GOODWAD
THE BOTTOM LINE: Goodwad is "a smoking water gun."
Hello! Welcome to the first instalment my review series. Today we’re gonna be looking at Goodwad, released by msx2plus in 2023.
Goodwad at large is a further evolution of this speedrunner oriented mapping we’ve been seeing grow in popularity over the last couple years of the community. Many comparisons to NoYe, the D5DA series and Poogers can be found here, to the point that Goodwad even has a pretty direct homage to Poogers and, as evidenced by the release thread, was inspired by D5DA3.
I’ve praised this elsewhere before but what sets Goodwad apart from these already very good wads (Poogers) is its general style and aesthetic. Granted a fair amount of these maps do use vanilla textures and don’t feel too distinct from a few maps you might see in other wads, a lot of it comes down to the always fun music choices (several of which they composed themselves) as well as when there are custom textures, they either seem to draw from an unconventional source or are made by msx themselves.
Msx’s talent as a musician and an artist shine through more than you honestly might think when you consider what this wad derives from, if you’ve played NoYe or D5DA the first colour that pops in your head is probably just that brownish STARTAN2 colour, when I think of Goodwad I think of beautiful watery blues, deep dark browns and blacks, poisonous greens, basically a somewhat elaborate way of saying the wad experiments with a lot of visuals, even more than something like Poogers which while not entirely being STARTAN2 doesn’t usually spend a whole lot of time to make something look pretty.
The gameplay in general, l think it fares best with the platforming. It’s funny, some of the biggest platforming ideas are in MAP01 and 03 of all wads, Grip is an excellent starter for the wad, pretty much an instant rush of adrenaline I always have to play a bit of whenever I fire up Goodwad, and Running Prime95 in the Background, a somewhat bizarre map with an intentional lag mechanic making it much harder.
On the topic of that map, Goodwad’s sense of humour in the maps is completely on point, certain highlights include the delightfully simple Watch This in which a crusher outside of your control kills several thousand enemies causing pretty immense lag for about a minute, or the excellent duo, Nirvana 2, a bizarre and unfulfilling parody of just the first room of Doom II’s Nirvana, and Nirvana 3 immediately after it, which looks like something similar until you actually move, revealing a beautiful and intricate platforming map made out of Nirvana chunks. Actually while we’re here, shoutouts to Nirvana 3. It’s my favourite map.
Of course it wouldn’t be a Goodwad review if I don’t talk about OneMo. Goodwad’s approach to difficulty is to turn the central difficulty into effectively a challenge mode, where the gimmick is every map contains exactly one monster. There’s a lot of fun ways this is implemented, the amount of maps that have zero monsters actually make a lot of them more challenging, such as Tickling The Catboy’s Tail now having an awkward Arachnotron in the middle, or I Come From The Future With Throogers having a Hell Knight walk around the perimeter, making that map much, much harder than it already was. As a pseudo-shitpost difficulty I think Onemo is pretty sick, some of them are really silly and some of them are really really elaborate, I’m not gonna spoil it but load up Betrayed in the Octogon on Onemo and you’ll see what I mean.
Probably the only part of the entire wad that I’d say falters a little bit is with the combat. None of the maps I’d say are outright annoying or anything, combat related or not, just compared to how fun and unique the platforming is especially I’m not really getting much new stuff out of the combat and I generally think maps like Daoyin, Veilpiercer or Collapse are some of the weaker entries. In most cases with the combat-centric maps I’m more interested with the visuals, especially in Little Satellite, She Ain’t Dreamin Blue Skies No More or Up, they’re never like bad or annoying or anything, they’re really just a bit basic but compared to some of the hilarious and innovative stuff going on with the platforming it’s a bit of a misfire. 25 Trillion Macro & 51 Trillion Microplastics Litter Our Oceans is a good example of a kind of map I’d have liked to see more of in Goodwad in the combat department.
Really though the only reason I have an issue with the combat in this wad is because msx has already set such a high standard for everything else, Goodwad is one of the most inspiring releases of the previous 2 years to me, which if you’re keeping up with the stuff that’s coming out, is no small feat especially as far as I’m concerned.Its most direct comparisons are most directly affiliated with speedrunning culture which is usually not the easiest for the typical wad player to really get into, so in this regard I think Goodwad’s softer edge and more appealing visuals could be something of a smoking water gun if you willfor a lot of people. I don’t have first hand account of this, but the Cacowards page (or Roots: 5 Years Later, one of the two) said that even players you wouldn’t think of as challenge oriented were really intrigued by it, which, if so, I think Goodwad met its goal.
FAVOURITE MAPS: Grip, She Ain’t Dreamin Blue Skies No More, Nirvana 3, Build-a-Slaughtermap Workshop, I Can’t/Won’t Find My Keys
LEAST FAVOURITE MAP: ok maxer fucking look
Edited by NiGHTS108: Fixed some inaccuracies sorry wrote at 4 AM :Clueless:
