Blind Alley R., "Monster Mansion" (BNDALYR.WAD)

BLIND ALLEY R.

MONSTER MANSION

by Gene Bird

It's been something of a comfort playing the levels of the Blind Alley series. To phrase something 40oz once said (concerning ...And the Bloodshed Began), sometimes you forget what sort of a demon murder machine Doomguy is. The current trend of encounter design involves escalating difficulty by exerting pressure on the player in new and exciting ways. Gene Bird is from an older school of thought, though. Monster Mansion has the alpha-numeric designator "R" which, if "E" is to be believed, pegs it as MAP27 of an episode that continued to grow in spite of the author's humble intentions. Many of its levels were individually polished and released over 2002-2003 as well as featuring as significant minorities of Community Chest I & II (and a few yet remain...). This one straddled both years, being finished / uploaded in 2002 and officially interred in 2003. Like the previous instances, it's a MAP01 replacement.

Beta 64 (BETA64.WAD)

For many years, authors were mostly content with attempting to bring the magic of Doom 64 to the PC. Sure, some folks made episode-like mods for The Absolution TC (like The Outcast Levels, Redemption Denied, and The Reckoning), but there just wasn't the same level of love as with Doom I & II. Maybe it's a "mod of a mod" thing. The disparity persists after the release of Doom64 EX, but someone - Doomworld Forum superstar Antnee - stuck it out for the long haul and fabricated the first ever user-created megaWAD for Doom 64. Beta 64 is a thirty-one level mapset for Doom64 EX, soft-released in late 2018. It isn't officially "done" or uploaded but if the author comes back to fashion MAP29 then I'll update this review.

Doom 64: The Lost Levels (DOOM64.WAD)

Samuel Villarreal has had one of Doom's longest and storied love affairs. The object of his affection? Doom 64. Kaiser started out converting its levels or otherwise using them as inspiration for part of his 2000 megaWAD debut, DSV. (Not to forget about the more polished reconstructions in his Console Doom.) He spearheaded the Herculean effort to recreate the entire experience in Doomsday for 2003's Absolution TC. 2011 saw the official release of the next phase of his passion project, the reverse-engineered Doom64 EX source port. It's been clear that some of the developers of Doom 2016 have a lot of love for the largely forgotten '97 release so it's cool to see all this hard work pay off in an official re-release for both consoles and PC using Kaiser's KEX engine, used for some other Night Dive re-publications, as the base. There's slightly more to this story, though - The Lost Levels.

Europa 2 (EAEURO02.WAD)

EUROPA 2

by Erik Alm

2001 appeared to have been a pretty formative year for Erik. Alm made five submissions for Sam Woodman's One Week Mapping Contest, demonstrating an esoteric taste that spanned "short and sweet" to large-scale challenges informed by Hell Revealed. It also marked the debut of his Europa series. The first entry was a massive labyrinth that mixed his stiff encounter design with a tangled layout and key sidequest that evoked shades of 1995. This entry - the second - closes out 2001 on a high note that sees a drastic change of style away from some of his less user-friendly design decisions. EAEURO02 is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II to be played in a Boom-compatible port. As is the case with EAGOTH1 and EAGOTH2, you need to play this with the Gothic DeathMatch II texture pack.

The Future of ONEMANDOOM

It's been more than another month since my last post so I ought to make a salient update that I've been putting off. Everything is going fine but at this point in my life, writing about the works of the Doom community isn't satisfying to me as a creative outlet. I'm not making WADs because chance and circumstance brought me back to my love of crafting stories and the sorts of thing that I would like to do cannot be accomplished within the admittedly flexible confines of the Doom engine.

I will still be maintaining this blog as a repository of reviews - pruning spam comments and the like - and may update it when I feel like I've grown the way that I want to. Until then, though, I'm done playing. Thanks to everyone who was and still is interested in reading these longform reviews; it's been a dazzling journey so far and I feel bad leaving so many cool sights still unseen. I'm just ready for a long, healthy detour.

still not ded

Just checking in to say that I've thus far weathered a jam-packed work schedule in addition to the epidemic.

i atent ded

I have not abandoned ONEMANDOOM but I'm not in any state to work on the blog. Long time readers may have realized that this sort of thing happens every two years. It's a convenient intersection of where my line of work intersects with maximum burnout but was buoyed along by, among other things, the birth of my second daughter. The good news is that I am looking forward to really playing Doom again! I got the PC port of Doom 64 and am anticipating the new and improved KEX engine and mini-campaign. In the meantime I've been filling my free time with baby love and NotDoom games. I dunno when this will pick back up again but whenever it does it will be with the excellent Europa 2.

ea Gothic 2 (EAGOTH2.WAD)

EA GOTHIC 2

by Erik Alm

As I mentioned in the review for EAGOTH1, 2001 was a big year for Erik. His participation in the One Week Mapping Contest was an important stepping-off point for someone who was previously not confident in the worthiness of their work. Toward the end of the year he started a string of single releases beginning with Europa 1 and, shortly afterward, ea Gothic 1. EAGOTH2 is the speedmapped squeakuel to the latter. Another fast and furious Boom-compatible blastathon, Erik elected to utilize the MAP29 slot for this go around. Was he potentially filling the whole E3? Or is it merely another case of sky-and-soundtrack preference?