Doom Musings: The legacy of H2H-XMAS

Happy 2020 guys. This year I promised to do something different this year in my very last blog post of the year 2019, and sure enough, I will expand this blog to include anything that belongs to Doom under a new tag. That would be known as Doom Musings. I muse over things such as notable PWADs, as well as wad concepts, ideals, mapmaking things, new features, all because I have been a member of the community for quite some time that I got to talk about all this at some point in an expanded blog post. The fact that my VERY FIRST POST said I would talk about Doom yet it's been two whole years and I talked about everything that isn't Doom tells me I gotta start doing that. So this will certainly be a new year resolution for this blog.

The 26th annual Cacowards showed a nice, long essay regarding The Roots of Doom Mapping, highlighting certain projects that have changed and evolved the way Doom modders modded their maps. There's sure to be some legacy in many of the projects listed there, but I feel a disturbance in the Force! What other notable Doom WADs were made in the years that have been sidelined, and what exactly was important for them?

So I will look at a gem I have always looked back on, known only as H2H-XMAS, perhaps the most well-known Christmas WAD out there.

Why is it the most well-known Christmas WAD? Well, how many other Christmas WADs do you really know of that the Doom Community snorted out? The only one I can think of is 32in24-14, a project I created a crummy map for, it was one of the very few 32in24s that bothered with single player Doom, giving us Christmas-themed map names and a few actual Christmas themed maps.

H2H-XMAS on the other hand is an old WAD from way back in 1995, which is 25 years ago right now. It is certainly a legacy WAD, containing 32 Christmas themed levels, and while the overall pacing of the WAD is completely uneven, it gave us Christmas music to listen to, Christmas-themed graphics, the prospect of actually playing as Santa Claus, as well as a few sprite replacements that are meant for the usual Christmas festivities. The WAD is one of the early examples of a team effort (for those in the community, most multi-level WADs are usually in three categories: One-man megawad, community project, or team WADs), with a team known as the Head 2 Head (H2H) getting together and compiling this 32-level megawad for those who wish to play it.

That's basically all there is to H2H-XMAS in terms of actually new stuff, sans the levels. The levels will feature traditional Doom 2 gameplay, with no new monster behavior to speak of. The levels themselves are horribly aged at this point. There are no moments of level design that stick out, not even when you decorate it all with cute Christmas decorations does it hit its stride. The majority of the maps are carryovers from H2H's previous workings, then littered with Doom monsters to give them some singleplayer playability. To point out a few blatant offenders:

The two maps above are MAP26 and MAP27, respectively. The first is an arena map, and when you play it, it's completely wooden. Not much to go for is it? It is notoriously small in size. And so is MAP27, which looks less deathmatch-friendly because as you can see, it's just several square rooms.

Here is MAP13 and MAP28, respectively. Again, they are symmetrical arenas mostly made for deathmatch, but given monsters just to allow for the singleplayer feeling to come in. There is a lot of openness the these particular levels which makes them frantic. Plus they are a little better in the design department.

Finally we have MAP17 and MAP12, respectively. Both of these maps seem reasonably designed from a birds-eye view, but if you look at MAP17, it's got bits of radial symmetry and loads of interconnecting paths that scream reskinned deathmatch map. And it is, along with the ones before it. And MAP12 is here, because, well...

Those who have played H2H-XMAS will definitely understand the true crux of the megawad, its gameplay. The community has lavished the megawad known as Hell Revealed for its idea of making "hard" gameplay but neglecting to bother with the aspect of designing it well. However, H2H-XMAS not only was released before the legendary Hell Revealed, but did much of the same thing, only in even uglier locales. You will quickly notice that the most common enemies met in H2H-XMAS are the revenants and shotgun guys. These two enemies are prevalant in just about every map especially in the middle maps and especially MAP17 and others around it (MAP15 is another blatant revenant-filled map with entire courtyards dedicated to them). The arena maps shown in the pictures above may look like garbage to the modern Doomer's eye, but they are a load of fun to prance around in as you deal with enemies that are scattered throughout the grounds. Because of that I outright adore this WAD, it is a very nice WAD to unwind some time in by playing some pretty tough outings despite any and all design choices being uneven and the WAD in general being uneven.

So let's talk about the rather infamous MAP12. Just looking at the layout is one thing, you have these terraced areas at the southeast, an open yard to the northwest, and some weird steps to the northeast. In that area, the starting points are these weird octagons, and they overlook that yard there. You can expect it alright, but the northwest courtyard will have plenty of enemies in it, with the hitscanner enemies being the biggest concern. That's not to leave out everything else. The majority of this level's architecture is orthogonal and quite banal, but in MAP12 you won't notice it as you combat the numerous imps, revenants, hitscanners. It's so easy to die here, but on the other hand it is not as easy to die. One thing H2H-XMAS does is give you more than enough supplies, so even if you must backtrack to keep alive, you'll stay healthy unless you're exceptionally bad at supply management.

Remember when I said H2H-XMAS was a team effort? Let's look at the authors and their styles here. The most notable author here is Dave Swift, a mapper who has made some levels in Maximum Doom I have played. His style is "throw shotgun guys in most places, keep many areas populated". He's not the best when it comes to level design, but if you look at the level layouts above, guess what, the latter four were all by him. So he can definitely create arena setups and make them memorable in gameplay but not graphics. None of his maps are posted in pictures here, but Eric "Geezus" Spry created the first few levels. His levels are short, basic in architecture, and basically they lack the tact that makes the other ones shine. Then there's Pavel Hodek, who created the best two maps in MAP06 and MAP07. Why these two maps are the best is that they look better than many others but also feel like they work excellently for both singleplayer and deathmatch. They are both not symmetrical and have many areas that don't look interesting, but seem unique when put up against Swift's symmetrical designs and the others as well. Another mapper was Zach "Zeek" Lawson, who designed MAP31 (a rather lame level that definitely wasn't tested), MAP18 (the hockey rink) and MAP20. None of these levels are as fun as the others. Finally, you have all the other levels not designed by Lawson, Swift, Hodek, or Spry, with one author contributing only one map each.

It's all varying in quality and makes the whole megawad obviously uneven, but it still manages to be playable to all. The more I look at H2H-XMAS and its obvious imperfections, the more I think about the imperfections in the level designs of other FPSs, including Doom itself, and whether or not the authors decided to screw it and just make something weird. It was quite simple to see. Some authors are simply better at making memorable levels than others. Some have created more intricate level layouts. And some offered layouts that just seem like they could be silly easter egg levels. And H2H-XMAS has a lot of those. I mean, Doom has E2M9, the crummy level of only three rooms and a weird gimmick. Duke Nukem 3D had the Lunatic Fringe, Spin Cycle, and Tier Drop levels, all radially symmetrical gimmick levels. Heck, even Wolfenstein 3D had its silly gimmick level in the Pacman secret level and that wonderful absurd death diamond of a secret level for Episode 4.

So really the legacy of H2H-XMAS stands two-fold, it's a wonderful example of 90s imperfection, and it is a holiday-themed levelset. The stuff from the 90s is wonderfully outdated and the imperfections just hold a weird charm to them. And theming something for the holidays was quite the thing back then.