games

One of the first comments I ever read about this WAD was that it’s absolutely perfect if you have a lot of time on your hands. That rings true, with the 6 fecking episodes that are on display here. It kinda plays like Eviternity on steroids, if only a little more inconsistent. Personally, I loved Doom The Way id Did, although I never truly felt it “truly” did Doom the way id did (lol), I…

Doom 64 was a game that I never thought I would get around to playing, but with the recent remaster and re-release, I was able to get it on Xbox Live. Which is great, because I was never going to buy an N64 or sort out an emulator, let us be honest. Doom 64 is markedly different from the other Doom offerings from the 90s, but is a canonical release and continues the loose story…

I’ve been meaning to check this out for a while, and to be honest it wasn’t bad, give or take the fairly weak story line. Musically, I think the soundtrack manages to strike a good balance between modern and nostalgic, with more callbacks to the original run of 90s games happening in the gameplay rather than in the audio. On the downside however no particular artist here stands out, especially as I pored over the…

The Doom II Master Levels is a mixed bag. One of the most irritating things about it, is that whilst a lot of the files occupy map slot 01, you get the same soundtrack over and over and over as you play. Thank any metaphorical heavens then, for the Doom community. Megasphere has popped up a few times in regards to soundtracking WADs, but this was my first encounter with his work. Honestly, he puts…

Doom The Way id Did is a community WAD pack that intends to pay homage to the original “classic” Doom mapping trio of Romero, Tom Hall and Sandy Peterson, by emulating their design philosophies and – literally – make a new Doom campaign, but the way id did. The problem I have with this is that outside of pigeonholing Romero into his now-famous, tech-base-based (lol) design criteria (you just need to look at Sigil to…

Pirate Doom has to be one of the most ridiculous yet ambitious custom Doom WADs that I have played. It comes across more of a total conversion than a level set, with a complete overhaul of the entire game to feature pirate-based landscapes and levelling, weapons and most hilariously, demons. Fighting the swashbuckling hordes genuinely had me in stitches at points, especially when a new monster was introduced. Some of the new game mechanics are…

Speed Of Doom is an incredibly well made set of maps for Doom II. Honestly, the fact that these began as a speed mapping exercise (hence the name), truly boggles the mind in terms of the level quality. But there is one problem. This is far, far too hard for me. I’m one of those cats that plays on UV because it’s “the” way to experience everything Doom has to throw at you, but Jesus…

When Doom II was ported to Xbox Live Arcade just over a decade ago, the guys given the job (Nerve Software) also made their own expansion / mini-WAD called No Rest For The Living. Honestly, these are some incredibly solid levels and they can be pretty damn difficult if you bite off more than you can chew. It has the length of an Ultimate Doom episode, rather than a full Doom II campaign, but that…

I initially decided I would split out the game review and OST review for this one (like I’ve done with some games and not others – we value consistency here at Lines In Wax) but honestly, the two elements are so completely interwoven and linked, to separate them is alien. Broken Sword was one of my favourite games as a kid. Granted, I was far too young to really understand the plot and also far…

Hell To Pay is probably the tackiest Doom WAD I’ve played thusfar, with the exception of The Lost Episodes Of Doom, which was just awful. Thankfully it was one of the first WADs I’ve started with. I’d never be able to make it though it these days, having played some top quality custom levels since. Hell To Pay isn’t bad. In fact, it has a pretty good story and some incredibly ambitious level designs (ever…

As I work my way through some of the earlier WADs that circulated the official main Doom releases, of course a stop on the Master Levels was required. I had the Master Levels on disc, I bought it in I think 1997, along with Doom II and Ultimate Doom. However, in the absence of any Doom loader like GZdoom or the likes, 8 year old me found it immensely difficult to load any of the…

Perdition’s Gate was one of the commercially released yet unofficial Doom II expansions. From the creator’s website, its hinted that Perdition’s Gate was supposed to be a part of Final Doom, but for whatever reason that didn’t happen. Anyways, dodgy software company Wizard Works eventually released this, on the sly. The thought of that being done in 2021 is really quite impressive. None of this is to shit on Perdition’s Gate, however. I have been…

Due to the success of Doom, id quickly followed with the now legendary Doom II: Hell On Earth. Personally, I prefer the original, and I find some of the levels, especially in the middle, to have really bad designs, but you cannot deny that this not only expanded, but perfected the Doom world. How can I love a game where I think the levels are shit, I hear you ask? Well, for starters, and anyone…

Unfortunately I had played the Plutonia WAD before I realised there was a glorious 90 minute fan-made OST for it. I thought at the time, “damn, why doesn’t this fucking WAD have its own OST like TNT did?”, and obviously I can’t have been the only Doomer to have thought this, otherwise this beautiful creation wouldn’t exist. There’s a mixed bag here, of styles more than quality, due to the number of composers on board,…

Frequent readers of the site may have noticed that I’ve started accumulating a few posts about Doom WADs. What became a nostalgic plan to replay the original Doom games in the recent version of Brutal Doom (Google it!) has now become a frequent past time for me. Its the perfect way for me to unwind from life, work, and the adult responsibilities of being a dad. For an hour or so every few nights, I…

Lost Episodes was my first unofficial yet commercially released WAD. It starts off really strong, and whilst I don’t own the actual book that came with it, I was able to navigate and enjoy most of the earlier levels. The problems begin however, when towards the end of episode 2, a second designer takes over. The maps all of a sudden become sprawling, enormous and mostly empty. This is proper amateur hour here, with the…

Imagine how hyped I was when I found out that this 5th episode of Doom was a thing! As someone who has played through the first 4 episodes countless times as a kid and then as a teenager, this WAD, billed as the unofficial 5th episode of Ultimate Doom, but created entirely by John Romero, was the icing on the cake when I started looking for reasons to play through Doom again. Those of you…

I’ve recently fallen back down the rabbit hole of playing Doom. As a kid I cut my teeth PC gaming by starting out with shooters like Doom. In fact, my original exposure to this terrifying world was the somewhat awful looking Sega 32X port, which culled levels from a few of the episodes and chucked them together. But when I got a pack that contained Ultimate Doom, Doom 2, and the Master Levels, I never…