Hellbound

5/5

Simply one of the best megawads. It is a 2012 title, and runs on limit removing ports. The main aesthetic is meant to be realism in some format so each section of each map does represent an actual utilitarian use for either envirmonment or story telling purposes. One not is that it is HARD. Because of it's late design era in the 2010s, the HMP difficulty is similar to 90s UV, but not quite Plutonia level except on UV. The WAD is more inspired by TNT Evilution type exploration and puzzles rather than as a pure combat jaunt. Thats not to say it skimps on combat or even slaughter. The late maps are very combat heavy, while the first 20 maps are general TNT style. Map 29 on HMP is packing over 1000 monsters. Its get grueling.

Thats probably the main down side is that those late maps are definitely meant for combat as compared to the rest of the maps. And that pace change becomes evident as soon as you hit it, even matches the silent environmental story you are follwing throughout the entire megawad. Hell turns more into a combat hellscape rather than the large war torn maps of city scape you encounter in most of the maps.

Regardless. This mapset has one of the best opening maps I have ever played. From the first key encounter to combat on the streets. And it just gets better and harder from there.

Hellbound is also very balanced for low difficulty play, so it is definitely worth checking out even as a novice doomer.

Another plus side, the entire thing is Vanilla style so it is 100% GZDoom mod friendly and even the late maps with high monster counts tend to run good under the likes of Brutal Doom and other Combat mods. There are very few or almost no Custom Textures, so it is also very friendly to environmental enhancement mods too.

I respect the endeavour (one-man megawads are a herculean feat, no matter how you spin it) and the author's dedication to showcase his love for the classic FPS games of the nineties through a swath of references, but unfortunately, despite the occasional glimpses of brilliance, the combat in Hellbound is an absolute slog. For better experience, play with a mod - one that preferably makes your arsenal a bit deadlier, so you can enjoy both the fights and the sights. Without enhanced armaments, however, you might just end up quitting early over the tediousness of clearing the gobs of meat thrown your way one stunningly decorated rectangular hallway/square-shaped room after another. 

Quite honestly just painfully dull. I played up to about map11 and all of the maps were nice-looking but vaguely city shaped beige things. Monster placement seemed scattered and random and combat mostly devolved into slow rolling everything with the super shotgun because you barely get ammo for anything else.

The Real Doom 2 Is Here :)

I played it with Brutal Doom,it was fun ! 

Hellbound is better than the Original Doom 2 to me,big maps,excellent level design,varied gameplay and atmosphere maps after maps,i think that some levels went further than what the engine could display.

Sometimes there is also a Doom 3 feeling about the enemy encounters,the rooms with less light or totally dark ones,i liked that mix of old school doom and sometimes more modern doom,so excellent work.

Hellbound is a must play,one last thing,i couldn't play the last level,it was laggy as hell,even by changing things,it was still laggy and unplayable.

This wad is incredible. Could very well be my new favorite (although I still SLIGHTLY prefer Going Down). This wad's level design is amazing and if you told me Romero himself designed some of these, I would not doubt it. Genuine thought and care were clearly put into every single part of this wad and I cannot recommend it enough. Stop reading this review AND GO PLAY IT!

Also, I highly recommend playing this with Brutal Doom. It adds a lot to a already amazing experience!

Stop reading reviews and download this magnificent wad and start playing, You'll love it!!

Played this a few years back and I still remember a lot of its memorable maps.

I started playing it again last week and I enjoyed playing it as if it is the first time.

I'm breaking up with Valiant to start my new love with Hellbound. Best DOOM mapset that has been made. I have replayed it more than once with Brutal DOOM Platinum and Final Doomer(Hellboundguy class) and I still can't get tired of it. Cities, hellish maps, tech bases, I just love it. I also really like the combination of E2M1, E2M2 and E2M3 in Map19. Amazing stuff right there, I strongly recommend this

Hellbound is a huge megawad comprised of several different scenarios such as tech bases, big cities, sewers, hellish maps and so on. I found it overall very challenging and took about 13 hours to beat it. The things I've liked on this megawad were: big maps with tons of enemies (some maps features over 500 monsters), a lot of ammo through the maps and NOT cramped gameplay which is a plus for me. The things I haven't liked: Map 25 sucks hard, shitty progression and very confuse; the majority of archvile enconters are unfair: they're used without cover for the player, teleporting instant and dealing unavoidable damage. My favorites maps were = 14, 16 and 31. Overall, I recommend this wad to anyone who likes a challenge and don't mind big maps, some lasting more than 30 minutes to complete. 

