Well, due to tiredness, writer’s block and the fact that “Doom II”/”Final Doom” WAD reviews still seem to be a monthly tradition, I found myself on the /idgames Archive again.
Interestingly, I didn’t use the “random file” feature because – at the time of writing in early-mid March – one of the “Latest files” on the front page caught my attention. I am, of course, talking about Benbenjamin_’s 2025 level “Zombie Control“. Yes, I’m actually playing a vaguely modern WAD…
As usual, I used version 4.8.2 of the “GZDoom” source port, although I imagine that this WAD will work with any – even vaguely semi-modern – limit-removing source port.
“Zombie control” is a short single-level WAD with custom music. The main gimmick here is that the only monster type in the level is the basic “zombieman”, one of the weakest enemies in the game. And the level uses all of the techniques you’d expect in order to keep itself fun.
Woo hoo! All zombies! All the time!
For the first half or so of the level, you literally just have the basic pistol. The number of zombies increases when you get more powerful weapons, leading to a thrilling conclusion where you get to mow down a giant crowd of the undead with a chaingun. Health is also sprinkled around the level quite liberally and, given that each zombie drops pistol ammunition, you’ll probably never run out.
Rat-ta-tat-tat! Or something like that.
The level does some fun stuff like giving you a “Beserk” shortly before throwing a horde of zombies at you. You’ll think “Finally! A situation where this power-up is actually useful!”... only to switch back to your pistol as soon as you realise that there are just way too many zombies to punch through.
Whilst this is a relatively easy and mindless “stress relief” sort of level, the actual level design itself is decent, with some unexpected doorways opening at various points, some clever use of verticality – like a tower you have to climb up in order to get back to the main part of the level and – using just the standard textures – a decent amount of visual variety between different parts of the level. The custom music is also fairly decent too and almost sounds like something that could be in a classic “Doom” game.
Ok, maybe “Tower” is too much of a dramatic word? It’s more of a turret really…
And that’s about all there is to say about “Zombie Control”. It’s a short – about ten minutes – well-designed level that is just wonderfully mindless fun to play. It isn’t particularly challenging, but it never gets boring and it’s an interesting experiment as well.
If I had to give it a rating out of five, it would get a four.
