Real World

Done with these settings:

- Crispy Doom 4.2

- Hurt Me Plenty.

- Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset.

- Saves every 10 minutes or so.

This is a short, simplistic, ok mapset. What seems to be a megawad, it never felt like one, as the maps are bite-sized and with low monster count, making it doable in one session of 1 or 2 hours blind. There's not much to talk about aesthetics, it only uses stock textures in a Hell Revealed way, that is brown/green/grey, sometimes mixed and sometimes only one colour for the whole map. The soundtrack is composed by iwad tracks and several new tunes (some from other pwads, don't know about the rest), of which maps 12, 13 and 18 have the best ones, some sort of fantasy-action cool midis.

What is relevant to point out is the notorious "influence" from certain wads in terms of layout and combat. Pretty much every map has something that could be considered a homage from TNT, Hell Revealed, Thy Flesh Consumed, or even Hangar too, in a very compact/tight way. This isn't any sort of accusatory comment, I don't know what were the author's intentions, but as I was progressing I couldn't just ignore many of the rooms that looked "very familiar", or to be more specific, the exact same ideas from other wads, more or less polished. It's up to each one to judge I guess... So progression isn't demanding in any way, the maps are quite short and small, impossible to be lost, you can even see all the linedefs in the automap in most maps, right from the start. You'll surely beat them in a blink of an eye, well except map 20, so I'd recommend any maxer to save before they face a switch, it could be a non-signaled exit. Wondering how combat is? Just like the wads I mentioned before, with a major influence from HR. For those who never played that, it can be tight rooms with mid-tiers to kill with any kind of shotgun available, a bunch of hell nobles to ignore until you find a useful weapon, or several hordes in a Downtown-ish environment. There're also satirical placements like an early cyberdemon to telefrag, or a square of stuck revenants that can't chase you. It's a bit hitscan heavy at first, but it gradually lessens in later maps. Don't know what else to say, I wasn't very sold on the combat in general, rather uninteresting at moments, some maps will overpower you, and others will punish you if you don't go for secrets.

Talking about secrets, NuMetalManiak made a perfect comment about them, some require SR50 which is a form of straferunning that is usually avoided for many reasons. In other cases, it is possible to enter normal areas and tag a secret, even if they are not hidden or have anything inside. Wall-humping is often necessary too. The ones I disliked at all were those that hid mandatory weapons, no matter if they were easy to find, without them is impossible to pistol everything in the way (map 11 ahem...). 

For favourite maps, I'll pick 19 and 20, the first because of the concept and the second one because go Downtwon maps. 

Overall, not sure if I'll recommend this to anyone, probably for the speedrun part, or if you are a diehard fan of HR, but I assure it's way easier. Anyway, still an ok set. My rate is 5/10.