Note: The base Doom '93 is a total classic for a good reason, it's a genuinely great game, however, this review is focused exclusively on the additional episode that the Ultimate Doom added.
After having gotten through the 3 main acts in this, I was looking forward to a bit more with the special episode 4 that was added to Ultimate Doom, but immediately upon starting it up, I quickly realised why they didn't originally add this. To say that this was a step down from the rest of the game would be a huge understatement, and it all comes down to the level design. At its core, you've still got a game that feels fun to control and has great atmosphere, but the issue is that now everything surrounding it is so heavily flawed. The first stage is a prime example of this to me, feeling like something a 12 year old would think of making, supplementing interesting and balanced difficulty for unapologetic enemy spam and heavily reduced resources to the point where you'll practically be out of everything by the end of a stage if you play super carefully.
After having hit a wall with level 2 I just decided to go back on an easier difficult setting and try again, but even ignoring the issues with blatantly awful spam, the layouts tend to just be very uninspired anyway for the most part at the best of times. After hitting the stage that forced the player to keep running over damaging ground while trying to figure out where they were meant to go, I just realised that it really wasn't worth continuing so I dropped it. A bit of a shame considering how fun most of the main game was, but this feels closer to a bad mod than it does an official piece of content for this.
After having gotten through the 3 main acts in this, I was looking forward to a bit more with the special episode 4 that was added to Ultimate Doom, but immediately upon starting it up, I quickly realised why they didn't originally add this. To say that this was a step down from the rest of the game would be a huge understatement, and it all comes down to the level design. At its core, you've still got a game that feels fun to control and has great atmosphere, but the issue is that now everything surrounding it is so heavily flawed. The first stage is a prime example of this to me, feeling like something a 12 year old would think of making, supplementing interesting and balanced difficulty for unapologetic enemy spam and heavily reduced resources to the point where you'll practically be out of everything by the end of a stage if you play super carefully.
After having hit a wall with level 2 I just decided to go back on an easier difficult setting and try again, but even ignoring the issues with blatantly awful spam, the layouts tend to just be very uninspired anyway for the most part at the best of times. After hitting the stage that forced the player to keep running over damaging ground while trying to figure out where they were meant to go, I just realised that it really wasn't worth continuing so I dropped it. A bit of a shame considering how fun most of the main game was, but this feels closer to a bad mod than it does an official piece of content for this.