| Community
Chest 3 - Various Artists  I cannot put my finger on
why, but I have a soft spot in my heart for megawads... as I believe most
of the community does. A couple years ago I awarded a Cacoward to
Community Chest 2 for its collection of 32 wonderful levels and awesome title
screen. Two years later, and just in time for Doom's 14th birthday,
we were graced with the third Community Chest installment. If the
last two were any indication of quality, then Community Chest 3 should be
a great megawad... and it does not disappoint.
 Like any community collection, the maps are,
obviously, very mixed and range from outstanding to decent. Many of
the great maps come from an impressive roster of modern mappers...
Rottking, Dutch Devil, Thomas van der Velden and many more. This
time around, Community Chest mappers took more advantage of Boom special
tags. You will see your usual display of scrolling dummy effects put
to good use in this collection... not quite Lutz insanity, though.
Be sure to check out all the levels—there are some real gems to be played
in here. If you enjoy megawads (and we all do) then you really cannot
go wrong with Community Chest 3.
Epic
- Deadall
Maybe it's just me, but you don't often see Egyptian-themed
WADs like Epic, and I sure as hell wouldn't mind seeing more of them if they were the same quality as
Epic and Equinox. I guess I answered my own question there, since trying to make a set of
Egyptian-themed single player levels with the same level of quality as Epic would make most mappers
break down and cry, myself included.  As typical with Eternal's maps, Epic oozes out more action than
you can throw a stick at, and I'll be damned if MAP05 didn't live to the title of this WAD, because
goddamn is it effin huge, and well... epic, obvious pun aside. There's also some really cool usage of
Boom features, and creative use of flame torches to simulate run-down cars being caught on fire;
isn't that a cool enough reason to check out Epic?
Ultimate
Torment and Torture - Tormentor667
A
difficult part of gauging "best mod" is quantity vs.
quality. Should a good megawad be rated higher than a single amazing
level because there are more maps? I make calls all the time regarding
this, and sometimes it is just a feeling that something is great.
Ultimate Torment and Torture really pushes this line. UTNT is largely
a collection of all the previous Torment and Torture maps into one
tremendous map. Tormentor saw fit to add improvements to the maps to
create one large, seamless project. Despite many of the levels being
previous releases, I felt that Tormentor put in a staggering amount of work
to renovate the maps and add transitions, cutscenes and specific GZDoom
effects to really make this project great. In addition to the changes
to old levels, the new levels that have been made specifically for this
project are absolutely stunning.
 Ultimate Torment and Torture feels
outstandingly "epic" in scope. The levels are big, the
firefights are hard and the story is... well, minimal. The final map
of UTNT is what stands out the most when deciding this map as one of the
year's ten best. The final level is an all out assault of an enormous
mountain that, at its heart, is firing a giant beam into the sky. You
battle waves of vicious monsters, both new and old, while you climb the side
of the mountain to reach the heart of the infestation. This level is
huge, capable of slowing my old machine down at times. The final Boss
chamber is equally impressive, a creative mix of mid textures, stacked
sectors and textures. Tormentor made a staggering number of maps this
year, including Austerity, KDiZD, UTNT Invasion, UTNT, City of the Damned and
even contributed to Community Chest 3. Out of all his releases this
year, Ultimate Torment and Torture is his masterpiece, the best he has
produced thus far. It is certainly one of the top 10 mods this year...
even if most of the levels are improvements of old releases.
The
Outer Darkness - Varun Abhirama Krishna
We conclude our top
10 ten picks for the best single player WADs of 2007 with The Outer Darkness, an E4-inspired level
that, like The Dying End, delivers constant action that is guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your
toes. Unlike The Dying End, the reason why it's so action-packed is because of how cramped the rooms
are and the amount of monsters in each room, giving the allusion that the map is more difficult than
what it really is—when you don't have much leg space to dodge fireballs getting flung towards you, and
those asshole shotgunners shooting through small windows.  It doesn't help that this is a Doom 1 WAD,
meaning there's no SSG to clear out the rooms in half the time it takes with the shotgun. But I guess
that's one of the main appeals of The Outer Darkness in that you don't get much breathing space, and
there's no SSG to clear out the Cacodemons as easily. For that, The Outer Darkness gets a thumbs up
in my book, and is definitely worth being in the top 10 of 2007!
|
2007
Cacowards
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Other Awards
RUNNERS UP
Demons of Problematique
Dennis "Exl" Meuwissen
Wonderful
Doom
Wraith
The hardest part of doing a yearly award ceremony is not recognizing
works that were good... but not a part of the top 10. Demons of
Problematique is a very good wad, and Wonderful Doom is one of the best
vanilla replacements I have played. Wonderful Doom was adored by the
community and heralded for being a brilliant reimagining of Ultimate
Doom. I will certainly take flak for not listing it in the top 10, but I
wanted to acknowledge both maps as worth your time. |
