Preacher | PREACHER.WAD
Darch
"And I say to you, my brothers and sisters, Hell is a deep, dark, foul-smelling prison of the damned, filled (filled!) with fire and brimstone, lost souls and demons. And how do you escape this eternal damnation? You blast the nasty pink demons right between their beady little eyes!”
— commercial for the Atari Jaguar port of Doom
Doom is a lot of things, but perhaps its most defining feature is its premise, pitting the player in a war against the forces of hell itself, the embodiment of ultimate evil. For the most part, it takes a very campy, sci-fantasy tone with the concept, the protagonist already a hardened badass from the future before he picks up his first shotgun and starts mowing down the legions of the damned. But there are other ways to approach this concept. I’ve seen character mods where you play as all-powerful wizards; there’s plenty of survival horror mods out there too. And outside of the Doom sphere, Blood puts you in the boots of an evil immortal cowboy out to destroy the quasi-Satanic cult that betrayed him and all the vaguely demonic aberrations they’ve summoned. But have you ever felt like something was missing? Like there might be someone uniquely qualified to fight the hordes of Satan? Say, a Preacher, perhaps?Mod disclaimers before we continue: A pretty limited set this time. As usual, I used HorrorMovieRei’s excellent Gothic Doom reskins, Flashlight++, and something called Magna Carta, a weapons reskin specifically for Preacher that re-animates all the weapons and adds a bunch of new effects, making the game feel a little more alive.
Darch is a long-time community member with a rather limited body of work, but what work he does have released has placed him rather firmly on the map as a potentially powerful creative force. After a few halting early entries, he’s had nothing but hits: Pirate Doom, Preacher, and Pirate Doom II all earned Cacowards. But where Pirate Doom was a GZDoom-based work — ZDoom being what Darch started mapping for — Preacher, his second big release, is a Boom affair, converted early into development. The premise is somewhat quixotic: it’s described as a “musical,” with some tracks (the title, stats screen, intermission and credits map) being authorized selections, complete with lyrics, from the gothic metal band Those Poor Bastards. The rest of the music is all MIDI tracks composed by Darch himself.
With Pirate Doom, Darch exhibited a sort of whimsical humor very much in line with the Monkey Island adventure games that inspired it. While Preacher is very different in tone, it nevertheless has Darch’s trademark sense of fun, with the protagonist being a constantly cackling religious fanatic, collecting such varied items as Jesus-spheres, prayers being an actual weapon, written down on sheets of paper and used to fuel your more mystical weapons — I left the church decades ago but I’m pretty sure that grimoire and that staff might be heretical, but what do I know? Of course, there's also more mundane weapons, so with the power of Christ and this shotgun you found you can compel the demons right back to hell.
But as silly as all that is, what really sets this wad apart is its structure. Each level starts you off in a small, enclosed area, at the end of which is a large pentagram teleport. Depending on where you step onto the pentagram, you’ll be zapped to one of several random places around the map, some more advantageous than others. Most of the maps follow the same basic formula: freewheeling nightmare worlds, abstractly-designed temples and ruins sitting amidst dark fields and rivers, their open design making for frantic encounters and a fluid progression around the map. Darch’s design style leans heavily on multi-tiered combat zones and broad lines of sight, so you can expect enemy fire to come at you from clear across the map sometimes. It makes for some of the most chaotic gameplay you’ll ever find. While enemy counts are rarely below 100, it doesn’t really dip into slaughter until the very last level, when the monster count suddenly jumps to 800-plus and you’re expected to just prayer-BFG most of it away, putting it more in the Darkwave0000/Speed of Doom school of slaughtermap design.
Special mention must be given to the music. I don’t know that Those Poor Bastards is quite something I’d usually listen to, and I like gothic music, but the track selection is at least fitting with the theme of the wad. If nothing else, I appreciate the concept, and I think if used at the right moment, some “real-world” music would be a useful way to enhance the overall experience of your wad.
If you’re looking for a humorous yet utterly chaotic experience, give Preacher a try. Just remember to say a prayer before you head in.
get it on /idgames
MAP01: Pagan Temple
Sedate enough start, quiet and spooky to build atmosphere, but Darch doesn't keep you waiting long before dumping you into a combat zone. There's not a lot of safe spots, forcing you to stay on your toes until you can calm things down a bit. It's totally worth finding a couple of the secrets on your way to the red key, because the ambush in the chapel is a lot of pressure when you're low on firepower.
