Edge is a total conversion mod for Doom 2 in which you go insane and on a killing spree after a terrible life with 6 levels, 3 different weapons, and a unique noise and speed core soundtrack.
Late last year, around September, 'edgeywaddev' released the first version of his DOOM II mod, "Edge TC". I reviewed it, and put it up on the ModDB page. A month later, a second version is uploaded to ModDB. Until now, I never actually played it, and as I expected, it's no different from the first version - at least, not visibly. This time I'm playing on how the game was optimized to play; no Doomguy face, and in OpenGL rendering. Let's see if my opinion changes this time.
First off, Edge is extremely short. I'm talking around 10 minutes, less than 10 minutes, really. This is because in the maps, there's no real incentive to go through everything. There's no one set path for where you're supposed to go, which I suppose would be fine if this game were more open world, but it also makes it so you don't really have to shoot and kill things unless they're trying to kill you. But, y'know, killing things is what a massacre game is for, so I tried to kill a lot of the civillians. My issue with killing civillians, though, is not only that it drains your ammo, but it's incredibly unsatisfying. Clunky, slow animations with hardly any movement, they look somewhat juxtaposed to everything else, and even with the ketchup mod included with the mod's download, I never found much satisfaction or excitement out of draining my ammo for some optional pedestrians. I'd argue it's only worth it to kill the cops - especially the SWAT team and Elite Guards.
The spritework is...okay. It's flat, really. Nothing wrong with being minimalist, but it's boring to look at most of the time, and as I mentioned before, it has a tendency to look juxtaposed with the higher quality guns and gore. If you're gonna make just most of it pixel art, then make all of it pixel art. A mix could work, but I wouldn't say that the mix worked well here. The shooting sprites and animations especially look sloppy; the gun firing sprites literally just put an orange circle near the barrel. It doesn't look explosive, it just looks lazy. Speaking of laziness and flatness, how about the map designs?
The map designs are, you guessed it, lazy and flat. Almost all these maps look like something I'd make on a superflat Minecraft world at age 6. They're so...generic. Not ugly, just boring, like the spritework. It's so bland that there's almost nothing to say about it.
Sprinkled throughout the mod is a plethora of issues. Major unbalance and frustration with the enemies and their placements, even in the normal mode, making me just wanna run to the obvious end of the level without having to deal with them, unsatisfying-to-kill enemies and pedestrians, et cetera. Not only that, but this doesn't deserve to be called a 'total conversion mod'. A total conversion mod would replace absolutely every asset with something original, whether that be reskinning it, remaking it, doing anything to it to call it your own. It's obvious to tell that there are many DOOM II assets everywhere. If this were a TC, that wouldn't be the case. A bit nitpicky and lies more into the difficulty and or skill of the player, but the amount of healing items is just unbearable. They're too few and far between despite what feels like hundreds of enemies being placed in every single level.
One thing I did particularly enjoy though, was the decent variety in guns, and their use. Every gun felt pretty alright, nothing was super wrong with how they felt, my problem with them only lies in their sprites. I think a good enough amount of ammo is placed around the map, and the enemies drop a good enough amount of ammo. Fair.
Edge does not much more than scream and shout about how it's a clunky, unbalanced baby's-first-DOOM-wad. It shines through in just about every aspect, and if some more time and care were put into optimization for different displays and rendering, enemy placement and damage, item placement, animation and spritework, et cetera, it'd be a pretty decent mod. As is, though, I wouldn't reccomend it much.
EDGE.
A wad where you play as Cryaotic and go on a rampage... for sure. I'd like to say this game is a joke, but that'd be giving it too much credit.
-=TITLE SCREEN=-
....what the **** is this?
-=LEVEL 1=-
MAP01: NEIGHBOURHOOD
This is the only part that's great! Solely because the choice of using "I STAPLE TAPEWORMS TO MY *****" by Passenger of **** was absolutely hysterical.
So I had absolutely no clue where to go in this. It's a mess of just citizens and police officers. IT TOOK ME AN HOUR TO FIND THE EXIT. Because what looked like the exit, you couldn't enter! YOU HAD TO PRESS THE USE KEY ON THE EXIT TO GO TO THE OTHER LEVEL. Map design at it's finest, ladies and gentlemen.
-=LEVEL 2=-
MAP02: COLEDGE (real clever)
It's a school. A really poorly built school. First of all, what's with this demented ******* layout? Has this person ever seen a school in his life? Is this what a homeschooling student thinks a school looks like?
Music is annoying as ****, Took me TWO FULL HOURS to find the exit. Dogshit.
-=LEVEL 3=-
MAP03: POLICE STATION
Not only is the music choice here grating, but it's also greatly uninspired.
Was easier to find the exit, but HOLY **** the time it took to even get to the exit without dying was abysmal. Learn how to ******* design a level. I'm sure they teach you this at col-edge... haha...
-=LEVEL 4=-
MAP04: CITY
I had to cheat through this one.
I have a headache.
(it's pretty fun if you use iddqd, enable fastweapons and give yourself everything though...)
-=LEVEL 5=-
MAP05: NIGHTCLUB
This music is some CrazyBus ****.
Had to iddqd my way through this one. Level is cramped as **** and way too many enemies. Not much else to say about this one.
-=LEVEL 6=-
MAP06: MILITARY BASE
The music isn't as bad. it's tolerable... just uninspired and boring once again.
Took way too long to find the ending once again. Got bored and cheated my way through it. I'm okay with that.
-=WALL OF TEXT=-
Is this the developer's suicide note? Is homeschooling really that bad?
-=LEVEL 7=-
MAP07: HOME
Thought this was a cool concept. You're taken back home and forced to walk through the aftermath of all the destruction you've caused to get there... only you can't really see it I guess. Just the blood red sky while a pretty harrowing ambience takes over.
Unfortunately, not much is done with this concept. You walk back to your house (which the walls are all blacked out, but not the furniture?) and you're locked inside, the door telling you that you deserve to be all alone. It's like the developer thinks he's pulling some sort of genius psychological horror fuckery, it's really pretentious
-=OVERALL=-
****** stolen graphics,
Uninteresting and drawn-out level design,
Decent-ish soundtrack sometimes,
Over-all I wouldn't say this is worth playing at all.
0/10. Just play Postal.
m-m-m-MID!
Terrible story, awful gun recoil,
The soundtrack are just dog ****.
The sprite is good though, but
The AI behavior are really stupid. Typical i hate my life and I will kill everyone. Overall very edgy,
not recommend at all
THIS is the Doom wad that I'm taking about!
This wad is just awesome. I've never seen a wad created this way. Running around the city as a depressed person and killing everyone Postal 1 style? Probably the first wad that was created this way. I enjoyed it. As for the models, they aren't perfect, but still awesome enough. (As for the NPC's, I kinda felt like going on a killing spree in Undertale) The music is pretty good. I don't know from where and when you got this kind of music, but I loved every goddamn second listening to this. It just fits so well into this massacre. The weapons are really god-like. Sadly, there's only 3 of them, but the thing about them is that they are pretty nicely done. The sound of weapon shooting is very good, too. Probably the only con is that this wad is too short. I know, making levels in Doom is pretty annoying and a little hard (especially with the custom models), but 6 levels (at least for me) is too short. You could put some more levels, for example a Mall or a Gallery, hell you could even put Park in there! For the finish of this review, I just want to say that this wad is great. One of those that you can actually play and enjoy it. I just wish that there would be even more versions of this wad with more levels, weapons and NPC's.
Great job on making this wad,edgeywaddev. Really great job.