Slaughterfest 2011

Done with these settings:

- GLBoom+ 2.5.1.4.

- Ultra-Violence and Hurt Me Plenty.

- Pistol starts.

- Saves.

An unsatisfactory product composed of mostly uninspiring content, with a few enjoyable segments. First of all, I was glad the maps are grouped by authors, which made it better to differentiate the better content from the, questionable sections. Coincidentally, the better segments have the most polished aesthetics, not that visuals really mattered in a project like this. The majority is built in simple shapes and geometry, generally squares, triangles, rectangles... corridors... but with nice texturing from the Gothic packs, such as maps by Phml and Grain of Salt, and some abstract weirdness texturing using the stock ones, particularly TimeOfDeath as I see it's his typical style of visuals, or even some modest hot red caves in Memfis' only contribution. The music selection, while not memorable, it has a few particular atmospheric midis like in maps 25 and 26, among many stock midis from iwads. Some maps don't even have midis, whatever!

The gameplay can be described in several ways, though I didn't find that many differences between the authors. If anything, the common consensus of "high number of monsters per room" is applied in pretty much every map except one, the thing is how each author employed this particular mechanic and ways to approach encounters. Whether they failed or not to deliver slaughter-styled gameplay is up to more experienced players on that genre. My understanding is fast-paced combat is one of the principles, among strategic procedures under pressure and generally powerful artillery to use, as can be seen in most of these maps. Now there's also a wide range of difficulty, from bland to demanding to suddenly overwhelming from wherever you see it. Dannebubinga is one that maintained a balance between hordes and space, he has probably the most serviceable idea of crowd controlling in his maps, since it usually requires to concentrate monsters in some specific ways, like infighting scenarios or pushing towards hordes in god mode, to gain terrain and claim victory. He doesn't overload the player with resources, nor you're entitled to save up them for "a better circumstance", unless you go wild on spamming cells on anything, but since you won't be swimming on ammunition, progression can take a while, like in map 11 at the stands of hell knights, though depending on what you do it's possible to clear everything faster than expected. The same can be said from Phml's maps, he went for more sprawling huge areas where combat turns a bit grindy low-pressure at times, and lots of enemies you can skip forever, though that's up to completionists and how they decide to spend their time. In spite of the slow-paced gameplay, which had its fun sweaty moments too (e.g. the maze of spectres on blood!), I'd say the highlight comes from aesthetics, as mentioned before. Another case of lengthy maps is TimeOfDeath, he went straight ahead for the BFG-spamming through bullet-hell styled in, mostly, huge areas that feel as cramped as monsters occupy every spot. While this is seen as lazy mindless gameplay, there's something about clearing hordes which pumps up the adrenaline, at least during the heat of the battle. It's also true there's no variety or complement on what you do, other than holding "fire" for as long as it takes to kill everything. Plus the new weapon, a giant pink unlimited BFG, completely neuters any chance to approach something from a different perspective, although I recall a couple of instances where rockets were more efficient, but that's not a big deal given the maps were balanced around the new weapon. Of his three maps I enjoyed the first one more (that is, map 27), probably because I had to observe the hud to know my current ammo stock, and it also didn't have any lag. His other two maps are best to be played using the extra file which shrinks cacodemon's corpses, and expect not only lag but also to get infinitely lost if you had never experienced the infamous megawad Eternal Doom before. Lucky for me, I did, but still the BFG spamming lost its charm too quickly, honestly speaking. Anyway, a contrast to the bigger maps, are the ones by Grain of Salt. Her maps are arena-styled, structurally symmetric, short but exhausting. The first map of the set is the only exception, though still claustrophobic and with not many choices, and it'll probably leave a bad impression on many people, but trust me, everything becomes worse later (; . Being serious, I preferred her later maps more than the earlier ones, the second one is specially best to play on lower difficulties, since the balance between stimpacks, monsters clogged on each square, and ammo in unconventional spots, is simply egregious. The other maps are similar but way better balanced to not ache for ammo or health... Then, I have a couple individual standouts, which are maps 13 and 14 by Memfis and Olympus respectively. The first one, despite being entirely different from the rest of the set, is a welcome change of pace, I liked its tyson/strict ammo based gameplay. The second one is an obvious tribute to Hell Revealed, not easy nor hard, surprisingly fun for being a huge rectangle of monsters. Now for the rest of the set I don't really have anything positive to say, too much RNG-based gameplay which is not my thing at all, too many lazy spamfests (map 31 omg...), interesting concepts that only masochists will perhaps enjoy due to how they're executed (the tunnels of cyberdemons/hell knights in map 24), and too much bland randomness (anything from 16 to 23, except 17 wasn't so bad), many of these maps don't even have skills implemented. The final map made me miss IoS, and that says a lot... If you still insist to play those maps, I suggest to use that extra wad that gives you higher ammo/health which comes in the zip file, it'll help to speed things up.

There is also nothing important to speak about secrets, the majority of the maps don't have any, and secret encounters in slaughtermaps are actually a cool idea, which this wad is missing. My favourite maps have to be 09, 12, 13, 14, and maybe 32.

Overall, not really glad for this experience, nor I recommend this to any newcomer slaughter fan. If you still wish to try this, my personal advice is to play directly the maps I praised the most, and either skip the rest or run the wad with extra modifications. It's up to each person, really, I know people who enjoyed this megawad and there's nothing wrong with that, obviously. My rate is 4/10.