MAP02: Babel
There are only 83 monsters on UV in this map, and you will feel most of them. "Babel" is a single large chamber in a vaguely Mesoamerican (or possibly Mesopotamian?) style, consisting of tiered walkways twisting over and under each other. Switched lifts allow passage on one level or the next -- lower the lift to cross, climb some stairs, raise it to bridge the resulting gap. Most of the enemies are imps and zombies, but there's a handful of mancubi, revenants, a baby spider and a knight or two to spice things up. It's hard to get rid of them at first because they're almost all on the highest tiers and they have good fields of vision, so it turns into a bit of fireball hell at first.
MAP03: Sacrificial Altar
The Mesoamerican style continues with this medium-sized combat arena with a number of corridors surrounding it. The action is frantic and violent, with little sanctuary for you to catch your breath. Crossing a slime stream hoping to get a wall behind you as you climb some stairs only lowers said wall, exposing you to more imp fireballs and even an arch-vile at one point. Once you put in all three keys to open the exit gate, a spiderdemon shows up, though she's trapped on a pedestal in her chamber, making it relatively easy to work around her until you're ready to deal with her. And even at the exit, you're still not done, Darch dumping you into another pit with barons, imps and revenants throwing shit at you.
MAP04: Dark Tower
Another fairly open, multi-tiered map, this one is a ruin set into the cliffsides surrounding a lava lake at the center of which stretches the titular dark tower. The tower itself is surprisingly not terribly threatening -- a couple of imps, and a pain elemental that continually churns out lost souls until you manage to take it out from afar. The bigger problem is the stiff resistance you'll face as you work your way up into the ruins, as while most of the enemies are trash mobs, there are a lot of them throwing shit at you from all angles. Fun scare with the red key.
MAP05: 40 Days in the Desert
A desert map with a strong insect motif, this one has you running around dusty ruins and caves. Your task is to find the three skull keys, all of which are guarded, though the red key may pose the biggest problem as it's squatted by a spiderdemon who is rather centrally placed, making her a persistant annoyance.
MAP06: Noir
This one is kinda like those old alpha Blood levels, only fun. It's a big black-and-white complex of bricks and checkerboard title, watched over by dark windows of silent buildings. Like most of this mapset, once you've teleported into the main area you'll have to deal with a mess of hitscanners and imps. Plenty of demons and spectres about too. Bigger threats won't really be on your radar until you start grabbing keys, at which point arch-viles will start showing up to undo all your hard work. The red key is optional, but you may want it for the super secret.
MAP07: Sanctuary
It starts off so calm and peaceful, even pastoral -- you sit at the foot of a large temple, half-surrounded by water, with Romanesque ruins dotting the horizon. But the temple itself proves to be an absolute hive of bullshit. You'll have plenty of cover, thankfully, as the temple interior is big chambers and winding corridors, but mind the surprise crusher traps and the multiple cyberdemons who show up.
MAP08: Witch Hunt
From the cyberdemon ambush right at the start, Darch turns up the heat. It's yet another death box with a quasi-Mesoamerican theme, this one with a lot of shifting floors, constantly keeping you off balance. Finding a safe spot is priority, but nothing stays safe for long as the map's open nature and constant reconfigurations means enemies will find their way to you eventually.
MAP09: Crown of Thorns
With upwards of 800 enemies it's obvious that this cyclopean ruin is host to the final battle. It's a big sprawling slaughtermess full of hitscanners (mostly chaingunners) and imps and pinkies, but pretty much the whole Doom II roster makes an appearance, including not one but two spiderdemons who stand watch over the courtyard. If you're lucky -- or you know which side of the starting teleport to take -- you can get the drop on them, but that's about the only advantage you've got. Luckily, Darch saw fit to dump as many prayer scrolls as you'll likely need on you, and you will be using them all. The central keep is the finale, with a Romero head that's annoyingly difficult to get a bead on.
MAP10: Judgement Day
Just a simple credits map to gate you from the vanilla game. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
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