ZDoom

• I remember Icarus saying that the encounters were pretty tedious. I agree. Putting a bunch of pinkies and barons everywhere was kind of fucked up, in my opinion - but luckily I rarely ran out of ammo to deal with them. It just made the pacing of the gameplay really slow - especially if you fucked up, which you will - a lot. I will say that the telefrag teleporters for the Cyberdemons was real clever though - I liked that.
• The maps themselves are very beautiful. There is some linedef abuse going on - but it's nowhere near the point that it would cause GZDoom to buckle under the weight. The entire mapset is very playable, even on older machines, and that is something I can definitely appreciate. Those of you who know me know that I do not appreciate it when mappers brag about their 200,000 linedefs in a single level. It's obnoxious and extremely overdone. (Sorry) I will never argue that the end result is impressive visually - and props to you for that - but it's unplayable. That's just how it is. Luckily for us, Romero did not cross that threshold.
• I am not going to play this to the end on stream. I know I probably should, but I just have no interest in playing the later levels without cheating. I ultimately want to finish it, not save-scum my way through a 5 hour slog. No one likes a stream with cheats, so I won't be broadcasting that.

Rachael wrote:I just have no interest in playing the later levels without cheating. I ultimately want to finish it, not save-scum my way through a 5 hour slog.

Spoiler: my opinion and impressions

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Didn't like it. I admit I went into it with a great deal of scrutiny. It's hard for any one person to match the quality of a masterpiece they worked on with a team over two decades ago.
That being said, I think there are actual design flaws that I thought unlikely given this is Romero's work. I've recently listened to some of his speeches on youtube about game/level design, and much to my surprise he seemed to violate some of those rules in these levels. (like (not) providing a constant sense of direction and feedback on what the switches do)
The eye shooting gimmick.. I guess it's okay to have some puzzle elements but at times I felt like they were edging on being a secret that is required to make further progress. It was especially infuriating to have a constance of danger while having to search for ways to make progress where the level didn't organically feed you a direction... like in E5M5. We actually got stuck on that level, somehow the walk trigger that was supposed to lower the wall in front of the blue door didn't work (probably co-op specific), we wasted 40 minutes trying to press use on every inch of the level all the while taking lava damage. Ugh.
In general the levels often felt cramped and a number of encounters involved corner-peeking a tough monster in a tight hallway with very little ammo. Also not a fan of the use of crushers, least of all the ones that are designed to catch you on the backfoot. Playing with "doom" sector lighting mode turned out to be a mistake as I struggled to see anything in major portions of some of the levels. (my poor, poor eyes) I found the levels to vary quite a bit on pistol-start friendliness. It took us 2 accidental exits before we learned what the exit looks like, which is unlike the exits in the old levels. The cyberdemon fort in E5M9 can eat my shorts. We got lost numerous times.

Alright well, you can tell I'm venting a lot of negativity here because we happened to have a sub-par time with it. We had to use a level skip to get over E5M5 and we also jumped over a few others because survival mode made us lose patience as we died just an inch away from exiting. (our own fault)

I had a growing negative disposition which made it harder to notice the good parts, but here are my thoughts towards that:
The levels were fairly organic looking and abstract, much in the style of the original levels that we know and love. A few times the strong contrast in lighting did create some epic silhouettes with barons of hell and such.
Some of the levels had decent "scrappy" moments where we had to conserve ammo, find secrets and save on health, though I would've preferred to be less reliant on the pistol.
Aside from a few hiccup areas, generally the level of detail was fitting with a gameplay oriented design rather than trying to look pretty (could've done with a few less cracks in the floor)
The midi tracks were pretty good across the board, had a few bangers. I imagine the paid version's music is probably awesome.
And I guess we were entertained free for an evening so, thank you John!

Rachael wrote:Uh, I'm sorry that not everyone worships Romero like a god? That kind of thing is very cult-like, and if anything is "sick" that's truly much closer to mental illness than not liking his work.

There is no denying he's had a massive influence on a lot of our lives - but that's no reason to put him or his works on a pedestal. He's just a man who happens to be pretty cool. And makes maps. And a professional game developer. That's about it.