Beyond The Hell

I thought I was just gonna play a very average megawad with a weird level design, but in reality it's much worse than that. The skill and patience required to hope to complete these levels in UV is much higher than you could imagine.

Numetalmaniak's commentary summed it up well but I'll go on and on.

I think it's one of the most sadistic and unforgiving wads I've ever played. I can make a list of what's in store for you, even worse if you're a pistol-start:

- Critical lack of life and ammunition
- Secrets that must be found if you hope to survive
- Deadly Holes
- Obscure progression
- Labyrinth with toxic liquid (with sometimes no radsuit!)
- Weapons hard to find or/and protected by a ton of monsters
- Chaingunners , Pain Elementals , revenants galore
- Hitscan fest without armor
- Compartments with 45,000 monsters inside.
- Unavoidable fast crushers
...

The wad is probably less difficult if you know the maps well, but everything is calculated in such a way that very few strategies are really sustainable. It's very difficult to have fun on this wad, I've had enough of it myself. I'm going to try to finish it anyway. On the other hand, I have to say that the mappers involved in this project are evil geniuses. The monsters, the scenery, the traps are perfectly used to piss off the player as much as possible.

For a player with a minimum of sanity, this wad is crap and doesn't give any pleasure. On the other hand, I'm more tolerant: The levels are rather fascinating for their lack of fair play and consideration for human dignity.

Well done

if you want a megawad in which it feels like playing beyond hell, well, that's exactly what this says, except let's interpret that title a little differently.

this mapset is fucking dreadful. it's not on the same level as playmasters.wad, thankfully, but it's just awful in gameplay overall. and design sucks too. to cap it off: really dull gameplay moments at times, but then you get to slaughter lots of imps or other small monsters. that's fine, but the authors like to put chaingunners in just the worst of spots. to further add to it, level layouts are even worse, triggers where you don't know what does exactly what, tons of damaging floors, and some assholish crusher placement in many maps. let's also not forget the 0 brightness rooms and blinking rooms. some map layouts even get reused, like 01 and 12, then 13 and 27.

"highlight" maps:

MAP09: has a big FIREBLU maze that actually isn't all that fun to go through.

MAP15: chaingunners all around you at the start

MAP18: almost impossible to 100%, has two crushers that are impossible to avoid, TWICE.

MAP24: for continuous players, since MAP23 had a Type 11 exit, lots of chaos with hitscanners means just surviving at the beginning is insanity.

MAP28: alright, the only map I actually liked.

so yes, this was an experience beyond hell, and one of the worst megawads I've ever played. it's one of those megawads where you just feel worse after playing it.

edit: lol carlos what's your problem with my reviews, man.

Maps are annoyingly difficult and even playing in "Hey Not Too Rough", one map starts with like 8 chainguners in front of you?  Others start similar with shotgun zombies close to you.  Not even to mention like map15 I guess, where you have to cross a very long corridor where the floor is lava (literally!) only 1 radiation suit in the middle, a couple of stimpacks and the corridor blocked by monsters going from Imps to revenants, pain elemental and arachnotron, and to complete, after you activate the switch at the end of the corridor you have to take all the way back, without another radiation suit or any other power-up (idbehold - r did it's debut there).  Definitely not enjoyable, being unnecesary difficult, almost impossible.