Scientist 2

- Map design is very good and attractive

- Fun to play as gameplay is very good too

- Not very challenging even at UV difficulty + Brutal Doom

- I wish it was a complete 32 maps wad, But it only has 20 maps and the other 10 maps are multiplayer only maps

It's visually an interested megawad, the map design is also nice, nice story and custom texture, challenging megawad, played with Complex Doom

Done with these settings:

- Crispy Doom 4.2

- Ultra-Violence.

- Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset.

- Saves every 10 minutes or so.

This is a fine story-telling megawad. Aesthetically, I don't have much to complain, the new textures, while not being the best looking, succeed in their context, and I was more fond of the second episode (newer maps) where I noticed an advance in terms of visuals. Tons of eye candies, such as frozen or burning marines, waving flags, boxes on false conveyors, portraits of monsters, and much more. All these little details are rarely seen in other wads, one just doesn't see a machine that produces cacodemons every day, that's one the funniest things I've ever seen in a Doom wad. About light variation, the author played a lot with darkness, most if not all the maps have various sections where it's quite dark to see what's going on. This can be a disadvantage against enemies, particularly hitscanners, caution is suggested in these cases, or gamma correction. However, darkness in caves was visually pleasing, personally speaking, and you'll probably deal with it better than the poor marines that hold the candles. The music selection is generally cool, but some midis are way too loud. 

On a gameplay side, unless you check the release date, this could totally pass as a wad from the 90s. What I mean is, there's clearly a focus on adventure+action, and while I'm not very familiar with old FPS games, this felt at times like playing a total conversion. Your objective is to punish the scientist for bringing hell into earth, so this guy is the new enemy, which you'll meet at many points and will teleport out of the place upon killing him. The combat is mostly incidental, a great portion are hitscanners of all sizes, plus a few traps here and there, either with monsters or things. The thing is the pistol starts, more often you'll start with shotgunners or chaingunners in front of you, which you'll have to trade guns with first, something very common in old wads. It's not always easy to find important resources, like armor or blur spheres, and ranged weapons usage is limited overall. I had no issues with grinding through tanky monsters with only hitscan weapons, but that may not be suitable for other people. About the weapons, I mostly liked the flamethrower and crossbow (plasma rifle and rocket launcher respectively), the AK47 was cool too, but the sound was kinda annoying at times. Double shotguns were awkward to use, due to the sprite frames being mirrored shotguns. Last but not least, the flamegrenades, these weren't as bad as others implied, I found them powerful, much like rockets but faster and effective at close range, perhaps they should have been way more potent, to one-shot barons or archviles for example, given they occupy the seventh slot... Anyway, the maps are built so progression goes on par with the story, there's linearity above all, but an interesting side of it is how the layouts lead the player to previously explored territories, nothing about going from one extreme to the other, except one or two maps. The rest is to recognize the switches and doors, which aren't always so obvious.

The secrets are very important, like I said before, when there are tons of hitscanners, the best shield is a blur sphere. Unfortunately, it's hard to spot a single secret in this mapset. Some are hidden behind random non-hinted walls, others via crossing certain linedefs, which then have you backtracking all the way to the start. A few maps have unreachable sectors marked as secrets for whatever reason. Whatever, no favourite maps this time, since I liked and disliked them all pretty much the same way. 

Overall, not too exciting, or recommended to everyone. I had fun probably because of playing on continuous, which made the starts more bearable against hitscan attrition. So, if anything I said above sounds good for you then try it. My rate is 6/10. 

Some unduly harsh criticism here, I feel. The gameplay is straightforward and fun, no tedious ambushes when one picks up a key, no wandering around for ages looking for switches or exits. The Siberia levels seemed fine to me, and excessive darkness wasn't really a problem. The replacement weapons aren't the greatest though, especially the grenades.

I've never seen the Scientist 1, but the Scientist 2 was an attempt at making a somewhat competent megawad. only 20 maps, with 10 being deathmatch only at the end. the biggest issue I have is that this wasn't really a pistol-start friendly mapset. it has some good combat in spades, and the settings are fantastic, but you'll probably scrounge for supplies if you pistol start. the music apparently takes after Dream Theater and some group called Ocean's Edge among others. there's quite a bit of peculiarity here that goes with its 2005-esque feel. special mention goes to some of the secrets, where you'll be finding random walls that do random things elsewhere in the map. MAP19 was a highlight, with the weird Easter Island type heads and the sector elephant. yes, a sector elephant.

now pistol start is hard enough, the changes to the weapons is also a minus. some are mere sprite replacements, though admittingly I liked the dual-wield shotguns for the SSG sprite replacement. the PG replacement has short range and sucks, but the BFG replacement is next to useless. the titular scientist is an antagonist, and his role is to harass at certain levels, with the final confrontation having him act similar to a cyberdemon instead of the Wolf3D SS. other than that, mostly vanilla gameplay. a few nasty moments to look out for like chaingunners and such. it's pretty average but marred down by its supply shortages.