DOOMGUY914
joined
Just a guy who's always loved Doom.
Reviews
Original review from 10 years ago:
This is easily the best doom wad I've ever played. The map designs are so creative and the gameplay is intense, especially on the hardest difficulty before Psycho. The graphics are great as well. Can't wait for episode 3 to be done!
Edit: 11/6/2021
While we'll likely never get a third episode, I can't let such a small review do it justice.
This mod won't be for everyone. It's VERY difficult compared to a lot of mods out there. Some of the hitscan corridors will turn a lot of people away, but a great many "pros" at Doom will love this one.
The map designs are initially what brought me in and kept me hooked. Eleven years ago I couldn't even fathom what maps the Doom community could produce. While of course, they'll never reach the level of design of modern games, the locations you'll visit in this mod are unique and gorgeous for their time!
Hell, they're still in the top rankings for me, and I've played hundreds of custom megawads/maps! As a matter of fact, I'd blame this mod for my love of atmospheric vistas in all of the great Doom mods/megawads.
The weapons and monsters don't always make sense, but they don't really need to. Certain maps hold different themes and utilize different monster placements. The second episode specifically starts you out in a Medieval time period, but you'll quickly recover your lost arsenal of firepower!
Now this mod isn't perfect. It still has quite a bit of roughness around the edges. A prime example being a BFG Turret that you have about 1 second to kill before it kills you in the adjacent section of a room. There's honestly no defending that design. Sorry, C n B! =P
Another example would be the frozen monsters in a map that require you to pass certain trigger lines before they activate and become killable. Cheese-able with the right amount of TNT and Molotovs, but still pretty annoying.
I'd imagine these situations in the maps could have been handled a lot smoother, but keep in mind, this was made BEFORE GZDoom became the staple of the modding community.
The blend between 3D weapons/decorate, and regular sprites isn't too jarring to take away from the core Doom experience. Plenty of intense combat situations and lots of runnin' and gunnin' will make many of you feel right at home.
With a bit more gameplay balance and the return to purely sprite-based graphics, this mod would surely become less notorious and become a well-known gameplay mod the likes of many other well-received mods that have recently been published.
I change my suggested score to an 8/10, but keep the personal opinion that this will always be a 10/10 mod, that sadly never got the exposure and resources many successful mods were granted in its place.
I hope someday we will see an Episode 3, or someone will come along and continue in the spirit that Cobalt and Butcher nurtured. Psychophobia is a messy masterpiece, that I encourage people to endure the ugly part of, to see where it truly shines.
It's not too different from the original doom maps, but it's added scripts break almost ALL mods you try playing it with. Not really worth playing, unless you are playing vanilla gameplay style. Also your own music wad will be overwritten unless you use a mod that allows you to customize it on the current map you are playing. This mod doesn't have a lot to offer and you can find many other map remakes that don't break so much due to script errors.
