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I’d pretty much lost my faith in single player conventional Doom over the last couple of years. I’d completed Doom and Doom 2. Then one day I found the community – and a whole bunch of levels with it. While the good ones kicked the original games’ collective ass as far as architecture went, they lacked the sheer excitement and game play that I got all those years ago when I first picked up my shotgun. These days I mainly bury myself in TCs and Deathmatch levels.
Until now. One WAD has restored my faith in what Doom can be – and that WAD is the Hell Factory Hub 1. This is, without doubt, the most fun I’ve had playing Doom in absolutely ages – the buzz I got was equal to first discovering Deathmatch or Batman Doom – it’s that good. Admittedly, it’s not 100% authentic Doom – it’s a ZDoom only level set. However, this is the best use of the port I’ve seen so far. Sure, there have been wilder tricks pulled – Cyb’s Bullet Train, for example – and WADs with 3D bridges and ACS scripting coming out of their ears. It’s just that the tricks never seemed so integral a part of the gameplay before. The hub system works brilliantly to create the effect of all 4 levels being one giant base, and the scripting adds a real atmosphere. What’s also remarkable about the Hell Factory is, despite being so state of the art, how old-school it feels. It’s like being back in the Hangar, six years down the line. The architecture captures Romero’s military base style perfectly – and then improves on it. The game play’s also fantastic, with monster placement and numbers being sensible – it’s not as stupidly difficult as some levels that are kicking around, which allows non-Doom gods (like me) to have fun without getting our assess kicked in the first thirty seconds. It's also worth mentioning that even though this is essentially a single player map, it works pretty well as a Deathmathcing arena if you're stuck for proper maps... In short, this is absolutely perfect single player fun, and has the best use of ZDoom that I’ve seen yet. Download this masterpiece now. |
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