site created and maintained by @Chris Hansen 

   Reviews  Ones  Brett Johnson  2001 GDR  2002 GDR  2003 GDR


 

 P A R A N O I A

By Gurkha Boy gurkha_boy@yahoo.com paranoia -needs zDooM

 

A thorough piece of work! Its actually that simple! "Paranoia" shows the tremendous work efforts of this author. He spent a lot of time on making these levels, and it shows. Not only that, but he's done a good job too.

Roaming around these military installations and laboratories isn't exactly a simple matter. Although incredibly fun it sometimes becomes annoying running around these huge structures looking for e.g. key. They are indeed very big and very non-linear. It does give the levels a certain sense of reality. Every structure, area or room could easily be found anywhere in real life. This is also due to ton of new textures that has been put into the wad. Most of them taken from Half-Life, but also from Quake II. They look extremely good and works perfect together with DooM II's original. Being so big and complex they are a nice change in pace when it comes to the more or less over abundant amount of One-map single player levels with a too easy approach to things. "Paranoia" breaks all the unwritten rules and brings to DooM the gameplay seen in most new First Person Shooters like Gunman Chronicles or the king of them all Half-Life. Don't count on blazing through "Paranoia" in 5 minutes, but prepare yourself for a rarely seen DooM add-on of very high quality.

Proof of the author's attention to detail and an example of his tremendous efforts is already seen early in the level pack. The office buildings are without a doubt the best I've seen to date! Chairs, desks, filing cabinets, computers and candy machines placed neatly and carefully to make a the player feel like he's actually walking around an office building. Again the cool new textures helps make the illusion complete.

One thing -perhaps the only thing- that irritated me is the fact that you feel like a dwarf when facing some of the new enemies in battle; the grunts are almost the double of your size, and if you aim at them looking straight ahead the shots hits them somewhere around the kneecaps. If the author could have fixed it then he probably would have, because its too obvious a mistake. Its a good thing then, that you have a wide variety of new weapons to kill them with. Again some of the best replacements I've encountered. They look and sound good, and adds that extra something to "Paranoia". Regarding the enemies he's really selected some great new monsters for us to fight against. They also help to make it all that more fun. Although DooM's/DooM II's monsters are the template for all enemies seen in FPS's today, they lose a little of their scary factor for every wad you play. So the rough, gray and semi-dark feel of "Paranoia" actually makes up the perfect environment for these new enemies. A Baron of Hell would have been totally misplaced in "Paranoia".

To sum up; if you're low on money and are desperate to feed your PC with something yummy, then download this wad. I'll bet you'll enjoy it!

 

Score: 88%