Hellbound Review

- My second time playing this with a year in between.

- UV Difficulty

The Good:

-  Has puzzles, which I love!

-  Progressive Maps, as in the next one continues from the previous and the Maps are not linear.

-  Excellent progressive degree of difficulty.

-  Not a slaughterfest, but not easy either.

-  Plenty of everything to keep you alert, yet alive.

-  Loads of secrets – most are clever and rewarding.

-  Awesome Hellish themes in some of the later Maps.

-  Later Maps are huuuuuuge; Map 29 (Ascension) must have taken a helluva long time to create, just as the Author states in the description of it. Use your Rocket Launcher and/or BFG when you get to it. The rest of your weapons are obsolete at this point.

The Bad:

-  Absolutely disliked Map 30. A whole lot of running around in the “poison lava” pit.

In Short:

All and all, Hellbound was a blast. You’re going to work for the keys from Map 21 and onward because they aren’t just lying around.

Map 17 (Starport) and Map 26 (Forbidden Archives) were my faves. I remember reading "Doomworld’s Top 100 Memorable Doom Maps" that Starport was ranked #80. So there ya go!

Despite disliking Map 30, I’m still giving this WAD 5 out of 5 Stars. One Map is hardly enough to deduct from the other 31 awesome Maps. Definite replay value. Bravo! Thanks for making it!

After 13(+some if counts restart after death/finding keys/get lost time) hours of playing this mod(in 3-4 days of play). I'm speechless now after finished Map30, and it's good after I found it's not really vanilla IoS fight, even I still use god mode to complete it since it's still too busy for me(in UV).

Well, most of levels really nice, architectures, detail, gameplay are good, city/tech base maps looks good, and hell maps looks awesome...nah, I just doesn't like some of levels, like Map26, you have to go everywhere in the begining areas or you'll run out of ammo in middle part of level, then find you have too many ammo when reach to the end of level, sometimes I just don't know where should I go first, or where is the GODDAMN key/switch...nonlinear level is good but sometimes I just get lost because of that...not sure if detailed design caused that, but at least I have automap.

Map31 and 32 are so special, Map31 is VR style but with HELL in it, if you complete Map31 without reach the secret exit to Map32, will go back the end part of Map15, but only some lost souls. But if you found the Map32 and finish it(of course it the Wolf3D theme again, but something different!), you will still go back to end part of Map15, but this time some arch-viles will like to burn your ass! I like this.

I play this WAD with HBFM29.WAD loaded(decided to load that after read the TXT file) so the Map29 is a little too good and have some low fps for my computer but I can accept that. Too bad it just a well-setup slaughter-style map(but not perfect working, 6 monsters just failed to teleport into the play area), I feel a bit boring after some waves but still complete the whole level.

I would give this 4.5, due to some flaws but I think I enjoy most of this WAD, yeah...I know some doesn't like this but I don't care, everyone has his/her own taste, and that's not my business(unless it's way too over).  Recommend for whose like detailed/complex DooM levels.

A monstrous megawad, one of my new top favorites. I love how venturing through this one feels like a new take on Doom 2's Hell on Earth descent, but this is just far far more detailed and engrossing. There are even a few sections in maps that give nods to classic Doom sections or even Doom 3 at times. It feels "modern" in a strangely amazing way with how detailed the architecture and aesthetics are. I also loved the connected exits and continuity, further giving it a huge sense of scale and adventure. The tech/base aesthetics are some of the best I've ever seen and I loved the Hell maps as well. A huge project from a one man army here and the consistency in design shows.

