Every time I replay all the IWADs, I say "Hey I haven't played the Master Levels in a while, I should do that!" and I always regret it every fucking time...

what an absolutely miserable experience this is. It's sad because there are some great maps here! The MLs starts off strong with some bangers from Tim Willits ("Attack" and "Canyon") and there's some real gems at the end too (the "Black Tower" is a real joy, and "Bloodsea Keep" isn't half bad either) but everything else is mid at best, and an absolute chore to play at worst.

Several levels have MANDATORY secrets (boy I sure do love wall humping every square inch of the map for 20 minutes to find a key I need to continue the map!) and Dr Sleep's maps are these weird symmetrical levels that violate a very basic doom level design rule, if you have symmetrical areas in your map, make each side have different textures so the player knows what part is which. Otherwise, you just run around in circles with no spacial awareness because every part of the map looks the same.

Jim Flynn's 2 maps are these abstract behemoths that I can never make heads or tails on where I'm supposed to go or what to do. They each take me almost an hour to play through. "Titan Manor" especially has some weird abstract puzzles that I always have to fucking google how to beat. It's a real slog.

The absolute worst map is "Mephisto's Maosoleum"(sic). What could have been of been a badass level (a giant Mausoleum filled with icon of sins and tons of monsters would be cool if we had actual room to maneuver and whatnot) is instead another awkward slog and is literally unbeatable if you run out of rockets. So unless you're psychic and magically know you need to save several rockets for the end, a first-time player is practically guaranteed to have to do this map all over again when they finally figure what to do! What a miserable experience...

Paradox by Tom Mustaine is a good map and a breath of fresh air thankfully.

My advice? Play Attack, Canyon, Paradox, Black Tower, Bloodsea Keep , and The Express Elevator to Hell, and skip the rest. Bleh

what i'm about to say might change within the next few weeks. maybe its just recency bias talking, or maybe i'm still hyped up on adrenaline after the insanity that is this games ending. maybe i'll think it through and find some fatal flaw that didn't cross my mind as of writing this review, but honestly?

i don't care.

as of this moment, this is the greatest game i have ever played.