FATAL
June 24th, 2007, 11:46 AM
Map 26- Silenced Progression.
I didn´t even need to have a hint of what the author was after the first plays: as far as I have played some of his works this map has the "Agent Spork" words written all over each and everyone of its walls. Why do I know it?. Well, make no mistake but I was almost forced to give up playing right on the first rooms after I got killed like 10 times in a row: that kind of trap seemed like straight from "Simplicity" (as some others in the map) and pointed me at the author on the right direction: loads of monsters, ammunition enough and the ability to drop an archvile just a few seconds after starting the map.
As I said: make no mistake. I´m personally no fan of the kind of gameplay that this level suggested but I can say I actually liked the map: once I got the hang of it the map proved to be very addictive and of the exact lenght to avoid being tyring. To put complex things a little simpler, the map has you following a set path spawning diverse rooms and passages (that you will sometimes re-visit) and fighting battles in each of them. These battles range from fairly easy (like some imps and soldiers) to more complex ones (specially those in wich arch viles are around or monsters do appear all around you) and, while some of them are directly set, most of the battles you´ll fight are the direct consequence of unavoidable traps set in your way... While these traps manage to surprise you, they´re no longer a surprise when you enter a room, see it devoid of any sign of life and take a look at the suspicious walls: you know something bad is gonna happen but there´s no chance to avoid it or, even worse, to set yourself in a good position for it.
While the battles and mild switching proved to be fun enough the map has the aforementioned problem of setting evil traps your way: even if you walk around slowly you won´t be able to avoid being surprised by a swarm of soldiers coming from your right or being trapped against the corner when Barons of Hell appear... Some of the battles are fair enough but, sadly, the environment in some others is that tight that luck plays a great role while dodging enemy fire: it´s exciting but also frustrating to fight a lot of tough monsters in a passage that´s roughly 128 units wide or to try to contain many foes (two archviles among them) without a suitable possibility of retrating...
And that´s the largest part of the map: tight and difficult battles. In fact, the map itself follows a deliberate pattern of "get ammo and health-fight-get ammo and health-fight-switch-repeat" that does not get old for the duration of the map, but leaves you wanting for a bit of more fair content. Again, make no mistake: I´m sure that many people will get to like this map because even I can see that, inside the category it may fit, this map is top-notch.
Also top-notch is, as expected, the architecture and lighting. The many beautiful tech rooms and passages are embelished with consoles, light panels and interesting texture effects that mantain a very coherent look through the whole map. It´s nothing I haven´t seen before (on the author´s work, of course) but it´s very much beautiful, interesting, inspiring and encouraging - in the way in wich I kept on replaying to see what´s next.
So, given that the approach to gameplay it´s not a problem but an option, are there any problems with this map?. Well, apart from one little visual bug that allowed me to see "miniature monsters" as part of a trap (as if I didn´t suspect they were there) I couldn´t find any secret, yet the secret count was clearly 100%. Yes, that´s it, there are absolutely no secrets in this map. That´s not a big deal unless you combine it with the fact that the map has you following a very strict route and applying a certain kind of strategies to progress: for example, I found that to get through the second battle I could take a few shots and go to some other position (that I would have never discovered unless I survived this battle in a very difficult way before... This scheme starts pretty heavy and calms down as the map goes on but in the end it feels like a tube. A very special kind of tube with lots of trial error, but a tube after all. Please notice that this has nothing to do with open-ended layouts or something: it´s just that, when playing, it seems impossible to stray from the course that has been imposed to this map: little alternate possibilities (due partly to tight environments), no secrets to be found, just one possible route...
That said, in the end the map did fare well: challenging enough for the 26th slot, short enough to avoid being frustrating and beautiful enough to smile while playing. Of course, it was also predictable and irritating enough -specially when you know that something bad will happen and you can do nothing-... Good and bad things balance on this map and make it suitable for its playing until finished. With nothing else to be seen here, why would I play it again?. Maybe some Cooperative play one of these days :).
