Review by DrCrypt

Interesting. ZDoom levels always impress me simply because I'm not as used to the tricks as other people might be, and every time I play a ZDoom level, I wish that better, larger, and more complicated levels were made for it.

Xorg 1 is pretty basic stuff and probably wouldn't have interested me very much if it were simply a Boom level, but it makes nice use of a lot of pretty ZDoom tricks and is a fun small level to play. A small complex in the brown-brick theme, it is pretty plain, with nothing particularly ornate about it. Standard fodder is a healthy roux of sargeants, imps, demons, cacos, revenants, and hell knights. There are some really interesting parts: an underwater fight against two cacodemons, which is the first time I think I've ever really needed to swim around in a ZDoom level. This section also benefits from a really pretty new colormap. There is also a very large, sweeping Temple to the Cyberdemons, where there are about 8 frozen cybs on pedestals, a 3D bridge, and a pit full of demons and cacos. The cyberdemons never spring to life, so don't worry. Then, you enter a temple, and through an ACS sequence, are warned not to hit the three switches. You do, you're teleported into a pitch-black room with two archviles who keep on phasing in and out, kill them, open the blue door at the beginning of the level, dodge a phasing revenant, and exit the game.

I didn't notice any texture misalignments, but I never do in such an omni-textured level. Ammo is pretty scarce, actually, but health is abundant enough for it not to be a problem... I started off the level sloppy, got whittled down to 4 percent health, and managed to beat it, although the archvile point sort of annoyed me (for good reason... archies are hard enough to kill in the open without their phasing in and out of existence). The ACS is nicely done and there are some good points. Overall, xorg01a isn't anything special, ornate, or complicated, but its fun for the ten minutes it takes to beat and uses some ZDoom stuff nicely.