If only you could talk to the monsters. Now that would be something.

You can! At last, you can! I am crying in purest joy.



DOOM, in addition to a pretty bloody great singleplayer campaign, has a less impressive multiplayer mode (more on which later today) and an ambitious user modding tool known as SnapMap. The latter has already been flooded with player-made levels, and unfortunately for anyone else trying to use it, the best one has already been made.

Hot Potato: Thy Spud Consumed is the work of Serbian game design Miodrag Kovachevic, aka MDKII on Twitter. The map’s a strong achievement in its own right, having clearly thought carefully about how DOOM’s fluid, high-speed double-jumpy movement can be turned to a sort of environmental race mode rather than shooting. You need to sprint a powercore to the end of a hazard-filled map, as radiation sees your health tick away all the while. It’s a good map, tense and frantic, a canny remix of DOOM’s mechanics and use of its wonderful momentum. But that’s not why it’s the best DOOM Snapmap of all time and forever.

It’s the best DOOM Snapmap of all time and forever because Edge Magazine’s most earnest wish has finally been granted, 23 years later. You can talk to the monsters. It is really something.

Specifically, you can talk to the Cacodemon who runs an upgrade shop (with which you can buy health and speed upgrades in order to better survive the death-race). He has this to say for himself:

A few other lines too, but that’s the corker. That’s all I ever needed from this life. You look lovely too, Mr Cacodemon Shopkeeper. I would love to hug you, not rip and tear your guts. And perhaps introduce you to Ian Cacodemon.

To play Hot Potato: Thy Spud Consumed, fire up SnapMap mode, go to Search Maps and enter ZGLRZC92. Then talk to the monster.