Review by Colin Phipps

This episode is a true classic IMHO, but for all the wrong reasons. It's a total conversion for Doom 1; you get new sounds, textures, graphics, and even some modified sprites. That's not uncommon, you say. But what makes this TC stand out from the crowd is that it is undoubtable the worst Doom addon I have ever seen. Just for starters, the new sounds are complete rubbish, and sound similar to some of the samples that came with OS/2 or Win95 (can't remember which).

The first episode imports new graphics are imported to give the levels a unique feel; no other episode I had ever seen was this trash. The new graphics are a series of beginner Paintbrush images, with yellow smiley faces on; they look terrible. All the levels in the first episode are decorated almost entirely with these, so look completely rubbish. There are lots of misaligned and mismatched textures. There is massive tutti fruiti in many places. The levels are just collections of random polygonal rooms, like most beginner levels. Even the between-level screen has massive tutti-fruiti.

If anyone has ever seen the Duracell bunny game (a 3D RPG kind of like Doom, but with bright textures), this episode is like it, except much worse.

The play is equally bad. E1M1 gives you the BFG and maximum cells. The levels are all very short, I completed the entire episode in 10 minutes. The only danger is a cyberdemon at E1M5, who can be ignored. There is even a repeated level; E1M6 is the same as E1M5, but with the exit available even sooner (a wafer thin wall is removed).

The second episode had a hard act to follow, but managed to be even worse. E2M1 was the same as E1M1, but with the smiley face textures replaced by sane textures. What a relief I thought, maybe the first episode was just a joke.

Wrong. E2M2 was a copy of E2M1; it was identical, except a few rooms are removed. And E2M3 was an exact copy of E2M2; as was E2M4, and E2M5. Shock horror - E2M6 was a copy of E1Msomething, though with a serious Medusa effect at the start to add to its already terrible tutti fruiti. Then E2M7 was the same as E2M2,...

The third episode I didn't play, but browsing in an editor revealed that all of its levels were copies of earlier levels.

At least none of the levels crashed Doom as far as I remember. There is not much else in the way of redeeming points to this TC though. The only danger to this level's status as a classic is this quote from the text file:

This is an upgrade from version 2.2 and a MAJOR upgrade at that :) This is at least twice as good as v2.2 and now I can actually say that the levels are okay there not awsome though, yet :)

Well if v2.2 was that much worse... if anyone has a copy email it to me, that would be worth seeing ;-). To be fair, to the author's credit, the text file doesn't claim these are great levels. To conclude, this TC is strictly for hard-core Doomers who can appreciate the funny side of a bad level. Mockery has a tough act to follow.