One of the most important wads ever released. Most of the old classics dont hold up that well these days, but this is still solid.
I cant really stress how much of a clear before & after effect there is when it comes to Alien Vendettas. Even today - almost 2 and a half decades later, you can still see its influence in recently released mapsets.
A must-play if youre interested in experiencing how Doom's modding scene evolved overtime
If you're interested in learning more about it theres an excellent article by Not Jabba giving a brief summary on the history of Doom mapping up until that point.

My previous classic Doom review here.


Meditations on Doom


=== Mechanics ===

Bangai-O Spirits, Treasure's 2008 DS masterpiece, is superficially quite like Doom in structure. All the levels can be created and changed with the included editor, and players can (jankily) share levels online. However, a distinct trait of the game is that Treasure's mastery of mechanics-as-such is remarkably tolerant of sloppy level design. Many of the included levels are borderline shitposts, and fittingly, one of the best is just a pixel-art portrait of the player character with lots of enemies thrown in. Treasure has done most of the work for you: all you need to do is place some stuff in the editor and let it rip.

In contrast, Doom levels need to be constructed with intentionality - certainly the enemies' AI pull some weight on their own but smart placement vastly amplifies their effectiveness. Huy Pham, creator of Deus Vult II, cites Alien Vendetta as a major inspiration and draws explicit comparisons to chess in the included text file:

"Map20 of DVII is a strong example of the Chess influence with the natural, non-teleport monster traps that simply springs from the map's sneaky layout. The Berserk trap on the uppermost level of Map20 is a reflection of a forced combination, with low health, the player is compelled to pick up the stimpack, entering the trap full of imps, grabbing the berserk as a counterattack, and then confronting the counter-counterattacking hell knight. In the yellow key complex, the two barons of hell were placed like two rooks on open files, firing down the corridor and putting pressure on the player's position and inducing him to make a mistake. The final archvile after taking the blue armor was placed in a way that parallels the black fianchettoed bishop in the Sicilian Dragon Yugoslav Attack opening, firing down the most crucial control point in the room."

The concept here is territory control. Chess is an apt comparison, but what's really interesting is to notice the similarities to shmups, that other game genre so focused on real-time territory control. The heavy emphasis on projectiles in Doom's combat means many common shmup techniques/concepts, such as streaming, moving with projectiles, misdirecting, safe spots, dodging within vs. outside of patterns, holding ground closer to enemies to keep control of space behind you, etc. directly translate.

In a structural sense, a tough section in a shmup demands a unity of macro-level routing, micro-level decisionmaking, and instinctual execution. Take Dodonpachi Daioujou's "hive" from stage 5. Clearing this demands the player work out a viable path that kills key enemies quickly while leaving movement paths open, have the requisite ability to precisely control their ship, and be able to quickly adapt to the slight unpredictability of bullet trajectories. Alien Vendetta's Map 32: No Guts No Glory (while being far less intense) uses those same core elements of macro-level routing through the map, micro-level decisionmaking via unpredictability of monster AI, and instinctual execution.

Like most shmups, and many older arcade-style games in general, there's also an intense focus on the fundamentals of movement and positioning. In this dev diary, Matthewmatosis talks about how compared to classic 2D games like Ghosts 'n Goblins, defensive decisionmaking in many 3D action games has been simplified by powerful get-out-of-jail-free cards such as rolls and parries:

"Imagine you were tasked with creating an AI which could complete these games without taking damage. You have access to all the relevant variables like enemy position and status, in other words you know when an attack is one frame away from hitting the player character. Despite being one of the most recent releases on the list, Devil May Cry 5 is one of the easiest to solve, especially if we’re talking about Bloody Palace. Simply attack until you’re in danger, then instantly activate Royalguard to negate damage. Others like Revengeance and Sekiro will require slightly more awareness about which attack type is coming but will ultimately be solved by pressing a certain button in response to the enemy...this isn’t some irrelevant curiosity, these defensive algorithms are running in your brain as you play...think about how clever Arthur’s [GnG player character] AI would need to be by comparison. If a grim reaper is running at him, it’s not enough to jump or throw a dagger on the last possible frame. You need to be able to think ahead and position yourself in the safest way to advance."

Doom is decidedly part of this old-school tradition, where avoiding sticky situations is contingent on many higher-level decisions that can't be easily reversed on a whim. High-level player David Assad has a great video on how survival in many tough fights demands creating space, which demands tactical play. Youtuber SoBad explains how the conventional advice about monster prioritization is in practice highly dependent on enemy positioning and composition (and he doesn't even mention infighting!). And in a nonlinear map, routing can recontextualize all of this.

My favorite map in Alien Vendetta is probably Anders Johnsen's Dark Dome. What's really cool about this map is how nearly the entire level is open to you from the start. This is because the entire level is shooting at you from the start. The opening minutes are a frenzied scramble to carve out a foothold somewhere as you dart around while constantly under fire. Clearing out one area opens up angles to attack new ones, which do the same in turn; this style of mapping has been called "zone-of-influence". And one of the great things that flows from this structure is how many viable ways there are to route the map. I used an invincibility to clear out a Archvile-guarded Revenant bonepile, but you might opt to assault from the window overlook instead and save it for one of the close-range Cyberdemon tangoes.

