FATAL
June 24th, 2007, 11:22 AM
Hell's Twisted Influence: Episode #2
Author: Andrew "Ninja_of_DooM" Fernie
hti2.wad (14,9 mb)
ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pc/msdos/games/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/g-i/hti_2.zip
Port: ZDoom 2.0.96
Single player,
31th March 2006,
1 map.
Reviewer: Danimetal using ZDoom v2.0.96.
Score: 5.5
Hell´s Twisted Influence, Episode 2 is a sequel to the original title wich I haven´t played yet. I hope that doesn´t mean that I´m missing a point or a possible evolution (most likely) in these levels that may make me have innacurate appreciations about this wad but, well, let´s hope that this wad can be played without having to go through the first... To go and play it, you´ll need ZDoom as this wad makes use of its features and you surely know what that means: cutscenes, custom monsters, sloped floors... Sounds nice to you?. Let´s dive into the wad to find out if it´s worth.
Hell´s Twisted Influence 2 can last for about half and hour or three quarters, wich is the time that you can take on a first run to finish the map playing at a normal pace. I´m sure that it can be finished in a lot less time as the author put there many battles that can be skipped without a problem (and with fast feet) but, in the end, part of this game is about killing monsters so, why running away from them?. Anyway, this first playthrough will prove to be easily playable and pretty straight forward with commonplace situations (like a hall full of locked doors whose keys you have to look for) and even a little on the easy side during most of its duration. When I can play a map without a lot of concerns I tend to find it fun and, indeed, you can find some fun while playing this map if you´re not very demanding.
And there it comes a problem: are you a demanding player?. Are you new to the community?. Don´t even care about what demanding means?. Depending on your answer you could find this wad to be very entertaining (as a novice player can run through it with relative ease without dying countless times) or very boring (expert players will notice the dull monster positioning and the commonplace and repetivive situations that lead to the same gameplay approach over and over)... It´s hard to give an absolute rating when this kind of thing happens but I´ll take the risk and will say that I am a demanding player. I like maps to require something from me else than pulling the trigger against waves of monsters and I firmly believe that four well placed monsters can be more challenging than a horde of twenty directly in front of you... You´re surely starting to suspect what the monster placing in this map is about but, please, let me finish my statement. As much as I am a demanding player I also enjoy little deranged sessions of trigger-happy dooming and that´s why I enjoyed this map. There´s nothing that special for me in this map and, in fact, I haven´t loaded it again since I finished it in one single session but if you want to run through a modern map and want to do it in a single session you could try this... Sadly the map gets old quickly and has little replayability value (no difficulty settings according to the txt file, little room for non linearity...) so there´s even a possibility that you get tired of it while playing (as it happened to me in the final boss battle).
The layout of the map is partly responsible for this lack of replayability: if you load the map in your editor you´ll notice that, apart from it taking a while (depending in your comp and on its ability to read a large file such as this), the layout is a cross shaped, linear structure as seen in many other wads. You know that these wads tend to be very tube-like as there´s only one way to go and, altough you´re greeted with some forking during one of the sections, it ends up being nothing... To be honest, I would have enjoyed this wad much more if is was completely tube like, taking me through various enviroments without having to visit any central room three times... But that´s my case, you may enjoy the castle environment with rusty tech bits that this wad shows you but I don´t think that it would be possible to deny that it´s a very linear map, not only in the layout and planning, but also in the battles section.
Indeed, the battles are pretty linear too. I mentioned before about the monster placing, most times directly in front of you or sometimes at your sides (consequence of the own map´s layout) and with that premise there´s little you can do except blast them continously. Most times it´s easy and sometimes it´s terribly hard to face one of those battles (like when a lot of powerful monsters await you into a locked room) due to the lack of cover but you can always move back to the door and blast them from there... It´s fun during a while but, as said, it gets old pretty quick. To spice things up there are some custom monsters that may catch your attention if you´ve never seen them before (most of them are variations from doom monsters and also some Heretic hybrids) but their placement is the same as the regular monsters. So, well, if you enjoy killing a lot of monsters (not that lot really, around 200) and don´t care about anything else you could enjoy the shooting-galleryesque scheme of most battles.