Map 27- No brakes.
This map was released inside and also outside the NDCP. It also happens that this wad had a review on the NDWR issue number 3 so what comes here is just a duplicate of the text with the convenient modifications. Expect nothing new here but read on to refresh your memory on this map if you wish to.
First things first (what a lame beginning to be in place of the original sentence!), this wad is highly unstable. It would take some time to explain why I think so but I´ll try to be as accurate as possible. First, unstable doesn´t mean "Bad" or "Good" or anything. I could have also used another term like "Diffuse" or "Irregular" but I didn´t want to hold to a word that could have negative connotations... Anyway, this wad features both good and bad points, as all wads, and both of them are on high pure forms. That´s it: the good is really good and the bad is really bad.
Let´s begin with the layout and style... The layout for this level is "unstable". It begins with a nice brownish and claustrophobic tunnel section with tech details that give a good starting feel and then it progress through some other styles in an unpredictable fashion: now you´re in some tunnels, you get to an open area, you´re teleported to a gut hellish place or you´re in a big blood lake with wood and green marble architecture... As said, unstable. The layout doesn´t seem to decide at all where it´s going due to the use of teleporters and the only thing that you´ll know for sure is that you have to go back to the beginning with a yellow key to exit the map... The beginning is that brownish tunnel I mentioned earlier but, suddenly, it´s connected with some outdoors area with primitive architecture (primitive in the sense of looking like really old lore) that doesn´t seem to belong there. At the end, you feel like you´ve been in some strange trip through hell (hell decorations, bloods and guts are a constant in some places of this map) and back without a sense of direction... No sense of direction is needed anyway, since you lineally progress and come back to areas as you need to.
Detail on these areas also varies during the whole show. This may have something to do with the wad having two different authors but, anyway, if the first area looks really good and is quite promising, some others look plain bare and, unfortunately, there are a lot of them and they tend to be huge (huge and bare, I mean). Maybe the first area makes the player expect something else but in terms of detail I was dissapointed: I expected a much better looking wad and the map did even look ugly sometimes due to the texture combinations used in some places (I never liked red and green together in those doses, to be honest).
Gameplay was unstable too... First of it all, don´t even try this in UV. Trust the authors, it´s really hard. I tend to ignore those warnings but this time I was forced into Hurt me Plenty when I miserably failed to get out of the third area like ten times so if you want to try this and don´t want to feel frustrated, start in a medium or easy difficulty level since UV it´s not only hard but almost unplayable sometimes. That doesn´t mean that Hurt me Plenty was easier: not at all. If you master the save and load technique you may progress trough this map quickly but you´ll be loading a lot of times due to the quantity of unfair traps, in-your-face encounters and tough monsters (I saw little former humans or imps among the 500 monsters in this wad, really... The number of revenants was, on the other hand, absurd). What does this mean?. It means that this map abuses though encounters in tight areas (how about a lot of mancubi and an Arch-Vile surrounding you instantly?) and does little use of regular battles. O.k, there are signs that bad stuff will happen so you´re warned, but that´s not enough as you´re never given a fair chance to avoid the danger or taking cover in a better position. The reasonable amount of ammo and health it´s not enough too: battling 8 revenants at the same time more than once in a map it´s not fun at all, at least for me... So, well, in terms of battling gameplay I was also dissapointed with this wad. There were nice moments, some of them really intense and strategic (like in the area with the two teleporters) but they don´t pay for the quantity of unfair, cheap battles, predictable and unavoidable traps and other bad habits. There may be players that enjoy this, but having to load a lot of times doesn´t show how much you master Doom, but rather how strong your patience is.
