HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 2022 – DEAN OF DOOM – S3E8



Happy Halloween and welcome to Dean of Doom, the show where we give grades to classic and contemporary Doom wads. Why? Because ranking things is fun. Just like last year, we’re going to have a gander at several sawed-off Hallowads…that is, if I remembered to clean out that arch-vile nest in my basement.

Link to the wads:

Wormwood: Expanded Universe
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/117856-wormwood-expanded-universe-boom-comp-halloween-maps-by-ribbiks-and-me/?tab=comments#comment-2212025

Morbid Autumn (Doomer Boards Project 29)
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/117873-dbp29-morbid-autumn/?tab=comments#comment-2212430

Wormwood ]|[ : The Horror
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/125529-wormwood-the-horror-boom-comp-halloween-maps-by-ribbiks-and-me/?tab=comments#comment-2408584

Special thanks to @DCG Retrowave for providing the MIDIs! (Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xHzJ94Fji7psz45rF_Bhw)

Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/mtpain27

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49 thoughts on “HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 2022 – DEAN OF DOOM – S3E8”

  1. I haven't played any of these, but they all look quality. I have Wormwood EU downloaded on my laptop, just never got around to it. I'm surprised I didn't play that DBP since I had started playing them around that time. And I had heard of Comatose, but never realized exactly what it was. It looks super disconcerting. Another high quality episode!

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  2. You need to check out some of the other work Lainos has been involved in. Some of the levels rival Comatose, easily. Sacrament and A.L.T are both amazing. I tell anyone who will listen about these WADs. They are both listed under “The Top 25 Missed Cacowards.” They both deserve to be recognized. Hill I’m willing to die on for sure!

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  3. Great production and great wad choices, I don't know if I have the guts to beat the Wormwoods, but I'll definitely try Comatose.
    Did you play "The Thing You Can't Defeat"? Not the Halloween kind of scary, but still pretty scary in its own way.

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  4. Aww yiss!! Comatose is one of those masterpieces one has to experience at least once in our lives. It's an entirely different and imho more effective approach to the sort of religious horror experience that Doom was ostensible supposed to be on it's earliest days, and it's certainly unforgettable.
    To me this one map is firmly set in my top 3 of all time forever, alongside Lost Civ's River Valley and Jade Earth. I cannot even imagine the amount of work that must have gone into it's creation.
    In a certain sense, it's the only Doom map I can think of that can induce in me that subtle skin-crawling liminal dread you get in empty Half-Life 2 maps.

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  5. Actually, Chernobyl is in Ukraine, not Russia.

    You probably remember it as Russia because it happened during the USSR times, which Ukraine was part of too.

    Fun fact, when the USSR fell most of their nukes were located in Ukraine, which made them the second biggest superpower in terms of nuclear weaponry, and they agreed to dismantle them in exchange for being left alone by Russia.

    Something something orcs, mordor, Sauron

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  6. Ah, good ol' bag of treats (and some tricks)

    A wad I like to play in this spooky time is Stranger Aeons, which as its name implies is Lovecraft inspired. It has 5 episodes (Ultimate Doom style), so you'd have to dedicate a whole video to it, but it'd make a great Halloween episode.

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  7. "What is a drunk arachnotron you ask?"
    Is immediately flash banged
    Gonna have to pull out my white cane after that one.

    Really loving how comfortable youve gotten in your narrations and adding more humor into these. Always nice to see more of the guy behind the screen.

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  8. Sorry for commenting twice, but the plague doctor graffiti sprites from comatose are from a Russian game name Pathologic, and without typing out paragraphs upon paragraphs of text about the game, I can just say this:

    I think its your kind of game.

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  9. Awesome halloween special mate. Comatose is an amazing map, feels like something straight out of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I've never played a doom level that makes me feel such emptiness and loneliness, as well as paranoia. Maybe one day I'll get round to beating it entirely. Happy Halloween to ya!

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  10. Now that I've taken a chunk out of Comatose, I feel it's worth saying that your summation is entirely appropriate, and I can completely understand how people felt discovering The Mucus Flow in 2004. It is a beautiful piece, one filled to the brim with ominous oppression, and constantly demanding that the player is fully engaged with it. Software lighting, though laggy at points where you have view of the skyline, makes it to where the shadow monsters seem to be fading into existence, forming around you as you progress. Every significant piece of progression, every key, and every heavy duty weapon acquired was a "fuck yes" moment, flexible for infinitely many players with how many routes are possible. The fact that it goes in so hard on its strengths is staggering, and it will stick with me forever.
    So yeah, it's a pretty good map.

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  11. (Haven't finished the episode yet… Gonna play the last map for myself first, but wanted to say) Imagine my surprise to discover that those switches in "Nevermind, there was a backdoor" helped with the fight! I've always struggled through it without it and paid dearly. I'd be mad but the one fight in "Stabbed, with a sword" still killed me way more. I will be back after I play the last map!

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  12. I’ve been a bit nervous to try out wormwood, but after seeing this, I might give all the entries a shot. Putting it on my bucket list. Not sure about morbid autumn though…the final wad, though….yeah, it’s high on the bucket list now. Brilliant review as always.

    Also, time for the 2nd edition of “Pointless facts for DOD”: We can add Stabbed with a sword as the 5th map to get valedictorian status and class president status alongside halls of the damned, vinculum gate, gutter grave, and of course, the mucus flow, with it being the 3rd A+ Valedictorian to get class president alongside the last 2. And for those keeping tallies, we have 2 map 4’s get an A+ and Valedictorian in just this video.

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  13. 11:48 Same here! Scythe II got me into the genre of gothic rock as a whole. Also, after watching your and Doomkid's playthrough of Plutonia, I saw that you liked MAP 13: The Crypt's track ("Tomb of the Unknown Soldier") in the Plutonia MIDI pack. And I thought you'd like to know that it's in fact a midification of Soundgarden's "Fell on Black Days" which is much beefier than the MIDI 🙂

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  14. Comatose is one of my very favorite Doom maps, but I never noticed that the fist attack in it is swapped to the right hand until you pointed it out. It's even in some of Lainos' other works (which I would very much recommend, especially 5till L1 Complex and Doxylamine Moon).

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  15. Hope everyone enjoyed Skeleton Appreciation Month!
    I'm glad that Comatose got showcased – its awesome when Doom mappers try something super ambitious like "I'm going to make S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in Doom" and while that's pretty much impossible, they totally captured that late-00s slav shooter mood.

    If you're looking for more sawed-off WADs (or mid-sized WADs for a double/triple feature) and you don't mind GZDoom-only stuff, I just released Infested E2, bringing the WAD up to 7 maps.

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  16. If memory serves correctly, Comatose is part of a series that includes Sacrament, Doxylamine Moon: Overdose and 5till L1 Complex, in Sacrament, you´re the last human on earth after the Rapture and the ones left behind where turned into demons, and every map after it is just you trying to make your way in the now abandoned earth…

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  17. Wow, great Halloween episode, Mt Pain, that last wad was as creepy as hell. And may I say that I just love your channel, you've rapidly become one of my essential Doomers shoulder by shoulder with decino, Dwars, coincident, etc.

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  18. If you like the Sisters of Mercy, check out the following:

    The Daughters of Bristol
    Clan of Xymox
    Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
    London After Midnight
    Bauhaus
    Type o Negative
    Ritual Howls
    Corpus Delicit
    Rosetta Stone

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  19. Vampire Killer's chill Tower of Dolls remix is just 👌🏻

    Maybe a good candidate for another Sawed Off Wads episode be Phocas Island 2 – good atmosphere WAD was interesting adventure gameplay.

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