But apart from battles you´re sometimes to solve small puzzles and other situations. Most of them are commonplace (like searching for a key so you can access to a second key and stuff, pretty hard to create something new from that), there´s an ocassional instance of switch hunting in the beginning (not really hunting as the map´s simmetry makes easy to find what you´re looking for) and then there are some situations like scaping from a room before it collapses that add a little excitement to the overall experience. These situations are still pretty scarce as the map seems to focus much more into fighting than puzzling... How does the overall experience balances?. It doesn´t balance. Most of the map is pretty easy, non combat situations are easily solved and it´s only towards the end when you´ll start to die again and again when fighting the boss battles. I guess it makes sense in the context of the map but from a gameplay point of view it´s not a very wise choice... Let me clarify that most of your deaths (if not all) will happen in combat situations (not in traps or stuff like that) against very powerful monsters. It´s not related to lack of ammo or health, it´s just that you may find some monster that will kill you faster than you can kill it... In the end, this sort of balance harms the flow of the map (wich, at least, is very smooth as there aren´t much player blocks) and the last situations you´ll face become quite "cheap" in terms of gameplay.
This product is embedded in an apparently detailed presentation. There´s a lot of mood to the castle (thanks partly to the music) and although most shapes are relatively basic and there´s a clear abuse of symmetry there´s also usage of ZDoom features, like slopes and particles that are used to great effect in some of the areas. Visually I´d say that this map has two large issues: first, the texture usage is very repetitive and you get to see the grey bricks and red carpets along the whole castle but, this is a castle, what else did you expect?. While this may be an issue it´s also true that it helps to set the mood of the map and it´s a nice addition that the author put some candles, candle lamps or stained glasses to increase the castle-like feeling. The tech bits may be out of place and it´s textures may also become repetitive but, again, this could have something to do in the context of the map. But I mentioned that there were two issues... The second issue is much more damaging for me and it´s also a personal appreciation but from the very first moment that I saw a portion of the map the words "Torment and torture" came to my mind. I know that it´s not fair to compare two wads so I´ll stop here but I didn´t want to review this wad without stating that, in my opinion, the "Torument and Torture" (specially the second issue) had much too influence on this wad.
Other visual touches that can be appreciated in this wad are the inclussion of an animated title menu (the camera floats around the first area as some text tells you about your mission). I had never seen it in a ZDoom wad and I was pleased with it. If I had to nitpick on it I´d say that the text dissapears too quick for me to read it and that also the camera shows some visual glitches during a couple of sequences, but that´s nothing important... Also, the author included a number of cutscenes (in wich I think that the player can be damaged but can´t move, it didn´t happen to me anyway) and on-screen text that helps you figuring out your objectives and next goals if you had any doubts. Part of these cutscenes also unveil more aspects about the particular story of this wad and though they´re well produced (with some nice camera tricks) sometimes they´re too static and the language used if often cheesy to my taste. Regardless to what my tastes are, I think that these cutscenes are nice additions to the wad.
So here comes the moment when I have to sum up everything... If you managed to read up to this point I´m sure that you figured out if you could like this wad or not but as I own not the absolute truth about wad reviews I´ll try to reach a middle point to this... I personally had fun with the wad but did not like it. It has good things to it and work put into it so it deserves to get an score higher than 5. Still, it has many gameplay flaws that make up for a potentially boring experience so it wouldn´t be fair to give it a score higher than a 6 (as I consider than 6 is already a good wad) so I´ll leave it at 5.5... Still, don´t get carried away by anything I have to say on this review and try this wad yourself as for me it´s some kind of "spoiled super-production" and you may like it.
<a href="http://img123.imageshack.us/my.php?image=doom00014ws.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/3826/doom00014ws.th.png" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us" /></a>
Soon enough you´ll be greeted with this sight.
<a href="http://img157.imageshack.us/my.php?image=doom00027vg.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/6023/doom00027vg.th.png" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us" /></a>
This red tint shows what can happen if you don´t take cover behind doors in certain moments.
<a href="http://img157.imageshack.us/my.php?image=doom00037xf.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/3469/doom00037xf.th.png" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us" /></a>
I can tell you´ll die several times when you reach this place.
