Community Chest 2

At the beginning, it goes by nice curve, later on, though, it feels twice as restart - after 2-3 maps that can be actually done wholly just using chainsaw quickly comes run-through-only map 24 (unless you are Doom god, you will not get 100% kills no matter how much you utilize infighting, which is huge shame for otherwise maybe the most beautiful map of the pack. To me it feels like author took maybe hundreds of hours of hard work and then trashed it straight into the bin). Overall, I must praise rather detailed designed of maps - there are lot of nice small features and you feel that authors put really lot of work and thoughts into most of them. Nice escalation to ending to it, nothing too crazy combat-wise, but well-done balance, I loves dark demon caves for instance..
Overall, rather enjoyable WAD, but would play second time maybe few levels.

I believe this is the second best megawad of the 2000's (after Scythe 2), I don't think anything else from that era has kept me invested throughout the mapset, it offers so much variance, each map is unique and beautiful in its own way, even the 90's shenanigans of some of the newer mappers.

 

Highlights : 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 19, 21, 25, 28, 29, 32.

 

There are a couple of stinkers in here, as to be expected, but I'm more critical about them because of the poor gameplay, they do look amazing, but that's only a shell of what they are.

 

Lowlights : 2, 14, 22, 23, 24

Done with these settings:

 

- GLBoom+ 2.5.1.4. complevel 9
- Ultra-Violence
- Continuous combined with pistol start mindset.
- Saves every 10 minutes or so.

 

This is a slightly improved sequel of a mediocre megawad. It has no story whatsoever, not that it needs one, it's practically designed without an overarching theme and focused on Boom compatibility, something that the prequel didn't communicate very well. Although you rarely see tricks like conveyors and silent teleports put to specific purposes, they're mostly for the atmosphere. A couple of maps use custom colormaps in particular setpieces. One is to simulate immersion in toxic, and the other in blood, or perhaps portals to hell?. Anyway, Community Chest 2 has some nice visuals using stock textures. While not every map looks great, a bunch are simply awe-inspiring because of the author's creativity. I dig the idea in "Death Mountain", the sinuous terrain with mounds everywhere is very neat, as it's theoretically a mountain floating in the air. My only gripe is the trees are placed to get stuck in. Other locations are plain techbases, brown caverns, wooden complexes, Inferno-styled hell and unknown places. Most of the music available are tracks from other wads and games, with only one self-made piece for map 24 by the same author, an amazing melody by the way. I would suggest to add your own tracks for the maps lacking them, for a stronger experience if it helps.

 

For those who have played the prequel first, and I'm sure everyone did, there are quite a few familiar names to be found, some of which contributed with more than one map. Gene Bird cooked around five for example, evoking a conservative "rooms with monsters" 90's style. His maps don't vary in any aspect to each other, nor to his previous works in Community Chest 1 unfortunately, but they blend well enough with the tone of the mapset. The first map is already by Erik Alm in his well-known Scythe fashion. Then we have individual entries from Andy Leaver, Kaiser and Use3d, the latter came as an improvement to be honest. On the other hand, a big portion of the people involved were completely new to me, and that's when I had to expect the unexpected, sort of. I'd say the maps had their ups and downs, generally enjoyable if some exceptions. They were also organized in a very random way, but that's no news. Just like a traditional community project, this megawad features a wide range of concepts, layouts, and forms to entertain the player, for better or worse. Fans of old-school and/or adventure maps will be delighted, as there are a lot of them in all sizes and difficulties, even several inspired by the original Doom levels. The obvious standout is "The Mucus Flow", a brutal map that can only be understood with patience and dedication, mostly the former one, and heavy chainsaw practicing. Besides, its curvy "mint-chocolate" design is beautiful and unique, or used to be, since tons of future releases found inspiration from it (e.g. Speed of Doom). A shame it has glitches in the sky. There are other remarkable moments to be experienced, such as to explore a city in depth to figure out the secret exit, or to fall in a sequence of fake exits that only exposes you in circles of chaingunners. I'm not sure how others will take it, but I couldn't hold my laugh after the second time.

 

Secret-wise, the first thing to know is that PRBoom users need to activate the "Linedefs w/o tags apply locally" option to enable access to some ZDoom-only secrets in maps 06 and 24. There is also a secret in map 20 that requires an archvile jump, but it's not possible to reach it outside of ZDoom versions. Other than those, hope your sense of exploration is wide awake, as there is plenty to locate and highly appreciate. I'm thinking of the standout map, of course. For favourite maps I will pick 19, 24, 27, and 31. Some others like 06, 13, 23 and 32 were entertaining for the most part, but not convincing as a whole. The rest range from good to dull or tedious, like the final map. 

 

Overall, it's certainly an upgrade in quality, and I'm inclined to believe the successors are much better. Still, it's nice to traverse the history of the community chest projects. If you and I share similar tastes, then you'll probably find content to enjoy here, and if not, well, skip the unnecessary. My rate is 6/10.  