The level also features puzzles, challenges and other gameplay elements...The worst of them all, are the traps. It´s not that they aren´t imaginative; the problem is that they are predictable and unavoidable. You´re bound to do some action that will unleash a raging horde of monsters to you and you know they won´t be precisely imps (in fact, there are some double barreled shotgun fests with demons, revenants and cacodemons mixed together). That´s, by far, the lowest point of this wad. Speaking of other things, the regular key and switch action is present and works nice as expected. It doesn´t shine a lot but, on the other hand, some challenges are actually fun (for example, the invulnerability moment or shooting through grates you almost can´t see through... This last is both a "good" and a "bad" anyway) and worth trying. Again and, unfortunately, I wouldn´t consider some of the battles and traps a challenge but a suicide, like in the very last battle when you know something is gonna happen (to beat this one I could only try getting away from the field to a safer position). As with detail and layout, I don´t know how much the duplicity of authors is to blame for this, but well, this wad is not friendly to players that want engaging and fair gameplay but will please the most hardened warriors out there.
So, what´s the fun factor of this wad?. Depends on you. Honestly, I didn´t have a lot of fun with it but I know that there are players that like this kind of "trial and error" gameplay (and I´m sure they feel terribly mighty if they survive a trap without loading a game... I tend more to feel lucky like "I was holding the BFG and I happened to be facing the right direction when hell broke loose). The whole responsibility for my opinion of the fun value is on the battles: it could have been much more enjoyable if they would have been designed in other way. On the other hand, I kept on playing until I finished the wad so that means it´s, in a sense, engaging. On the other hand of the other hand, my expectatives weren´t fulfilled as I played (I kept on playing to see new nice stuff and I didn´t) so I tend to negatively think about this wad.
Map 28- Hotash Slay.
Can´t say I know anything about the author... Maybe he left the community before I came here?. Anyway, what he left for the NewDoom Community Project was an open-ended map very reminiscent of some original Doom map with a secret exit accesible via rocket jumping whose name I won´t quote here. Knowing that, what did I think about this map?.
To be honest, my first impression was quite bad: the odd texture choices (for a second I feared some tutti-frutty effect), the strange and humongous architecture almost entirely composed of large blocks and, again, the odd and certainly ugly textures weren´t particularly promising. After a bit of running around and seeing the kind of monsters that the huge courtyard I was had to offer the situation didn´t get a bit better: some cyberdemon, batchs of monsters and even more ugly texturing (make sure you notice I am treating textures as monsters here!) just made things a bit worse. Still, knowing what kind of map you´re up to from the beginning gives it a chance of catching your attention and after a couple of plays I got a few details that had me getting into the buildings populating the courtyard.
In for a surprise, I´d say: while the main looks of the map are pretty bare most of the interiors -a couple of exceptions apply- look particularly fine, with nice light effects, interesting texture combinations and small quality details. Does this make the map better?. Well, certainly not but creates an interesting contrast between the original Doom style on the outside (with its enormous structures) and the strangely decorated and varied interiors (tech, blood, ugly Doom 2 stuff...). Did I say "In for a surprise"?. Well, once you start getting inside the buildings, exploring and realising the non linearity of the map in all its dimension you´ll also get into the battles, the looks and the small puzzles you´ll find in the way: this map feels really boring until you guess the purpose of each building. Maybe one building contains some vital key while other is just there to distract, arm or trap you. Anyway, true to the truth, most of the buildings lack puzzles or adventurous switch actions so most of the puzzle of the map is on the layout itself: where do yo go?. What do you need?. What other options do you have?.
So, the battles on the map do well, the puzzle does well and the looks do both horrid and well. Most things seem to be doing well but let´s not forget some things we haven´t mentioned yet: the possibility of breaking the gameplay (for example, you´ll be horridly trapped by picking a weapon you just can get in every building without problems), the absurd amount of revenants in some places, the feeling of being completely lost as you start, the question of whether in the end there´s enough ammo to finish the map (considering there were enough supplies during the whole experience) or how hard it is to find the exit for the map (just ran across it by chance)... These others didn´t fare well. On the other hand, travelling through the courtyard is short and easy and there´s a sense of accomplishment when finishing so everything tends to balance.
I wouldn´t say this map is on the top of the pack -specially considering I don´t like extremely open ended maps- but it does fare well in the end.
