BERSERK Jon Landis

Jon Landis was a pretty well known creator in DOOM back in the day. He authored an episode called Eye of the Beholder for DOOM, a mini episode for DOOM 2 called Eye of the Beholder 2, and also contributed a few levels to a partial conversion mod called STRAIN. Well, all the way back in the day, he released his firsts map - BERSERK.

To install BERSERK, you need to have ZDoom and move the WAD file into the GZDoom folder, which is pretty par for the course for DOOM maps.

There's no story or even a particular theme for this map. It's incredibly rough. The maps are just simple geometric shapes for the most part and aren't even that cohesive. You start off in a circular chamber surrounded by zombies with a berserk powerup nearby, hence the name.

Almost every combat encounter will have a similar power up, which lets you rip everybody apart with your bare hands. Unfortunately, none of the battles are particularly memorable. Outside of the first room and the room full of cacodemons, I didn't remember any of them afterwards.

One thing it does well, however, is the practice of mandatory secrets. You'll need to explore and find hidden areas in order to progress. This can either be a good to bad thing depending on what kind of a gamer you are.

Overall, BERSERK is an incredibly rough map with not that many amazing setpieces. There's really not much going for it outside of it being Landis's first map - if you're a fan, you should give it a look.