Review 1 - Wow

A long time before I even had the idea of making this blog, I played a lot of wads, as I've said before. And when the time to actually write the first review came up, I wondered what wad should be reviewed first.

Should I write about a Mega Wad? Should I review a Joke wad? Maybe a series of wads?

After considering many of the wads I have played, I decided to stick with reviewing a joke wad. I decided to review Wow.

(Wow can be found here: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=9955

Since quite a lot has been said about wow before, I am getting the description of it directly from the Doom Wiki:

The map is comprised of a single room with a BFG9000 and some ammo for it. There is no exit, and the main feature of the level is the "illusio-pit": a pit with a fake floor effect hiding it situated under a quivering torso hanging from the ceiling, with a cyberdemon in it. The pit is thus invisible until the player falls into it, at which point much of the screen is filled with hall of mirrors effect because of the missing textures. The text file accompanying the WAD gives the following explanation for the pit:

A cyberdemon has escaped from a lab, where they are trying to find his weakness. He was injured by a marine, which was made short work of, and he was trapped inside a illusio-pit.

Similar "illusio-pits" have been used in parts of Joke WADs such as Mock 2: The Speed of Stupid and The New Adventure as tributes to Wow.

After reading this little juicy nugget of information, I got interested in trying out the wad for myself.

I downloaded the wad and played it myself (I actually managed to kill the cyberdemon there! Be sure to see the video posted below). Unfortunatly, once the Cyberdemon's dead there's no way at all to finish the level. Since I managed to kill the Cyberdemon I assume that I 'finished' the level.

This wad has already been reviewed on Honest Gamers. Here's the link to it. It's certainly worth a read. http://www.honestgamers.com/systems/content.php?review_id=7514&gametitle=Wow

I do think, however, that Gary Hartley was too harsh in the review. I cannot say that I liked the wad, but at the same time I cannot say that I found it to be a waste of time, either. I have seen many comments on the wad and people keep giving the wad 0 or even 1 star out of a max of 5. I find this to be a little unfair: this wad is a joke wad and as such is not meant to be taken seriously as a story wad. From the second I finished its download and read through the text file, I knew it was going to be something rather...unusual.

Not surprisingly, this Wad is number 2 in the list of Top 10 Infamous WADs written by Andrew "Linguica" Stine and Mike "Cyb" Watson for Doomworlds celebration of Doom's 10th birthday.

I had forgotten this detail when I decided to review this wad. I'll be sure to review the other 9 Infamous Wad's at some point.

Okay, then. I guess it's time for the Grades.

• There was no new content in this Wad so it shall not gain or lose points on this.
• There was no multiplayer in this Wad either, but it would not really make a difference anyway. You can't exactly have a good deathmatch in a bare room with an illusion pit.
• Difficulty would score the game some points. The game scores 6 points for this.
• On the other hand, it gets just 2 due to gameplay. It simply has no point. Even if you manage to kill the cyberdemon, you still are not able to finish the level or get out of the pit (if you fell or jumped into it).
• The architecture was the one hard thing to assess here. The room itself was rather bad. On the other hand, I liked the fact that there is a corpse hanging over the illusio pit. You can more or less know where to expect it. I guess i'll give it 3 points for that.

Since New Content and Multiplayer don't gain or lose any points, I'll only find the average based on Difficulty, gameplay and architecture.

6+2+3 = 11

11/3 = 3.666666666666666

Therefore, this wad will get a 3.6