the same aesthetic and isn't much different on its face. Some of the elements hint at his potential, though, and have me excited to see what sort of critical leaps he'll take between now and then. I was surprised to find that Out of Phase II is actually a two-level minisode, replacing MAP01 and MAP02 of Doom II. When you consider its origin, though, it makes a bit more sense.