Newgothic - movement 1

"Move in!"

When slaughter takes a different direction. Or is it the same but with different aesthetics? Well let's find out, played through GlBoom+ 2.5.1.5 on HMP.

Newgothic - Movement 1 is a set comprised of 18 slaughter levels with a gothic, industrial, and hellish aesthetic focused on the fun part as opposed to being as challenging as humanly possible. The player is taken to various bases, regions of Hell, and Earth (including cities) to fight the demon invasion. It comes with a new background menu, music, and textures.

So what is there to say? Well, not a whole lot as the gameplay is typical slaughter for the most part, with the exception of MAP16 which features a little over 100 enemies and deviates from the formula with its encounters, needing to finish off enemies in more challenging ways due to the design of the level and scarce ammo. In fact, the Berserk given at the start might prove to be the one essential power up in the entire map, with ammo and weapons offered to reach enemies you otherwise couldn't with just your fist, and places an emphasis on moving quickly with its traps. Apart from it, the other levels play generally the same, with enemies placed in strategic positions while they also come for you in medium-sized or large waves, and their counts ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand.

The difficulty curve seems to be nonexistent. This is because one level might end up being noticeably more challenging while the next much easier, never really knowing what to expect. The quality is also a bit inconsistent as some maps don't look like they belong in the package at all, with MAP03 and its Cyberdemons being the biggest offender. You start at the top of a tower in the middle of nowhere and you have to work your way down in order to take out a few hundred Cyberdemons, and that's virtually everything it is about. Not very challenging, but not very fun either. It also doesn't stand out visually as the tower, the ground to walk at the bottom, and the endless blue ocean is all the eyes are going to see for its entirety. A total filler and the package would've been better by simply not including it at all.

Apart from a few consistency issues in terms of quality, the only other problem would be the music. While it's certainly good, its problem falls more on the technical side of things. Some tracks are either too loud, while others are too quiet, and at least one of them appears to have poor audio quality. Otherwise, no problems, just pure slaughter fun and carnage with large levels that are pretty straightforward so navigation shouldn't prove to be an issue in any level, my favorite being MAP15 with its giant city. Sheesh, never seen so much carnage on the road. Newgothic Movement 1, along with the Slaughterfest series and classics such as AV, the later portion of the Scythes, and HR might as well be a good introduction to someone who has never played slaughter before due to its more forgiving nature, even though it appears to be more like a simple collection of maps as opposed to a true megawad since there's no real difficulty curve, it has some consistency issues, and you're taken to random places. But it's still good fun, and what's solid, is solid, best to appreciate it for what it is as opposed to what it could've been. So don't wait any more and send those bastards to oblivion.

Most of the maps are plenty of fun and quite hard.  Some were a bit over-populated to my tastes.

so the first Newgothic. having replayed it after experiencing the much less great sequel, I still hold my opinion that Newgothic movement 1 is much better with the slaughtermaps being much easier to tangle. this one also has better-looking maps and ideals that differentiate it from its sequel. sure, it's got some silliness in MAP03's tropical getaway of mancubi and cyberdemons, as well as the hardcore Dead Simple clone that is MAP07, but there's some pretty good ideas elsewhere. MAP16 has a relatively low monster count, with some puzzling gameplay for the BFG secret plus neat-looking void-space, while MAP08, MAP09, and MAP13 all force you to get six keys, with 13's city taking the cake easily. MAP15 also deserves mention for it's insane pyramidal combat, though it's certainly not perfect in any regard, and MAP21 will be the longest of these slaughtermaps. despite some longevity in these maps, as well as the mini-odysseys you'll come across, these maps tend to be friendlier to speedrun, and I like them more because of that.