1024: ABC Edition by Ilya "Joe" Lazarev is a "megawad" for vanilla Doom II. Why the quotation marks? Let's talk about it.

Difficulty: 6

While maybe not the hardest damn wad out there, this one does put up a fight, though not necessarily in enjoyable ways. On most maps in this wad, you are immediately pitted against an angry horde and have to act quick to annihilate them and force some breathing room into the situation. Being a 1024 style mod, there generally isn't a whole lot of room to maneuver, so you'll be doing a lot of sidestepping in tight quarters. Occasionally, you'll run into some Cyberdemons and a single Spider Mastermind. But by the time you do, you'll already have the BFG, most likely.

Not a whole lot more to add here. Lots of enemies in tight fights. Nothing too challenging.

Design: 3

Here's where the mod really suffers. In principle, all of the maps are designed by a letter of the English alphabet. Why not something like Chinese or Korean? Eh, it doesn't matter. Point is, the maps are laid out in a 1024x1024 box (if you aren't familiar with the 1024 series of maps, spoiler alert). But what really makes this one stand out, and not in a good way, is that in most maps, it's just a box. Box after box after box. No areas to peer out, no landscapes to at least make it seem like you're in a building or hellish arena in a field of flames... Just single sided linedef boxes.

For the most part, fights are laid out pretty well, aside from the hiccups of being in close quarters to some pissed off imps and revenants when you start the levels. However, Lazarev does something incredibly... I dunno, lame might be a good word for it. Now, I realize that the mod is based around the English alphabet, which has 26 letters, and Doom II has 32 maps. So the author scatters "skip maps" throughout the wad - five in total, bringing the map count to 27, NOT 32 (hence "megawad"). I'm sorry, but this is just sloppy, and comes across as lazy. This could easily be solved with a MAPINFO lump for ZDoom users. And yes, the skip maps are 64x64 boxes where every wall is an exit.

Detailing is practically nonexistant. It's fine that the author wanted to focus more on gameplay elements than detailing, but this kind of comes across as 1994-ish. And also, one of the maps has a really ugly HOM on a staircase in Mount Pain II (see screenshot). Come on, man.

Playability: 4

I really wasn't sure what score to award here, but some bad design choices leads to an unwinnable scenario on MAP30. There is no rocket launcher or any rocket ammo on this map. At all. This makes a pistol start impossible, due to Romero's head only taking splash damage (BFG doesn't do that, so...). On top of that, if you play the entire mod from start to finish, you've likely exhausted your rocket ammo, which means after all that, you can't beat this mod. Period. Unless you cheat, you're just f*cked. Which is a real shame, because aside from that, the final level isn't that hard, even with three cyberdemons and two icons.

Overall (Not an Average): 4

I really didn't enjoy this wad. With the 1024 concept, this really comes across as a "me too" wad, without the flare. Execution seemed very sloppy, and being unable to finish the mod kinda leaves a bad impression. I can't really recommend this one, unless you're feeling particularly masochistic.