The "hot starts" in maps like Dark Dome also illuminates a truth: running away is deep! Trying to squeeze past a mob of chittering Revenants can be just as engaging as filling them with buckshot, and meaningfully deciding between the two is a joy rarely afforded in modern games. And those living Revenants won't just disappear: maybe later they'll pop back up at an inopportune time, or join the fray of another brawl. Mancubus battalions meet Cacodemon migrations; Cyberdemons rage at far-flung Revenant missiles; caged Archviles catch quick glimpses of their foe across twisted geometry; the boundaries between encounters, so rigid in most games, loosen, and their contents ooze together.

Certainly the door problem is a foremost cause of this rigidity, and some lock-ins here and there (like the BFG survival-horror blue key room) are far from unwelcome, but we can give up a bit of ground. Let the player play lame if they really want, you're not their babysitter. It's worth it when what's gained is a unique structure and flow that I haven't seen in any other game.

Even in 2022, especially in 2022, Doom has a wealth of ideas to offer. Don't think the iceberg stops at surface-level elements like fast movespeed or no reloading. Dig deeper and you'll find something timeless yet shockingly ahead of its time, a medium for mappers to explore yet grounded by solid and versatile fundamentals. Universally known, widely loved, rarely appreciated, never replicated.


=== History ===


"By the turn of the millennium, many players and mappers had moved on from Doom to Quake and other more modern games. Some of the greatest early mappers, including Iikka Keranen, Matthias Worch, and Dario Casali, had graduated to careers in commercial game design. Many of the major post-Requiem mappers—Anders Johnsen, Anthony Soto, Brad Spencer, Lee Szymanski, Kim Andre Malde, and others—had gotten together to create a team megawad out of Johnsen’s struggling one-man project, after which most of them would drift away from Doom. The twilight of the game’s odd little mapping community had always seemed like it would inevitably arrive sooner or later, and with the coming of the new millennium and the biggest of the “Doom killer” games themselves becoming obsolete, it must have felt more imminent than ever.

In other words, it was about time for somebody to create the most influential PWAD of all time."

- The Roots of Doom Mapping on Alien Vendetta

As you can probably tell if you've read any of my other writings, I'm mostly a "mechanics person". That's not to disparage other aspects of games, it's merely what I enjoy analyzing. But even for someone like myself, when playing Alien Vendetta it's impossible not to get sucked into the sheer history of it all.

Playing Misri Halek, listed as the most memorable map in history by Doomworld, might not have been a particularly great experience for me in an immediate gameplay sense. But imagine someone in 2001 experiencing something with this scale and architecture in a virtual world for the first time: how breathtaking and inspiring it must have been! (Luckily most of the maps have good gameplay too.)

Authorship is a large part of this meta-appreciation. After you beat a level, the stats screen lists the map creator(s) right under the title. Just spent hours banging your head against Dark Dome? You have Anders Johnsen to thank for that. And in a collaborative project, much like the original Doom games, each author has a distinct style. See Brad Spencer's name? Expect a fangs-bared techbase. Kim Andre Malde? Thick atmosphere and striking architecture. Anders Johnsen? Anything from a brisk romp to an all-out siege assault, depending on what the larger progression demands.

This is a pleasure that sadly seems to be limited to small indie teams and modding scenes. Devil May Cry 3's first level is one of the most fun to play in the series, but I have no clue who to credit for it. Itsuno the game director? One of the 10+ programmers listed in the credits? Someone else? Sometimes names emerge from the mist, but it's rare. In this sense, Doom is far more akin to a music genre or art scene: webs of influence can be traced, styles explored.

The larger narrative is equally captivating. It might be easy to forget, but Doom has really been "indie" from the beginning. id Software was just a handful of guys working out of a random building, and the community has always been just a bunch of fans making stuff as a hobby for the game they love. Certainly Doom was massively popular and influential, but there was no guarantee that the scene behind it would last.

Alien Vendetta is a line in the sand. A vindication of the past: 7 years on and the Doom 2 fundamentals aren't even close to being exhausted. A gift to the present: here's our last hurrah. A signpost to the future: mappers, look at what we did, what you can do. Surely you can do better, hmmm?

Playing with the custom MIDI pack feels fitting. Alien Vendetta was a gift to the community; now the community gives back. It's hard not to sense the emotion in Anders Johnsen's reaction to this WAD, 20 years later, still getting love from Doom players new and old.

For that matter, it's hard to imagine anyone at the time foreseeing what the classic Doom scene has become. Alien Vendetta's synthesis of aesthetics and challenge has been driven into new territory, most uniquely with Sunder and its slaughter progeny. Thanks to Doom's engine code being released, sourceports provide a modern experience while preserving all the idiosyncracies of the original, if you so desire. While level design has seemingly stagnated or even regressed in gaming at large, what's on offer in custom Doom maps, through three decades of knowledge, has risen to the best in the medium bar none.

So often, it feels like this medium has a capricious taste and a forgetful memory. Like so many others, Doom should have been confined to the history books, an unmoving artifact, a museum piece that gets gestured to when people talk about the FPS genre, then locked back up in its case. Maybe a few would see the deeper possibilities, feel intrigue and sadness, then get dragged along with the tide like all the others. Everyone moves on.

Not this time.

The fire still burns!