Well, although I thought about forsaking the ancient traditions and taking a month off from “Doom II”/”Final Doom” WAD reviews, I didn’t. I’d planned to just click the “random file” button on the /idgames Archive and play some easy old level from 1995 that I could blaze through in ten minutes to pay token lip service to this hallowed monthly ritual. But then I spotted that the “Latest files” segment included a modern WAD called “Apophis” (2025) by Christopher Lutz.
Call it nostalgia for watching giant old DVD box-sets of “Stargate SG-1” back in about 2013-14, random memories of Teal’c talking about “The will of Apophis” and of flying pyramids, but I just had to play a WAD with a name like this. So I did. And, to my absolute delight, it turned out to be an unofficial fan expansion to THE best WAD of the 2010s. I am, of course, talking about the one and only “Ancient Aliens” (2016) – a WAD I re-played as recently as last year. It still holds up perfectly!
Seriously, when I saw THIS, I was pretty amazed 🙂
Anyway, whilst this would be a good time to add a FLICKERING IMAGES warning for “Apophis” (2025), I have to admit that my time with it was… troubled. When I started playing it, I didn’t realise that you’re supposed to load it into a Boom-compatible source port (I used GZDoom 4.8.2 ) alongside “Ancient Aliens”. So, I got a lot of missing textures and cool glitched-out pink/purple/orange monster and weapon textures.
But then, running it on an old second-hand computer from 2013, the game “helpfully” froze my computer during the first level. After shovelling in some extra coal and getting an early dinner whilst waiting for my PC to finish restarting, I checked the readme file and then tried dragging and dropping both WADs onto the GZDoom icon. No dice.
And, although I was tempted to give “Ancient Aliens” another re-play, this fan expansion DOES include pyramids…
Upon further re-reading, I learnt that you have to load both using a… command line prompt?! I prepared this review back in late May, a good four or five months before the alleged “Last ever Windows” – Windows 10 – will be planned-obsolecenced by Microsoft in order to push some crappy “Sign in to this operating system online! Let Recall watch your every move! You’d better have a TPM Module on that motherboard!” excuse for a sequel. [Edit: Ha! Britain and mainland Europe got an extra year of extended updates 🙂 ]
The point is, I really didn’t want to think about how I may or may not have to switch to Linux and kiss gaming goodbye (No, I haven’t used “Steam” in over a decade. I like to actually own my games...). I don’t have a clue whether or not I’ll be using Linux when this review goes out. Maybe I’ve mastered the command line by then? Maybe I’ll have a “sudo apt-get laugh” at my past self? Or gleefully find myself WINE-ing about how terrible Windows is? Still, at the time of writing in May, I’m a Windows user and I do NOT use command lines! What is this? 1993? So, I played the game in wonderful glitch-o-vision instead.
And, even with the missing textures, this WAD still has a bit of an “Ancient Aliens” feel at times! God, I’ve missed that sky!
Anyway, “Apophis” consists of a core group of four large ancient Egypt-themed levels and two and a half sci-fi themed bonus levels (which have to be accessed via the “IDCLEV [level number]” cheat). These levels certainly have some cool moments, and even an unofficial knock-off of “Ancient Aliens” is still absolutely awesome to play 🙂 There’s some spectacular architecture, some cool level names like “Pyramystical”, and I just love ancient Egyptian settings in videogames 🙂 This is an objectively cool set of levels.
Still, the level design is a bit different to “Ancient Aliens”. The levels are giant sprawling things where it is very easy to get lost or “stuck”. In fact, I eventually ended up skipping half of the third level with cheats because of this. Likewise, there are a few small areas which haven’t been “idiot-proofed” – and you can get trapped in them if you aren’t careful. The game’s approach to difficulty is slightly different too, with more emphasis on throwing lots of low-level monsters at you. It isn’t easy, but the rhythm and pacing of it are noticeably different to “Ancient Aliens”. It feels like a solid “ordinary” level collection, rather than a constant frantic running battle for survival.
Again, though, there’s a lot of cool stuff here. There are pyramids! And there’s an awesome set-piece in the fourth level where you can get several Arachnotrons to fight a pitched battle against a Spider Mastermind for you! There are pillars and courtyards and… ok, I’m on the fence about the invisible bridges. Yes, they’re very “Indiana Jones”. Yes, “The Plutonia Experiment” used one in 1996. But I spent a good ten minutes or so of frustrating backtracking and searching before I even thought to take a “leap of faith”.
Surprisingly, the Arachnatrons actually won the battle as well. Still, this was really awesome 🙂 And a fun hat-tip to level 20 of “Doom II” as well 🙂
Still, for all of its frustrations, there were some moments when I was playing this level set where I understood my tradition of playing a “Doom II”/”Final Doom” WADs every month. There were moments, when I was immersed in playing one of the good parts of this WAD, when I felt like I was outside of time. When it felt like I was back in 2015 or 2017 again, enjoying a Doom WAD in the evening. The timeless feeling of playing a Doom WAD I’d randomly found on the internet. A connection to more than a decade of memories. And it was beautiful, transcendent even.
All in all, even an unofficial knock-off of “Ancient Aliens” (2016) is still pretty awesome. Yes, the levels are a bit too sprawling and confusing, but there’s so much cool stuff here and adding ancient Egypt to a videogame automatically makes it twice as good. Despite my criticisms, and not playing these levels under the best of circumstances, I still had some real fun with these levels and I also love the fact that – almost a decade after it was released – the spirit of “Ancient Aliens” still lives on 🙂
If I had to give it a rating out of five, it would get a four.
