Phouse: "The great arena"

here is an experimental wad that tries some arcade-style gameplay for Doom. make a simple arena repeated over the span of 32 maps, give the player a reasonable set of amenities in the weapons, ammo, and health provided, and then fight a wave of enemies. it in fact was made specifically for an lmp competition, and I wonder what it's about? going through as much as you can a la Ironman-style?

for the casual players out there, The Great Arena will likely bore, especially with the first waves since you get so many supplies. you'll also realize a complete lack of armor and a lack of BFG, which tries to amp the challenge a little more. the general strategy for most maps is to find where your enemies start and when you can, circle around the arena continuously until everything demonic stops moving, then use the lift and exit, although if you're bold you can just exit any time. notable rounds are 20 and 28 with their multiple cyberdemons, as well as a sort of breather in 29 with like two archies before the mancubi-riddled finale. most of the waves consist of just one enemy, which probably makes things a bit boring, although some rounds do have two types of monsters. note that 31 and 32 are pretty much unused, with scattered powerups and no monsters, you get the feeling these were deathmatch levels. also no monsters show up in the stands. this is a simple time-killer, and you could do better elsewhere.

also this mapset for some reason crashes ZDoom at times when trying to load the next level after hitting the exit switch. I have no idea what could potentially be causing this, especially with every level being the exact same layout.

I completed the whole megawad in only 36 minutes. The same arena is repeated over 30 times but there're not armor and no BFG in any of the maps. The authour could at least add/change some items to make it less boring. There's no design as the maps are the same over and over. It would be wise to just avoid it altogether.