ok so my computer's power supply suddenly died on me so i thought i'd have this whole console player arc but GUESS WHAT i bought a new one instantly and visited my parents for easter so i also ended up getting some time on my brother's PC just to play fucking TNT of all things.
/
it took me a good while to muster up the will to get past the first 10 levels which always made me drop the whole thing. TNT thrives on huge maps with weird combat setups, but those early ones are just boring, cramped, and don't work towards building its identity.

as soon as you get into some more inventive ones, though, it gets interesting.... so many far away hitscanners and barely populated arenas! so many attempts at roughly non-abstract areas... so many massive secret setpieces! map12 (Crater) was a standout for me, its namesake comes from an odd secret that lets you explore a narrow view of a nukage waterfall in the crater. the way it tries to do this kind of cute trick without much fanfare is what gets me. they made a mapset that tries making DOOM a little more "real", and the way it almost works is charming.

even the guest maps from the Casali brothers (who made Plutonia, the other half of Final DOOM [which i love]) build on TNT's concept well, but with more exciting combat. it's just that about half the playtime on this big, big WAD is spent on almost regular DOOM II maps but with no bite or cool surprises. just a bunch more hitscanners mixed in.

i can definitely tell why this was so influential, though. it does a lot to intrigue the player about trusting a big concept more than only trying to do tight combat loops over and over. map20 (Central Processing) is a blessing!

bonus: take a look at this fanmade remix of Into Sandy's City made for map32 (Caribbean). it's so cute!

Two things come to mind while playing TNT: Evilution, tedious and poorly designed. TNT: Evilution is the second half of Final Doom which also comprised of The Plutonia Experiment, and while it isn't as difficult as Plutonia, it sure is a confusing mess at points. Apparently, this was going to be a free megawad until id Software came and said they wanted the wad to be a part of their Final Doom package. That's why a lot of Doom fans hold a lot of resentment towards this wad, and honestly upon replay I don't blame them. I couldn't imagine paying a whole $60 to play this thing. The level that really highlights how incompetent some of the level design is would be Map 18: Mill, which has one of the more infamous puzzles the wad features. It features four buttons with 3 of them blocked off, and all the buttons lower sections to get a yellow key. Some of the rooms surrounding the buttons have some of the most confusing level design. At no point does it prepare you beforehand for some of the gamplay choices it implements. For example, a shootable wall to raise a lift. I wondered around for about 10 minutes before figuring that out. Then there is baffling design choices like Map 20: Central Processing, where the exit is not a button, but an exit sign that you have to press to exit. One level that remember most from this wad is Map 27: Mount Pain. The titular Mount Pain of the level sparked my imagination back then along with the first two Doom games, it's a shame most of the rest of the level is a tedious slog to get through, with a boring sewer segment to boot. I used to think this was a decent wad back when I first played it, but by revisiting it on a higher difficulty, the cracks really start showing in this wad. It's a shame, too, because there are some interesting concepts this wad tries to implement. It just never fully realizes that potential.

Towards the late middle, the levels get really lengthy and labyrinthine, to the point of sheer annoyance. Everything becomes very difficult to navigate without staring at the map the whole time. Some of the maps towards the very end are actually pretty good, with a decent feeling of setup and payoff, as late-level objectives are shown to you early, so you know which key you need or what you need to unlock in order to finish the level.
I can absolutely understand how pissed off Doom fans must have been when this WAD was suddenly made an official paid expansion, only to be... this. Without even being an expert, I know much better has been done with the engine in the time since this came out.

Played through with a weapons mod called "Final Doomer +". Pretty much all my issues with TNT are the same but I would like to take this review to say that the mod is super awesome. Not only are the weapons super fun to use but a ton of care has been put into making them useful for this WAD specifically and made the whole thing way more fun. They can't fix the inherent problems with TNT but they definitely mitigate them, and the fact that they can be used on literally any WAD afaik just makes it even cooler. It's got weapons designed for 9 different WADs actually so there's tons to test out.

they somehow managed to make a set of levels even worse than doom IIs. every flaw that can be in a level is represented somewhere here. obnoxious hitscanner spam, overly long levels, too little health pickups, switches that dont properly convey what they do, custom music that is annoying or not at the right volume... each new level brings a new kind of stupid thing to make your experience unfun. the people who claim to enjoy evilution seem to mostly be people who save constantly and dont pistol start, which must make it a lot easier to ignore the constant issues. metal, administration center, and mount pain in particular are some of the least fun ive had in doom period. the ONE positive thing i can give it is that the levels are visually pleasing and aesthetically more interesting than doom IIs and its not even close.

I chose to play through the "official" WAD expansions to DOOM before diving off the deep end into the world of DOOM (and DOOM clone) WADs, starting with TNT: Evilution. In a vacuum, it's... fine, but knowing what I know about where modders and WAD creators have taken this engine, it's pretty disappointing.

Starting with the pros: for a 1996 expansion, there are definitely some cool upgrades / expanded use of the old engine in ways that were enjoyable to experience, and makes me excited for some of the bigger / more modern WADs on the horizon that I've yet to play.

Cons: most everything else. Even that pro I listed above is a bit of a cop-out, as the original Aliens: Eradication total conversion mod came out before TNT and showcases a lot more flexibility than TNT does. The levels are too long, far too drawn-out, and don't do anything revolutionary enough to be worth folks' time at this point. Please, if you are interested in diving into the world of DOOM WADs and you already own Final DOOM, by all means, play Plutonia (understanding that it's pretty damn hard), and then just jump headfirst into running DOOM with free level packs, of which there are literally thousands, many of which are far superior to this "official expansion."

While i feel like TNT gets a little too overhated at times, it is true that most of it's levels are pretty unremarkable, when they are not down right bad. However, i remember having a good time playing the first half of it. There were some nice maps at the beginning for sure, and one in particular (Wormhole) stuck in my mind as one of the most interesting maps i ever played when it comes to old-school vanilla doom. But still, it's pretty hard to celebrate anything about TNT, specially when the first wad to be compared with will always be Plutonia.

What a pain to play through. Beaten on 1/21/23 on the HNTR difficulty (I had prior beaten up to map20 on UV but wanted an easier time this playthrough and to actually beat it) pistol starts saveless.

Messy level design, too many switch hunts and mandatory secrets, questionable design choices, ugly open spaces, the only reason I'm giving this a 2 is that there are some good maps sprinkled in there, albeit few and far between.

BEATEN

When the levels are populated by reasonable enemies and reasonable amounts of them, you start to appreciate the level design of Evilution, so do yourself a favor and turn down the difficulty to the lowest it can go to get rid of all the chaingunner spam, which seems to be the only way to create difficulty that the developers could think of.

Levels are expansive, creative and sometimes confusing, but what is really neat is seeing all the little visual tricks they do to spice things up. They really tried to push to the brink what was possible in a Doom level, at the time anyway.

If you can swallow your pride and drop to I'm Too Young to Die, you'll come away with an additional 30 enjoyable Doom levels, rather than 30 that just piss the living shit out of you.