I didn´t even need to have a hint of what the author was after the first plays: as far as I have played some of his works this map has the "Agent Spork" words written all over each and everyone of its walls. Why do I know it?. Well, make no mistake but I was almost forced to give up playing right on the first rooms after I got killed like 10 times in a row: that kind of trap seemed like straight from "Simplicity" (as some others in the map) and pointed me at the author on the right direction: loads of monsters, ammunition enough and the ability to drop an archvile just a few seconds after starting the map.
As I said: make no mistake. I´m personally no fan of the kind of gameplay that this level suggested but I can say I actually liked the map: once I got the hang of it the map proved to be very addictive and of the exact lenght to avoid being tyring. To put complex things a little simpler, the map has you following a set path spawning diverse rooms and passages (that you will sometimes re-visit) and fighting battles in each of them. These battles range from fairly easy (like some imps and soldiers) to more complex ones (specially those in wich arch viles are around or monsters do appear all around you) and, while some of them are directly set, most of the battles you´ll fight are the direct consequence of unavoidable traps set in your way... While these traps manage to surprise you, they´re no longer a surprise when you enter a room, see it devoid of any sign of life and take a look at the suspicious walls: you know something bad is gonna happen but there´s no chance to avoid it or, even worse, to set yourself in a good position for it.
While the battles and mild switching proved to be fun enough the map has the aforementioned problem of setting evil traps your way: even if you walk around slowly you won´t be able to avoid being surprised by a swarm of soldiers coming from your right or being trapped against the corner when Barons of Hell appear... Some of the battles are fair enough but, sadly, the environment in some others is that tight that luck plays a great role while dodging enemy fire: it´s exciting but also frustrating to fight a lot of tough monsters in a passage that´s roughly 128 units wide or to try to contain many foes (two archviles among them) without a suitable possibility of retrating...
And that´s the largest part of the map: tight and difficult battles. In fact, the map itself follows a deliberate pattern of "get ammo and health-fight-get ammo and health-fight-switch-repeat" that does not get old for the duration of the map, but leaves you wanting for a bit of more fair content. Again, make no mistake: I´m sure that many people will get to like this map because even I can see that, inside the category it may fit, this map is top-notch.
Also top-notch is, as expected, the architecture and lighting. The many beautiful tech rooms and passages are embelished with consoles, light panels and interesting texture effects that mantain a very coherent look through the whole map. It´s nothing I haven´t seen before (on the author´s work, of course) but it´s very much beautiful, interesting, inspiring and encouraging - in the way in wich I kept on replaying to see what´s next.
So, given that the approach to gameplay it´s not a problem but an option, are there any problems with this map?. Well, apart from one little visual bug that allowed me to see "miniature monsters" as part of a trap (as if I didn´t suspect they were there) I couldn´t find any secret, yet the secret count was clearly 100%. Yes, that´s it, there are absolutely no secrets in this map. That´s not a big deal unless you combine it with the fact that the map has you following a very strict route and applying a certain kind of strategies to progress: for example, I found that to get through the second battle I could take a few shots and go to some other position (that I would have never discovered unless I survived this battle in a very difficult way before... This scheme starts pretty heavy and calms down as the map goes on but in the end it feels like a tube. A very special kind of tube with lots of trial error, but a tube after all. Please notice that this has nothing to do with open-ended layouts or something: it´s just that, when playing, it seems impossible to stray from the course that has been imposed to this map: little alternate possibilities (due partly to tight environments), no secrets to be found, just one possible route...
That said, in the end the map did fare well: challenging enough for the 26th slot, short enough to avoid being frustrating and beautiful enough to smile while playing. Of course, it was also predictable and irritating enough -specially when you know that something bad will happen and you can do nothing-... Good and bad things balance on this map and make it suitable for its playing until finished. With nothing else to be seen here, why would I play it again?. Maybe some Cooperative play one of these days :).
Map 27- No brakes.
