Now that you have seen our general discussion on the wad, many of the points of which you have already brought up on the forums and have considered by yourselves on your first play, I want to move away from the technical dissection and analyse KDiZD as an event.

What do I mean exactly?

Well we know that in the Doom community a lot of development takes place. Development of source ports, utilities and wads. And this is great, because talented people achieve things and become even more talented, and we end up with some good product to play.

I wonder sometimes if the balance between those developing and those appreciating the efforts has gone for good. Doom is old, and who wants to play Doom when the likes of Starcraft 2 or Forza 2, or whatever floats your boat on the Wii or PS3 (did I just say PS3?) are all vying for your limited time?

But then I see evidence on Doomworlds idgames database of lots of reviews for certain wads, and I'm not so sure. It's funny. One minute you suspect we might not be far off giving up on Doom for good, then something like KDiZD happens.

People have bemoaned the drama, hype, egoism, call it what you will. But honestly. Would you rather have a sense of occasion, or none at all? Would you rather have a crucible of ire and controversy, or the gaming equivalent of a wet shower? In the post-Doom gaming era, having a good old-fashioned argument seems like one of the few ways left to really spice things up within the community.

But it doesn't have to be the only way.

Doom, you see, still has a few tricks up its sleeve. And chief amongst these is the little gem known as co-op.

Co-op mode is largely dead in modern FPS games, at least PC ones anyway. I recently played Gears of War on the Xbox 360 with my friends and there was no doubt in my mind that it was more fun than either of my initial SP runs through Doom 3 or Half Life 2 had been - and I really enjoyed Half Life 2.

As I drove home that night, I became convinced that the genre had moved in totally the wrong direction on the PC, to the point perhaps where it is in danger of dying.

I was thinking back to this when the news broke that KDiZD had been released. An opportunity had presented itself to see if elderly Doom could throw something up that rivalled that modern console experience.

"Why don't," I said to zarkyb, "we play through KDiZD in co-op?"

I don't think there has ever been a better time to play co-op since Doom was released. Back then it was simple to set up, but you really needed a few decent (and much more expensive, in real terms) PCs in order to create a decent home network.

In the interim years the internet started to emerge as a genuinely viable alternative but everything was a bit wrong - Doom95 was terrible, most people still on dialup, and so on.

But fast forward to 2007, and look what we have. A much faster internet, with almost everyone on connections to make co-op play in even the busiest of maps very possible. We have some very sorted source ports which have now gone through years of revision, and the heir apparent to vanilla is zdoom, which we had set up and ready to play within a few minutes.

And so, into the most eagerly awaited wad of the year stepped zark in blue, joe in white, and myself in my usual slightly gay pinkish colour I find hard to put a name to.

And, do you know what? It was bloody good fun.

Oh, there are lots of things not to like about KDiZD co-op. The map design is very, very fussy in parts, with the automap in particular being rendered useless. The text file makes reference to the original E1 being too easy now, and KDiZD bringing a new challenge, and that's fine, but the problem is the implementation of this challenge is often at the expense of fun. Never, ever put anything in at the expense of fast or fun gameplay. In some games maybe, but not in Doom.

E1 was about pace. It was quick, it flowed, and you moved seamlessly in the right direction, even in E1M4 and E1M7 - perhaps the two earliest examples of open-route maps that would feed into the non-linear model.

In KDiZD, you get lost. With three people playing, it's even worse, because one player might experience text from a switch, where others do not. Of course, you could argue that the player should simply inform the others, and we did, and I suppose my real issue was that some switches were informative where others weren't. It did not feel consistent.

Doom relies on two things really to tell you where you need to go. One is bright visual reference points, the other is obvious direction of progression as deduced by looking at the automap. KDiZD is very short on both. Zark and particularly joe felt that there were too many coloured keys but I'm not so sure - I've played maps with six keys that were fine - there's one in 10sectors.wad. I think it's more a problem of progression - it's dark, and things are not marked clearly enough, so the backtracking and progression becomes very hard. And the tightly bunched-up maps offer no clues at all via the automap method. This led to us spending an hour in Z1M3 chasing our tails, which was not fun at all. Crucially, it was the "new" section of Z1M3 underground that provided so much confusion. Contrast this to Z1M2, which was a much more logical and successful development of the original E1M2.

Those original E1 sections also work the best for co-op, and I don't think this is by coincidence. if you are going to support co-op (and of course you should) I think it really shows the importance of testing your wad together as a team and really asking some tough questions about your mapping. You can make the best-looking ice-cream sundaes in the world but if they taste of nothing, it's been a self-defeating exercise (especially having told everyone how tasty it's going to be!).

But at this point I do want to give KDiZD a lot of credit for its mostly unbroken co-op compatibility. So many big projects say co-op is a no-no, or it's untested. Why? This missed opportunity is just such a shame given the work that's gone in to implementing netcode.

It did, however, go pear-shaped on a few occasions. If you are going to have a door or pillars or anything that traps from behind you as the map progresses, then it needs to be able to be bypassed or re-opened if the map is to be truly co-op compliant. If everyone dies, you are then stuck. KDiZD fell foul of this on a few occasions. The worst map in terms of co-op compatibility is Z1M8. There, it is possible to raise force fields and leave all of you unable to progress beyond the central area by the 3-key door should you all die. Beyond that door also lies a platform that sinks into nukage - nice touch and underused by many mappers - but not co-op friendly and it can't be reset.

These compatibility glitches would perhaps be less important if zdoom could handle co-op savegames but sadly that feature currently does not exist.

As far as the new monsters and the enjoyment of the firefights were concerned, I have to say I found them pretty good for co-op, though I know many have been less impressed. The acid test with new monsters though is always to ask yourself, "would I have enojoyed it more with the original monsters"? Here I find myself saying probably yes, though it is very marginal - the shadow imp makes for quite good fun in co-op where one of you is being hunted and the others are trying to pick him off your tail!

The rifle is a nice new weapon, but I am never sure about replacement weapons. I think the original guns were perfect for both Doom's gameplay and storyline. In co-op, I don't think it made a huge difference for us, though the rifleman (principally zark) did lead the attacks whilst joe and I tended to back up with shotgun, which was a nice gameplay combination as far as ammo permitted.

Ammo and health balance on the whole was, refreshingly, quite good for co-op, which really is a tough thing to get right. We were down to our chainsaws a few times but much less than I had feared.

There were also very few issues with zdoom co-op despite the ambitious nature of the wad. The intermission PDAs worked flawlessly, and we were able to view each players stats and our cumalative stats with ease. We had a good laugh seeing zark register something like -100083 health on one map having been telefragged! It's a pity that you can't save your co-op game as if you have to shut down the server or you get a crash, as we did on just a couple of occasions, you lose these particular stats.

Lastly, I must just give the secret maps some credit. Z1M9 was great and Z1M10 cut me down just as I was about to say two years is too long for any one episode to be made ;)

So I find myself drawing near to the last word on KDiZD - the whole experience. And as zark has said in his conclusion, it's tough to separate the fun of co-op from an evaluation of the wad.

But then that's precisely the point. Why do you have to? Yes, KDiZD has its flaws - lots of them in fact, but as an experience in co-op you find it easier to forgive them as the wad provides a lot of magic moments in this format. More than anything, I was left with a feeling of absolute quality from KDiZD. However misguided you adjudge various aspects of it to be, there is no doubting the effort that has gone in, and that provides atmosphere even where the maps may not.

I suppose then that its zdoom and KDiZD together then that are on trial here: as a co-op Dooming experience in 2007.

Put the 360 and the Wii away, configure your firewalls and get yourself on IRC.

They've passed.