There are not a lot of traps or spawns in this one which seems to be an issue some people take up with it maybe coming off a bit easy, but I personally don't mind a difference in flavor like that. The body count of enemies is still extremely high. That said I did play this with Complex which maybe made encounters more interesting from start to finish, a mod that can break and unbalance things, but it worked really well here. I ran continuous weapons too and on HMP. My only negatives are that I could not figure out the switch hunt or red key in Map19. I also did not care for Map29, which was repetitive. But the pros outweigh the cons! Overall I clocked in about 12 hours and as most say this is a huge megawad with giant maps, so you might need to be in the mood for that. Definitely a must play for the masterfully detailed maps.

Oh my god, that was best and longest mappack that i ever played with Project Brutality 3.0!

I find myself at odds with the consensus on this megawad. My main issue is that most of the levels are just way too over-designed for their own good. A bit of complexity can be a good thing for Doom maps (Back to Saturn X seems to hit the sweet spot), but the levels here just sprawl out of control, often without any rhyme or reason. There are numerous instances of switches that will affect the level in ways that just don't feel logical. This isn't helped by the fact that the maps are extremely dark, and it's all too easy to miss seeing things that should be a lot easier to see than they are. 

I acknowledge that the author put an incredible amount of work into this project, and the texture work is very impressive, but I really didn't enjoy my time spent with these maps. Sorry. 

It's pretty good if you like bad things. I only like good things, so it didn't really click with me.

Done with these settings:

- Crispy Doom 4.1

- Hurt Me Plenty.

- Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset.

- Saves every 10 minutes or so.

I think this must be one of the most awesome wads in terms of aesthetics. Combines tech/city/canyon/hell in very good-looking layouts, beautiful details, and realistic environments. Signposted streets really stood out above everything in my opinion. There's also, for the most part, low light, sometimes difficult to see where to go, but that adds suspense which is cool. Appreciated the non-linearity in most maps and one of the things I always look for in wads, you are able to come back to previous areas, even the start point, in every map, so slow 100%-ers like me could tag everything without problem. 

Combat is ok. There are very little encounters that proved to be a real challenge. In fact, my death count must have not exceeded 10, 12 maybe, and at least 6 of them were due to bosses-tier. In general, monster-clearing is straightforward. Not many traps, but that's fine for me. A mapset doesn't have to rely on traps everywhere to stand out. However, as for teleporting ambushes, I found that in many levels, monsters would teleport/pop up very early, sometimes filling a new room before I could get there, turning into easy grinding. Map 31 for example, there were times that enemies teleported so early that I had to fight them via door-camping. Infighting is prominent in later maps, I like this feature so no problems.

Secrets are fine, for the most part, easy-medium to find, including some obscure ones with no clues (at least non-intuitive) like in map 26. Probably what didn't convince too much was hiding the SSG in many maps, but that's not a big issue. On the other side, good use of computer panels as secret switches. I also liked the use of iwad midis as well as custom ones, nice to hear Death Bells in map 06.  

My favourite maps are 02, 05, 11, 14, 31, 16, 20, 24, 27, and I would have added 29 but the insane lag made it hard to perform myself in the map. Nevertheless, it gave me a nice final battle with two big spiders dominating a bunch of weakened cybers. Map 15/31/32 secret paths looked and played awesome. Map 30 bugged me a lot, while I could do it without relying on god mode, I had to turn idclip on to kill Romero's head since the central ring failed to raise, or I didn't understand the gimmick... anyway, if it is wasn't that, it was the tedious obligatory lava type 20. The rest of the maps are good too, maps 12 and 21 were so so for me. 

Overall, a good wad, better in visuals than in gameplay. Had fun after all. I'll give this a 7/10  

Lots of work in this one.  Levels are huge and very well detailed.

I had the privilege of experiencing this WAD along with the Doom Wad of the Month Club where it was analyzed to death and pretty fairly assessed as an awesome piece of work. I recommend perusing our write ups for in depth reviews but you can't really go wrong with this one. It's got it all. Atmosphere. Action. Slow. Fast. Modern architecture with hellish details. You can't go wrong.