A mod for Doom II: Hell on Earth
Icarus: Alien Vanguard (ICARUS.WAD) is a 32-level megawad released in 1996 by TeamTNT. It was developed as the collective's first freeware release, after TNT: Evilution was picked up for publishing by id Software for what would become Final Doom. The first level sees the player commandeering a shuttle and flying it to the infested exploration cruiser, the Icarus. From there, the player must fight through the ship, regions of the neighboring planet, and unsafe simulations to cleanse the demonic threat. A sequel, Daedalus: Alien Defense, was released in 2003.
Time Played
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average
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to finish
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to master
Reviews
Soul
If you like monotonous environments and confusing switch hunts, you’re in good hands with Icarus: Alien Vanguard. I don’t know how many levels take place Icarus starship but it feels like two-thirds of the mapset on the ship’s silvery interiors. Even when the campaign heads into gothic or hellish biomes, the texture use is still very boring.
On a handful of levels I ended up noclipping my way to various keys or the exit because trying to figure out progression was too hard to grok. I’m sure if I took my time I would have been able to figure out how to get the yellow key in Map 8, but I didn’t want to spend too much time playing this wad so I skipped that whole trial. Same goes for finding the secret exits on Maps 15 and 31.
This is definitely a megawad from 1996 because– god– sometimes figuring what to do involving combing entire maps for a switch or trigger. Exploring levels isn’t a lot of fun either. The map design goes for believable/lived-in spaces but combined with the sparse details and unintuitive layouts, the naturalness of the environments work against it.
This gets me thinking: is this what other people feel when they play TNT Evilution? A lot of my problems I have with Icarus are problems people have with TNT, although I don’t remember being so confused and frustrated in all my times playing the team’s most famous megawad, though.
I played with Project Brutality which made this campaign zesty enough for me to want it to see it through. I can’t imagine finishing this vanilla, though. What good can I say about this one? I guess the level design and functionality could be worse. The music’s decent. Enemy placement is good and even on UV, is pretty tame. I think for the most part, it’s not surprise that this early megawad (which was featured on Doomworld’s 100 Top WADs of All Time) has mostly been forgotten.
On a handful of levels I ended up noclipping my way to various keys or the exit because trying to figure out progression was too hard to grok. I’m sure if I took my time I would have been able to figure out how to get the yellow key in Map 8, but I didn’t want to spend too much time playing this wad so I skipped that whole trial. Same goes for finding the secret exits on Maps 15 and 31.
This is definitely a megawad from 1996 because– god– sometimes figuring what to do involving combing entire maps for a switch or trigger. Exploring levels isn’t a lot of fun either. The map design goes for believable/lived-in spaces but combined with the sparse details and unintuitive layouts, the naturalness of the environments work against it.
This gets me thinking: is this what other people feel when they play TNT Evilution? A lot of my problems I have with Icarus are problems people have with TNT, although I don’t remember being so confused and frustrated in all my times playing the team’s most famous megawad, though.
I played with Project Brutality which made this campaign zesty enough for me to want it to see it through. I can’t imagine finishing this vanilla, though. What good can I say about this one? I guess the level design and functionality could be worse. The music’s decent. Enemy placement is good and even on UV, is pretty tame. I think for the most part, it’s not surprise that this early megawad (which was featured on Doomworld’s 100 Top WADs of All Time) has mostly been forgotten.
Currently imagining a universe where id Software chose this for Final Doom instead of TNT Evilution, and Doom players to this day regard "that one level with the Pain Elementals and the chained-up bucket of KFC" as the hardest official level to pistol-start.