Monday, July 11, 2011

Two Big Ones

I was gonna leave Icarus up until this next Friday but as long as actual news is happening, I should say something before it gets stale.

On the port side of things, Scoredoom got what I can only assume was an eagerly anticipated 3.0 release. If you haven't heard of Scoredoom before (who are you???) it's a mod that replaces certain enemies in Doom IWADs and PWADs as well as replacing powerups. It's semi-randomized, in that the port generates a random assortment of powerups and monsters for every map, but that map will always have that given setup. Then you play Scoredoom, get scored on various factors, and compete against other players. I'm still pretty young Doomwise so I'm staying away from stuff like this for now, but if I were to mod my gameplay regularly, Scoredoom would be one of my top plays. It's got a host of other features, of course, but I think I've touched on the important bits.

On the WAD side of things, Doom Core made its way to the archives. Doom Core is a 32-map MegaWAD (for Doom II, obviously) totalling much of Valkiriforce's output over the 2010 year. It's been rigorously tested to work in vanilla, so grizzled classic players take notice. I can't speak as to the quality of Doom Core yet but I did spend some time testing the first third of his 1996 style MegaWAD, Reverie, which was pretty damn challenging and fun to play (and also really fucking inventive), so I'll vouch for DCV.WAD, on top of the people already playing it and enjoying it in its development thread.

On the site side of things, the following WADs have been reviewed, I'm just stalling putting them up:

Polygon Base, by Rick Lipsey
A Hidden Mountain Factory, by Grzegorz Werner
99 Ways to Die, by Warren Marshall

The following WADs are on the chopping block:

Army of Darkness Doom (II), by some AoD fans
Dystopia 3: Re-Birth of Anarchy, by Anthony "Adelusion" Czerwonka and Iikka "Fingers" Keranen
The Troopers' Playground, by Matthias Worch

After I finish 1996 out I'll indulge myself in some non-"Best of" fare. Probably play through Doom Core, Raven, some other stuff. All I know is that quadruple threat of Eternal Doom, Requiem, S.T.R.A.I.N., and Hell Revealed, along with The Talosian Incident and Dawn of the Dead feels incredibly daunting. 1997 was one hell of a year, and yet Doom continues to march on...

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