This map was released inside and also outside the NDCP. It also happens that this wad had a review on the NDWR issue number 3 so what comes here is just a duplicate of the text with the convenient modifications. Expect nothing new here but read on to refresh your memory on this map if you wish to.
First things first (what a lame beginning to be in place of the original sentence!), this wad is highly unstable. It would take some time to explain why I think so but I´ll try to be as accurate as possible. First, unstable doesn´t mean "Bad" or "Good" or anything. I could have also used another term like "Diffuse" or "Irregular" but I didn´t want to hold to a word that could have negative connotations... Anyway, this wad features both good and bad points, as all wads, and both of them are on high pure forms. That´s it: the good is really good and the bad is really bad.
Let´s begin with the layout and style... The layout for this level is "unstable". It begins with a nice brownish and claustrophobic tunnel section with tech details that give a good starting feel and then it progress through some other styles in an unpredictable fashion: now you´re in some tunnels, you get to an open area, you´re teleported to a gut hellish place or you´re in a big blood lake with wood and green marble architecture... As said, unstable. The layout doesn´t seem to decide at all where it´s going due to the use of teleporters and the only thing that you´ll know for sure is that you have to go back to the beginning with a yellow key to exit the map... The beginning is that brownish tunnel I mentioned earlier but, suddenly, it´s connected with some outdoors area with primitive architecture (primitive in the sense of looking like really old lore) that doesn´t seem to belong there. At the end, you feel like you´ve been in some strange trip through hell (hell decorations, bloods and guts are a constant in some places of this map) and back without a sense of direction... No sense of direction is needed anyway, since you lineally progress and come back to areas as you need to.
Detail on these areas also varies during the whole show. This may have something to do with the wad having two different authors but, anyway, if the first area looks really good and is quite promising, some others look plain bare and, unfortunately, there are a lot of them and they tend to be huge (huge and bare, I mean). Maybe the first area makes the player expect something else but in terms of detail I was dissapointed: I expected a much better looking wad and the map did even look ugly sometimes due to the texture combinations used in some places (I never liked red and green together in those doses, to be honest).
Gameplay was unstable too... First of it all, don´t even try this in UV. Trust the authors, it´s really hard. I tend to ignore those warnings but this time I was forced into Hurt me Plenty when I miserably failed to get out of the third area like ten times so if you want to try this and don´t want to feel frustrated, start in a medium or easy difficulty level since UV it´s not only hard but almost unplayable sometimes. That doesn´t mean that Hurt me Plenty was easier: not at all. If you master the save and load technique you may progress trough this map quickly but you´ll be loading a lot of times due to the quantity of unfair traps, in-your-face encounters and tough monsters (I saw little former humans or imps among the 500 monsters in this wad, really... The number of revenants was, on the other hand, absurd). What does this mean?. It means that this map abuses though encounters in tight areas (how about a lot of mancubi and an Arch-Vile surrounding you instantly?) and does little use of regular battles. O.k, there are signs that bad stuff will happen so you´re warned, but that´s not enough as you´re never given a fair chance to avoid the danger or taking cover in a better position. The reasonable amount of ammo and health it´s not enough too: battling 8 revenants at the same time more than once in a map it´s not fun at all, at least for me... So, well, in terms of battling gameplay I was also dissapointed with this wad. There were nice moments, some of them really intense and strategic (like in the area with the two teleporters) but they don´t pay for the quantity of unfair, cheap battles, predictable and unavoidable traps and other bad habits. There may be players that enjoy this, but having to load a lot of times doesn´t show how much you master Doom, but rather how strong your patience is.