Maps of interest: 4, 11, 12, 15, 23, 24, 26.

A truly excellent set of maps. I had a lot of fun with them, especially Map 15.

boring with an occasional dash of good map

Like CC1, its pretty hit and miss. Unlike CC1, the hits are so good, that I can generally overlook the misses.

Mostly a mixture of average-decent maps and good-great maps. Then theres Gene Birds maps. Honestly could've been 4/5 from me if it weren't for gene bird. 3/5

strange isn't it? a few good maps can make the entire set replayable, even if there are some serious bugs and mediocrity in the other maps. sure enough, that's what the second Community Chest is, and in a twist of fate, proves to be the most memorable one. the overall quality is only a small step up from its predecessor, we see a few familiar faces make some maps, and newer mappers (some of which are still around today) making the rest. Gene Bird, once again, is prolific, but his maps don't have a whole lot of real substance, yet they remain inoffensive. Kaiser and Use3D, both mappers who make long levels in general, make their long ones here, and they are better than the previous ones.

 

but let's see what stood out the most. MAP15 is one of the few maps that to this day remains unique, with Fragport-style organization on what to do and where to go, but also adding in monster encounters every 10 minutes that pass. which makes max runs a bit moot but at the same time it creates a number of playstyles thanks to both the nonlinearity and the time limits. MAP22 is one of the first wads I remember playing standalone, one of the true tough challenges, and which Lutrov71 the author would go on to make No Brakes, which was NDCP MAP27 as well. following it was MAP23, a love letter to A Link to the Past's Death Mountain, incredibly well-organized even though combat is frantic. MAP24 everyone knows by now, a very experimental piece that although buggy, is one that design-wise drew a fuckload of inspiration. all despite its gimmicks with the hitscan towers, all the stashes in a single location, goddamnit. MAP28 being Linguica's map how exactly would you design a completely weird map that teeters on jokewad territory at times but still remains serious enough to make it a worthwhile, yet linear adventure with multiple headaches, well this map does that quite well.

 

these five maps are the most notable of them all for what they offer, and while others tend to be standard, they aren't really passed up, as they are average and mediocre at the very worst and do great to keep paces going.

This was way better than the 1st CC.wad, I played this October 2014 on a Pentium 3 1ghz in ZDoom and only Death Mountain caused FPS drop. These levels were awesome except for 3 levels: map 24 Mucus Flow would have been a master piece but lack of ammunition caused combat to fall flat on its face, Map 27 Gethsemane was a slog, map 28 No Room was a total piece of shit. All the other maps were good, lots of techbase. Even the Gene Bird maps were fun. Dick tested, Cock approved!

Holy shit!! this wad kicks ass and stomps on it!!!

Lots of superb maps bristling with interesting challenges, and a few nice puzzles. However, the level "Mucus Flow", despite the hyperdetailing, is RUINED by an impossible-to-find switch that is required to progress through the rest of the level. No, I couldn't find it, and no-one was prepared to help me at the time. So it might be a creative community, but it doesn't have infallible quality control. (B.P.R.D. deserves a slap for that damned switch) 4/5

"Community Chest 2" wasn't based around any theme; the only requirements were "make a boom compatible map that doesn't suck too much", and the authors had varying editing experience and style, so of course the end result is a very varied set of maps... Still, most of these maps are excellent. I very much enjoyed playing them through. Now that I think about it, there's not a single map I hate here (which is rare). Even the filler maps have great gameplay. --4/5

Wonderful the guy who invented the idea of ​​joinin g several wads ... Because it makes authors that do not have much time to make a wad of 32 maps can be distinguished in a continuous game wads ... By the way, ​​wads of maps made ​​singul arly usually are worked more in their details, and a wad compilation of single wads is amazing! Sry my english!

Wow, hit scanner abuse, and God Awful traps. There's traps for everything, walk 5 feet down a corridor and get attacked by revenants that spawn in behind you, keep walking down the the corridor and get attacked by more monsters, climb a ladder and the whole room is filled with monsters! That in combination with not enough health made this a frustrating wad to play. I am willing to give it a 2/5 for the detailing on the maps, though. -LordMordecai

It rocks. 5/5-Moti

Excellent. Quality, challenge and complexity vary considerably from map to map, but they're all at least good, and some are extraordinary works of art. Overall, this is certainly one of the very top wads of the year.

i tried this with jdoom and it was slow lol. definetily use this with zdoom. 5/5 this is awsome. - xolzo

this stuff is awesome !! :D Peace.. -NMN

agree with the last reviewer but more healthy rating 4/5

It's good to see it was cleaned up from that last upload a few weeks back. I still feel it's too uneven and unless changed, it still has the worst Map 30 I've ever played. Those caveats aside, awesome. A solid 4/5.

It...is...perfect. 5/5 -CT

Much better than the original.

[biased vote]This is excellent stuff! Play this now! -Cyber-Menace[/biased vote]

1/3 4-5 stars, 1/3 2-3 stars, 1/3 0-1 star - 3/5