Happy new year 2021. It feels like the moment something bad, anything bad, happens this year people will immediately whine on social media saying 2021 is the worst year ever even though it has only just begun. Of course, this is a stale joke and all but who cares right? New year, new time to do stuff like reminisce on old years or be a better person. Then again, look at what 2020 has done to the world. It has given us the worst year ever for multiple reasons that we all already know and don't need a real refresher on.
So on the subject of "worst" let's look at a part of the Doom community that is considered long forgotten, the "Worst Wad" cacoward. For about 7 years of the early cacowards the "worst wad" was given to the absolute worst of the bad lot, the ones that are outright terrible for any number of reasons. Why was it discontinued? That will be covered soon, but of course I'd like to offer my thoughts on the losers of each award.
First up is a project I never bothered to play: Doom: Rampage Edition. Apparently it was quite hyped, but turned out to be an extreme disappointment. Imagine a megawad where you get to play as a Doom monster, not to mention those who are familiar with the Rampage game franchise may be drawn in. So what went wrong? Well, why can your playable baron of hell use weapons? What's with the bloated file size filled with MP3's (illegal may I add)? What's with the lame maps? Where's the Rampage elements? And then you have the fact that whoever the author was, they were in the category of "shut up my creation is a masterpiece you can't criticize it" kind of person. This truly deserved the notion of a worst wad for all of these reasons.
Next, in 2005, we see that the worst wad is given to the large complex of 1994 wads, which honestly is quite a bad thing to put for the worst wad already. It shows that there really wasn't a 2005 release that was considered "worst" in any way. Furthermore, it gives a disservice to the actually good 1994 releases like the TiC releases and UAC_DEAD. I guess the writers at the time just didn't know what to really put here.
The next worst wad award culminated in some of the funniest drama I've ever seen preserved in a Doomworld thread ever. Nazi Auferstehung was sent to the site Doom Wad Station (my first site for downloading wads I may add) and proved to be Doom: Rampage Edition 2.0. It's got a premise (resurrected Nazi stuff), bloated file size due to illegal MP3s, an author with a strange and unusual attitude, and not only are the maps lame as hell, they were made in Slige! Not to mention the author put in copies of the Doom 2 IWAD, also illegal. The drama that succeeded the release was hilarious. What kind of person pretends to be mentally disabled and post by pressing enter every few words?
In 2007 the award was given to Glassyman for his contributions that deal with Gamarra. I've actually played these wads, and yes they are terrible. Glassyman seemed to make these off of some strange fanfiction he wrote about this dude named Gamarra that is his buddy or something. The "Gamarra's story" wads, strangely enough, are just simply bad 1994 quality wads with oversized rooms, stupidly long lifts, skinny corridors, and just all-around bad design. But afterwards this guy makes "Gamarra's Soul Story", which seems to not only be an extended fanfiction of Gamarra after you actually kill the guy, but Gamarra's Soul serves as a "take that, critics" moment, as Glassyman makes the player attack the forum users who have "wronged" him. Not only is it childish, but it portrays a number of respectable forum users as childish. So the worst thing about the Gamarra stuff is how it went from being lame 1994 stuff to just outright being insultive of the critics.
Arguably the most infamous worst wad recipient was UAC Military Nightmare in 2008. It's hard to tell what's the absolute worst thing about it. Let's see. The numerous one-off wads inspired by and even preceding UAC Military Nightmare? The purposely impossible boss battles? The vulgar messages thrown around? Perhaps it's the enhanced scripting that screws with game settings and renames the character? I'd say it's the fact that this, and many of its children that basically are made for Aquarius199 videos nowadays, all start out as if they were actually decently-made wads. But then they delve into the stupid crap, with vulgar threats, thrusting the player around a penis-shaped room with the SOMEMONG texture, and the fact that these are all made for nothing more than attention. I'll go back to these in just a moment.
2009 saw the worst wad go to...a detail guide. Apparently, this guide, made by a somewhat controversial ZDoom author, ended up being described as being way too much for a guide on detailing stuff. Players and critics are the most fickle bunch of people I see, as you never know what they want to see in Doom WADs. I don't think this guide is even used anymore. A lot of the time, most mappers, like myself when I used to map, either use their own judgments or they get their design decisions from how famous and well-recieved Doom WADs do it.
The final worst wad recipient went to a Zdoom weapon and enemy wad that I think is in perpetual development. Æon's of Death, as it's called, is one of a plethora of randomizer mods that randomize the enemies and weapons, and in this case, the notion is that all of them come from well-known first-person shooters. I've never played this, though I've played something similar called Classic Rivalry which had a similar sort of thing. It looks like when writing the worst wad write-up Scuba Steve was trying to piece things together when examining it, which, well, that's probably not a good idea when you're dealing with something that's essentially a randomizer. I really don't think Æon's of Death deserves to be the worst when compared to much worse randomizers, and there was in fact a reason to play it in some retrospect, at least to see what it actually contains and if it could be used in multiple mapsets. And yeah, there's videos where people played famous mapsets with Æon's of Death, so there you go.
After 2010, the worst wad was discontinued, for quite a number of reasons. What happened? Well, first of all there's the apparent rush of "Terrywads" that followed in the footsteps of UACMN, all with the whole "look at this it's good but it trolls you hahaha" attitude, plus the odd and apparent notion that they somehow WANT to be recognized as the next worst wads. That along with Doomguy 2000's contributions, which are loosely similar to Terrywads, but with direct intention to be seen as worst (looking at 1x1box.wad). The other main reason has to be that it was considered to not be appropriate to acknowledge crap anymore, basically. Other than the terrywads and such, why award something that is low-effort as worst? And there you have it, the tainted legacy of the worst wad. I'm personally glad it was removed because now it serves no appropriate purpose. If there ever was another one of these, it would have to be unintentionally terrible or perhaps had a load of things that no one was expecting or wanting.
No comments:
Post a Comment