I made a list of sprite-based shooters and it's still wild to me what a giant year-on-year leap it is from Catacomb 3-D to Wolfenstein 3D to Doom. It's like going from Mario 1 to Super Mario World in half the calendar time.
Anyways, here is my power ranking of good games:
Doom 2 > Doom > Blood > Hexen > Duke3D* > Heretic > Chex Quest > Dark Forces > Marathon trilogy (probably) > Rise of the Triad > Wolf3D > Strife > Blake Stone
* depending on how much you can tolerate 90s bullshit
I'd love to learn the speed routes for games like Hexen, Dark Forces, and the Marathon games since the main things holding them back are poor signposting. (To some extent a problem in all the 90s shooters, but it's worse when there's things to do besides collect keys and get the exit.)
@KommaChameleon Chex Quest is a guilty pleasure, just for the absurdity of the whole thing, and the not-so-grunty-as-usual take on the FPS. Its soundtrack is permanently stuck in my brain.
@ElectricKeet To me, Chex Quest isn't a guilty pleasure, it's just a pleasure! The sequel level packs in particular have some impressive colorful vistas and a charming-if-not-witty sense of humor.
Nowadays we have singular games that are updated and played for a longer time on the calendar than it took to evolve the technology and gameplay for id Tech 1. That's bananas!