Author: Andrew "Ninja_of_DooM" Fernie
hti2.wad (14,9 mb)
ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pc/msdos/games/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/g-i/hti_2.zip
Port: ZDoom 2.0.96
Single player,
31th March 2006,
1 map.
Reviewer: Danimetal using ZDoom v2.0.96.
Score: 5.5
Hell´s Twisted Influence, Episode 2 is a sequel to the original title wich I haven´t played yet. I hope that doesn´t mean that I´m missing a point or a possible evolution (most likely) in these levels that may make me have innacurate appreciations about this wad but, well, let´s hope that this wad can be played without having to go through the first... To go and play it, you´ll need ZDoom as this wad makes use of its features and you surely know what that means: cutscenes, custom monsters, sloped floors... Sounds nice to you?. Let´s dive into the wad to find out if it´s worth.
Hell´s Twisted Influence 2 can last for about half and hour or three quarters, wich is the time that you can take on a first run to finish the map playing at a normal pace. I´m sure that it can be finished in a lot less time as the author put there many battles that can be skipped without a problem (and with fast feet) but, in the end, part of this game is about killing monsters so, why running away from them?. Anyway, this first playthrough will prove to be easily playable and pretty straight forward with commonplace situations (like a hall full of locked doors whose keys you have to look for) and even a little on the easy side during most of its duration. When I can play a map without a lot of concerns I tend to find it fun and, indeed, you can find some fun while playing this map if you´re not very demanding.
And there it comes a problem: are you a demanding player?. Are you new to the community?. Don´t even care about what demanding means?. Depending on your answer you could find this wad to be very entertaining (as a novice player can run through it with relative ease without dying countless times) or very boring (expert players will notice the dull monster positioning and the commonplace and repetivive situations that lead to the same gameplay approach over and over)... It´s hard to give an absolute rating when this kind of thing happens but I´ll take the risk and will say that I am a demanding player. I like maps to require something from me else than pulling the trigger against waves of monsters and I firmly believe that four well placed monsters can be more challenging than a horde of twenty directly in front of you... You´re surely starting to suspect what the monster placing in this map is about but, please, let me finish my statement. As much as I am a demanding player I also enjoy little deranged sessions of trigger-happy dooming and that´s why I enjoyed this map. There´s nothing that special for me in this map and, in fact, I haven´t loaded it again since I finished it in one single session but if you want to run through a modern map and want to do it in a single session you could try this... Sadly the map gets old quickly and has little replayability value (no difficulty settings according to the txt file, little room for non linearity...) so there´s even a possibility that you get tired of it while playing (as it happened to me in the final boss battle).
The layout of the map is partly responsible for this lack of replayability: if you load the map in your editor you´ll notice that, apart from it taking a while (depending in your comp and on its ability to read a large file such as this), the layout is a cross shaped, linear structure as seen in many other wads. You know that these wads tend to be very tube-like as there´s only one way to go and, altough you´re greeted with some forking during one of the sections, it ends up being nothing... To be honest, I would have enjoyed this wad much more if is was completely tube like, taking me through various enviroments without having to visit any central room three times... But that´s my case, you may enjoy the castle environment with rusty tech bits that this wad shows you but I don´t think that it would be possible to deny that it´s a very linear map, not only in the layout and planning, but also in the battles section.
Indeed, the battles are pretty linear too. I mentioned before about the monster placing, most times directly in front of you or sometimes at your sides (consequence of the own map´s layout) and with that premise there´s little you can do except blast them continously. Most times it´s easy and sometimes it´s terribly hard to face one of those battles (like when a lot of powerful monsters await you into a locked room) due to the lack of cover but you can always move back to the door and blast them from there... It´s fun during a while but, as said, it gets old pretty quick. To spice things up there are some custom monsters that may catch your attention if you´ve never seen them before (most of them are variations from doom monsters and also some Heretic hybrids) but their placement is the same as the regular monsters. So, well, if you enjoy killing a lot of monsters (not that lot really, around 200) and don´t care about anything else you could enjoy the shooting-galleryesque scheme of most battles.
