Easily the best time I had playing Classic Doom yet, Going Down both as a Doom Wad and as a one person creative endeavor is about as close to being ideal as it can get.
A remarkably cohesive piece of work, described as chaotic evil by the wad author Cyriak Harris himself, the wad carries a mischievous spirit , but at points he can turn it into malice.
The two main characteristics of this wad is the combat, Cyriak loves using a small compact area as his playground, where any action you take can and will cause enemies to ambush you or appear in an area you have to go back to, keeping the player consistently paranoid about doing anything in this map as any interaction could mean lurking death for the unwary. This feeling is enhanced by Cyriak's music which sounds like someone organizing a circus in my head where you should be really careful if you want to check behind the stages or you might not come back alive. As more and more enemies get released the game seems just gets more chaotic and increase my heart rate. And sometimes he just lets open the floodgates, hundreds of monsters at a time when he seems to get tired of playing with the player. There are 2 fights in this set that I would say straight made me break through my Doom skill ceiling and because of how fun the design is I enjoyed the failures as well.
The other characteristic is the weird humour mixed with his eye for detail, easily the best looking Vanilla Doom wad I have played, Cyriak creates believable environments with stock Doom 2 textures, the whole idea of this wad is funny in a way, Doom guy going down floor to floor clearing demons. One floor might be an office building where a Baron of Hell jumpscares you from behind the boss's chair or Doom guy might decide to take the emergency exit to the roof to call his mom. It's just this weirdness that makes the whole thing so charming.
There's endless creativity here, while similar no two levels are truly the same and while not every level hits the same peak, their sheer uniqueness ought to win you over. One level you might be crawling through the vents of a building to get around the monsters, another one where there might be a elaborate key hunt through an area. Dont worry none of these are boring, Cyriak always does more with his concepts than it seems he can on first glance.
Then there is the last third of the map, there are sections here that are genuinely jaw dropping not only for Doom but for any FPS campaign I have played, I wont spoil what happens but fair to say, if you made it that far things will only get better, more insane and definitely harder.
A remarkably cohesive piece of work, described as chaotic evil by the wad author Cyriak Harris himself, the wad carries a mischievous spirit , but at points he can turn it into malice.
The two main characteristics of this wad is the combat, Cyriak loves using a small compact area as his playground, where any action you take can and will cause enemies to ambush you or appear in an area you have to go back to, keeping the player consistently paranoid about doing anything in this map as any interaction could mean lurking death for the unwary. This feeling is enhanced by Cyriak's music which sounds like someone organizing a circus in my head where you should be really careful if you want to check behind the stages or you might not come back alive. As more and more enemies get released the game seems just gets more chaotic and increase my heart rate. And sometimes he just lets open the floodgates, hundreds of monsters at a time when he seems to get tired of playing with the player. There are 2 fights in this set that I would say straight made me break through my Doom skill ceiling and because of how fun the design is I enjoyed the failures as well.
The other characteristic is the weird humour mixed with his eye for detail, easily the best looking Vanilla Doom wad I have played, Cyriak creates believable environments with stock Doom 2 textures, the whole idea of this wad is funny in a way, Doom guy going down floor to floor clearing demons. One floor might be an office building where a Baron of Hell jumpscares you from behind the boss's chair or Doom guy might decide to take the emergency exit to the roof to call his mom. It's just this weirdness that makes the whole thing so charming.
There's endless creativity here, while similar no two levels are truly the same and while not every level hits the same peak, their sheer uniqueness ought to win you over. One level you might be crawling through the vents of a building to get around the monsters, another one where there might be a elaborate key hunt through an area. Dont worry none of these are boring, Cyriak always does more with his concepts than it seems he can on first glance.
Then there is the last third of the map, there are sections here that are genuinely jaw dropping not only for Doom but for any FPS campaign I have played, I wont spoil what happens but fair to say, if you made it that far things will only get better, more insane and definitely harder.