Id's compilation of two community-made MegaWADs from 1996, each with a separate story taking place after the events od Doom II. Plan was to fill the gap after Doom II and before Quake but due to legal hoops it only saw daylight a week before the latter released. I think I actually played this not long after that with some snippets from both expansions coming back to me during this playthrough.

Evilution was created first by numerous mappers from TeamTNT (The New Technology), a group with epochal influence on the classic Doom community that thrives to this day. Some members that the olden days are still around. Originally it was to release in late 1995 as a free WAD before Romero opened his wallet the night before and bought out the project. That caused some ruckus among then young community but it's tough to judge a bunch of pubescent teens for selling out for $38,925.00.

Plutonia was a passion project of two Casali brothers (Dario and Milo) over the course of 4 months at the request of id after they were impressed by their earlier work. It gained notoriety for its gotcha difficulty which is now a regular occurrence is so-called big mods. Rumor has it each brother bought a new car with the id check. They continued their careers in the game industry thanks to their remarkable feat.

Not off to a good start I'm afraid, it would have been a stretch to say otherwise even in 1995. What makes it bearable is relatively easy difficulty and having its own original music which pales next to original but at least it's something new to listen.

Main drawbacks are oversized, underdetailed, overpopulated, confusing and straight out unfun levels. Starvation of Rocket ammo and BFG for the first half made dealing with the hordes a real slog. Not much care went into their placement I might add. So it's pretty much Shotgun and Chaingun for half of the WAD and forget about nice in-fighting setups. Secrets ignore Romero's design principles for the most part so that too took away from the joy. Wall-humping every surface decorated by the same textures without any clue over and over again isn't much fun.
Good levels only manage to reach average heights before fading into oblivion. First and last third could be called passable with everything in between being like watching paint dry. First secret level has a critical bug where a yellow key is missing due to being flagged MP-only so an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mini-patch is required. Might be included in August 2024 re-release but I'm not sure.

It feels like they accepted anyone with a computer as a mapper and though the motivation was sky-high, the talent was not. Still it was the early days with only basic editing tools and no one to learn from. Internet was on Dial-up and all that so yeah, who am I to judge.

Starts surprisingly strong and manages to stay that way for 3/4 of the way. Levels are much smaller but more detailed and flow more naturally. Notably less enemies but they're deadlier and far better utilized. In fact they pull no punches right from the start with Arch-Vile welcoming you with its open arms on the first level already while Zombiemen do not even appear until level 7. Luckily weapons and ammo are generous. Secrets are fewer but are decently telegraphed for a change so hunting them felt rewarding. Music uses tracks from the original which isn't bad but there exists a community MIDI pack released in 2013 which can be loaded as PWAD for your hearing pleasure.

Toward the end level design quality drops when they become more and more TNT-like. Secrets and ammo still hold up but levels and fights not quite. Plutonia also suffers from dumb point-of-no-return gimmicks where you are either forced to exit or get locked out from earlier portions of the level (missing out on kills/items/secrets) and it's not obvious until too late. Evilution does it too but only once or twice, it's like a damn ritual here.

Despite its flaws it's of considerably higher quality. I dare say the first half is even better than the original. Casali's shared vision, passion, focus and experience produced a cohesive package despite there being only two of them compared to TNT's +100. To be fair it began as a commercial undertaking to begin with (while Evilution was plucked from the community after being done) so high quality was a goal from the start and lucky for us they delivered.

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I hadn't mentioned many annoying design flaws both WADs suffer from which prevent 100% in post-level stats screen so over time my notes on how to deal with such oddities grew and grew. Really hate it when Alt+Tabbing becomes an integral part of gameplay for all the wrong reasons. That said the impact Final DOOM had on the community over its 30 year history made me switch my tune so I gave it a stretched Positive. Modern source ports literary owe its existence to it. So many prominent community WADs are works of art and it could have never happened. In that lies its legacy.

Package is archaic, relying on old DOSBox which is also set up poorly, and is no way to play this. So I borrowed Launcher.exe and its config from DOOM + DOOM II rerelease and renamed it to DOSBox.exe (default target for Steam) then edited config to point to my Crispy Doom setup. It gets me Steam goodies, 30 years of modern QoL, and vanilla compatibility. That's how you run this marine.

W plutonia