But apart from battles you´re sometimes to solve small puzzles and other situations. Most of them are commonplace (like searching for a key so you can access to a second key and stuff, pretty hard to create something new from that), there´s an ocassional instance of switch hunting in the beginning (not really hunting as the map´s simmetry makes easy to find what you´re looking for) and then there are some situations like scaping from a room before it collapses that add a little excitement to the overall experience. These situations are still pretty scarce as the map seems to focus much more into fighting than puzzling... How does the overall experience balances?. It doesn´t balance. Most of the map is pretty easy, non combat situations are easily solved and it´s only towards the end when you´ll start to die again and again when fighting the boss battles. I guess it makes sense in the context of the map but from a gameplay point of view it´s not a very wise choice... Let me clarify that most of your deaths (if not all) will happen in combat situations (not in traps or stuff like that) against very powerful monsters. It´s not related to lack of ammo or health, it´s just that you may find some monster that will kill you faster than you can kill it... In the end, this sort of balance harms the flow of the map (wich, at least, is very smooth as there aren´t much player blocks) and the last situations you´ll face become quite "cheap" in terms of gameplay.
This product is embedded in an apparently detailed presentation. There´s a lot of mood to the castle (thanks partly to the music) and although most shapes are relatively basic and there´s a clear abuse of symmetry there´s also usage of ZDoom features, like slopes and particles that are used to great effect in some of the areas. Visually I´d say that this map has two large issues: first, the texture usage is very repetitive and you get to see the grey bricks and red carpets along the whole castle but, this is a castle, what else did you expect?. While this may be an issue it´s also true that it helps to set the mood of the map and it´s a nice addition that the author put some candles, candle lamps or stained glasses to increase the castle-like feeling. The tech bits may be out of place and it´s textures may also become repetitive but, again, this could have something to do in the context of the map. But I mentioned that there were two issues... The second issue is much more damaging for me and it´s also a personal appreciation but from the very first moment that I saw a portion of the map the words "Torment and torture" came to my mind. I know that it´s not fair to compare two wads so I´ll stop here but I didn´t want to review this wad without stating that, in my opinion, the "Torument and Torture" (specially the second issue) had much too influence on this wad.
Other visual touches that can be appreciated in this wad are the inclussion of an animated title menu (the camera floats around the first area as some text tells you about your mission). I had never seen it in a ZDoom wad and I was pleased with it. If I had to nitpick on it I´d say that the text dissapears too quick for me to read it and that also the camera shows some visual glitches during a couple of sequences, but that´s nothing important... Also, the author included a number of cutscenes (in wich I think that the player can be damaged but can´t move, it didn´t happen to me anyway) and on-screen text that helps you figuring out your objectives and next goals if you had any doubts. Part of these cutscenes also unveil more aspects about the particular story of this wad and though they´re well produced (with some nice camera tricks) sometimes they´re too static and the language used if often cheesy to my taste. Regardless to what my tastes are, I think that these cutscenes are nice additions to the wad.
So here comes the moment when I have to sum up everything... If you managed to read up to this point I´m sure that you figured out if you could like this wad or not but as I own not the absolute truth about wad reviews I´ll try to reach a middle point to this... I personally had fun with the wad but did not like it. It has good things to it and work put into it so it deserves to get an score higher than 5. Still, it has many gameplay flaws that make up for a potentially boring experience so it wouldn´t be fair to give it a score higher than a 6 (as I consider than 6 is already a good wad) so I´ll leave it at 5.5... Still, don´t get carried away by anything I have to say on this review and try this wad yourself as for me it´s some kind of "spoiled super-production" and you may like it.
<a href="http://img123.imageshack.us/my.php?image=doom00014ws.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/3826/doom00014ws.th.png" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us" /></a>
Soon enough you´ll be greeted with this sight.
<a href="http://img157.imageshack.us/my.php?image=doom00027vg.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/6023/doom00027vg.th.png" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us" /></a>
This red tint shows what can happen if you don´t take cover behind doors in certain moments.
<a href="http://img157.imageshack.us/my.php?image=doom00037xf.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/3469/doom00037xf.th.png" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us" /></a>
I can tell you´ll die several times when you reach this place.