The level also features puzzles, challenges and other gameplay elements...The worst of them all, are the traps. It´s not that they aren´t imaginative; the problem is that they are predictable and unavoidable. You´re bound to do some action that will unleash a raging horde of monsters to you and you know they won´t be precisely imps (in fact, there are some double barreled shotgun fests with demons, revenants and cacodemons mixed together). That´s, by far, the lowest point of this wad. Speaking of other things, the regular key and switch action is present and works nice as expected. It doesn´t shine a lot but, on the other hand, some challenges are actually fun (for example, the invulnerability moment or shooting through grates you almost can´t see through... This last is both a "good" and a "bad" anyway) and worth trying. Again and, unfortunately, I wouldn´t consider some of the battles and traps a challenge but a suicide, like in the very last battle when you know something is gonna happen (to beat this one I could only try getting away from the field to a safer position). As with detail and layout, I don´t know how much the duplicity of authors is to blame for this, but well, this wad is not friendly to players that want engaging and fair gameplay but will please the most hardened warriors out there.
So, what´s the fun factor of this wad?. Depends on you. Honestly, I didn´t have a lot of fun with it but I know that there are players that like this kind of "trial and error" gameplay (and I´m sure they feel terribly mighty if they survive a trap without loading a game... I tend more to feel lucky like "I was holding the BFG and I happened to be facing the right direction when hell broke loose). The whole responsibility for my opinion of the fun value is on the battles: it could have been much more enjoyable if they would have been designed in other way. On the other hand, I kept on playing until I finished the wad so that means it´s, in a sense, engaging. On the other hand of the other hand, my expectatives weren´t fulfilled as I played (I kept on playing to see new nice stuff and I didn´t) so I tend to negatively think about this wad.
Map 28- Hotash Slay.
Can´t say I know anything about the author... Maybe he left the community before I came here?. Anyway, what he left for the NewDoom Community Project was an open-ended map very reminiscent of some original Doom map with a secret exit accesible via rocket jumping whose name I won´t quote here. Knowing that, what did I think about this map?.
To be honest, my first impression was quite bad: the odd texture choices (for a second I feared some tutti-frutty effect), the strange and humongous architecture almost entirely composed of large blocks and, again, the odd and certainly ugly textures weren´t particularly promising. After a bit of running around and seeing the kind of monsters that the huge courtyard I was had to offer the situation didn´t get a bit better: some cyberdemon, batchs of monsters and even more ugly texturing (make sure you notice I am treating textures as monsters here!) just made things a bit worse. Still, knowing what kind of map you´re up to from the beginning gives it a chance of catching your attention and after a couple of plays I got a few details that had me getting into the buildings populating the courtyard.
In for a surprise, I´d say: while the main looks of the map are pretty bare most of the interiors -a couple of exceptions apply- look particularly fine, with nice light effects, interesting texture combinations and small quality details. Does this make the map better?. Well, certainly not but creates an interesting contrast between the original Doom style on the outside (with its enormous structures) and the strangely decorated and varied interiors (tech, blood, ugly Doom 2 stuff...). Did I say "In for a surprise"?. Well, once you start getting inside the buildings, exploring and realising the non linearity of the map in all its dimension you´ll also get into the battles, the looks and the small puzzles you´ll find in the way: this map feels really boring until you guess the purpose of each building. Maybe one building contains some vital key while other is just there to distract, arm or trap you. Anyway, true to the truth, most of the buildings lack puzzles or adventurous switch actions so most of the puzzle of the map is on the layout itself: where do yo go?. What do you need?. What other options do you have?.
So, the battles on the map do well, the puzzle does well and the looks do both horrid and well. Most things seem to be doing well but let´s not forget some things we haven´t mentioned yet: the possibility of breaking the gameplay (for example, you´ll be horridly trapped by picking a weapon you just can get in every building without problems), the absurd amount of revenants in some places, the feeling of being completely lost as you start, the question of whether in the end there´s enough ammo to finish the map (considering there were enough supplies during the whole experience) or how hard it is to find the exit for the map (just ran across it by chance)... These others didn´t fare well. On the other hand, travelling through the courtyard is short and easy and there´s a sense of accomplishment when finishing so everything tends to balance.
I wouldn´t say this map is on the top of the pack -specially considering I don´t like extremely open ended maps- but it does fare well in the end.