Doom The Dark Ages is great, but OG Doom's fan levels remain the genre's apex

Have you played Doom: The Dark Ages yet? Good, isn't it? id Software keeps finding new places to take one of the oldest formulas in gaming, and the fact it managed to get both a quasi-medieval setting and yet another big mechanical change of direction signed off is just as impressive as the feeling of those elements coming together when you're immersed in Dark Ages' viscera.

Thanks to turning up on Game Pass on day one, this was, in fact, the biggest launch in the venerable developer's long and rich history. And there's only one problem with that: it means they had to make a game a lot of people would enjoy.

Doom: The Dark Ages onboards you skillfully, gradually unveiling each of its many, many combat mechanics. It throws a shield at you, then shows you how effective it is to throw that shield at some Imps. Then it ramps up the difficulty on a carefully sculpted curve for the next 21 levels, catering for those who want story beats (seriously, whoever guessed there'd ever be this much dialogue in a Doom game?), RPG-heads, and the tedious individuals among you who like collecting stuff.

Do you know who didn't consider any of that for a single second? Amateur level makers in 1994. And that's why, as great as The Dark Ages may be, I've reverted back to OG Doom 1 and 2 and their vast WAD collection.

This 30-year-old library of interactive outsider art includes some of gaming's most esoteric material. Deep cuts of the calibre even the thinnest-rimmed glasses wearers among Pitchfork's staff would approve of. Doom 1993's WADs vary dramatically in quality, but the collection's so heaving at this point that if you only ever played the best 1% of the lot, you'd still be playing for years.

That also makes it quite daunting. For a foot in the door, I recommend Brutal Doom. Most user-generated content for the original games takes the form of WADS (short for 'where's all the data?' God bless you, id), an officially supported means of packaging custom game files and importing them into the game.

Brutal Doom isn't a WAD in the strictest sense because it uses the original game's levels and focuses on gameplay changes. Be that as it may, I'm sorry but there's just no way you're installing Doom in the year 2025 and not installing Brutal Doom if you know what's good for you.

Creator Marcos Abenante, aka 'Sergeant Mark IV,' has been developing it for 15 years now, and his focus has been squarely on making Doom's combat more extreme. Barrels explode in preposterously large fireballs. Blood splatters off enemies like they're dressed in blood bags and drinking Bloody Marys. It turns an already raucous shooter into something with the swashbuckling recklessness of an early '90s censor-baiting video nasty, only it's turned up so far beyond merely 'violent' that it's impossible to take seriously. It's a must.

In a similar vein, Doom 2's recent Legacy of Rust mission pack is also mandatory for anyone reinstalling the oldies. It hails from MachineGames, features two fresh episodes and new official enemies for the first time in decades, and they will turn your cocky ass into puree.

Even before we get to the more offbeat experiences, id would never have been able to ship a game as violent as Brutal Doom, or as challenging as Legacy of Rust, which is what makes those things all the more fascinating. It's game development once you take away the constraints of commercial interest.

Ready for the hard stuff? Good. Firstly, you should know that many WADs use GZDoom rather than the original game files, so it's a good idea to have that installed first. And now, let's talk about Shadows of the Nightmare Realm by Alexa 'YukiRaven' Jones-Gonzales. What an incredible mood piece it is, drenched in foreboding lighting and inverted crosses. If you're into the Devil Daggers aesthetic, you're in heaven among these game files, not just because of the aforementioned visuals but because it's possible to stay alive for longer than 45 seconds here.

There are custom audio files, textures, and even weapons among this 2017 gem, which was still being updated as recently as November 2023. An incredibly professional bit of WADing.

For a different flavor of WAD that conveys the excitement that amateur creators had about their new capacity for turning real-world locations into Doom levels, Steve McRea's The Unholy Trinity is a brilliant nostalgia trip. Particularly so if you happened to study at Trinity College, because that's the inspiration for this one. The creator saw its gothic academic spires and decided they'd make for a brilliant corridor shooter, and while he's not entirely correct about that, this thing was made in 1994. Nineteen ninety-four. The appeal of playing it today is about being reminded of that 'let's try and make my house/school/workplace in the game' trend that pervaded the '90s. On those terms, it's one of the better WADs from the era.

From rather more recent work, I love the neon colors and avant-garde level layouts in Intergalactic Xenology 2 from Dreadopp and Lord_Z. Released in 2021, it's a trippy sci-fi festival of slaughter that's barely recognisable as related to its source material. And if you're wondering what the first Intergalactic Xenology's like, let me tell you this: I have no idea and haven't played it.

It's an extremely broad church of experiences, design approaches, and aesthetics. Some WADs are simply shootable punchlines, while others serve as portfolios for serious developers who go on to work on bigger commercial projects at development studios. Nightdive software engineer Lexi Mayfield, for example, is veritable Doom modding royalty, having made well-regarded contributions to the community since as far back as 2002.

If you're curious yourself, I recommend starting with ONEMANDOOM's absurdly comprehensive collection of Doom WAD reviews, complete with screenshots. You'll also find installation instructions and compatibility notes there, among tons of other useful info. Doing God's work, etc etc.

None of this makes Doom: The Dark Ages a bad game, or indeed anything less than excellent. But I'm glad there's still a thriving corner of the internet where the peerless fundamentals of Doom's combat are being experimented with in such a subversive way. Where creators aren't thinking about catering to psychographic audience segments or considering in-cycle purchase intent. They just want to express themselves, and the best of those expressions is a library of WADs that will keep me going for many years to come.