The game’s title screen
I started this playthrough of Freedoom’s campaign multiple months, maybe even over a year ago. It’s a thing I’d play here and there and slowly get through the different episodes. A lull in work, some free time and so on.. everytime a good opportunity to play a bit of Doom.
A while back I played through what was at the time the full “official” releases of Doom, meaning Doom 1, 2, Final Doom, Master Levels, TNT, Plutonia, Nerve and Sigil. That was well and good but it did make me notice some of the poorer designed levels of namely Doom 1, 2 and the Master Levels.
Going from there I wasn’t sure what to play next but eventually settled on going through the Freedoom campaign. I hadn’t looked at Freedoom (the truly free version of Doom; it is completely open and all assets are freely usable) in a very long time, and since then the singleplayer campaign had been completed.
My way of playing Freedoom
It’s worth noting I set up a custom pwad of Freedoom rather than playing the full on iwad version (if you don’t know the Doom modding lingo it’s fine don’t worry about it). Namely I kept, of course, the maps, but also the music and textures and hud. The rest I stripped out, so no Freedoom sprites or weapons. I just don’t really like them at all, so I just wanted to play it as a map pack for Doom. The custom hud arrangement is mostly just because I have a whole personal setup using GZDoom.. but that’s not important.
The first three episodes were all mostly impressive. Given that the levels were made in a more modern era than Doom originally was, and with the modding community’s growing expertise, it makes sense that they are a bit more detailed and ambitious than Doom’s original levels, even though the goal is to stick with the etos of the Doom 1.
You have your two tech-base episodes, the second one being a bit wilder. Accurate to Doom 1. You have your third episode set in Hell. Again, follows Doom 1’s logic. Levels all ranged from OK to Pretty Great, with no big letdowns. I will say the secret levels were all very good! Where it becomes a different thing, however, is in the fourth episode.
Double Impact’s title screen
Freedoom adopted another map pack, Double Impact, as its fourth episode. I’m not sure what the process was here, but this map pack was released standalone and then reworked into Freedoom’s fourth episode. Consensually of course.
What this means however is that Freedoom has no direct Thy Flesh Consumed equivalent. Double Impact is an episode 1 replacement, albeit with some fairly brutal (for episode 1 standards) maps. Thy Flesh Consumed was more of a Hell But With A Different Aesthetic episode in Ultimate Doom, featuring a lot of wood and marble, but now here we’re back to episode 1 vibes. I guess that’s the biggest shame with Freedoom’s campaign.
As for Double Impact itself, as stated the maps are hard (for an episode 1 replacement) and very large (again, for episode 1). Some of the latter maps took me quite some time to complete, and while they sometimes echo certain maps from Doom’s first episode, they’re mostly original. And they have some truly devious traps.
All in all, I’d say Freedoom had a very pleasantly surprising singleplayer campaign. I always liked that Freedoom existed as a free approach to Doom but never really liked what it was doing, thinking it was all fairly ugly. Now, I think only the sprites are ugly; the textures, maps and also the music are all stellar. I’d recommend Doom fans try playing it the same way I did.