3 Heures d'agonie

Done with these settings:

 

- Crispy Doom 4.2

- Ultra-Violence.

- Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset.

- Saves every 10 seconds or so.

 

Fun mapset, a mixed bag of varied styles. The set is all speedmaps by different authors, some I recognized in their maps, like JC or FranckFRAG, and others completely new to me, so it was nice to meet all sorts of offerings. Visuals aren't the strongest feature, of course, still many authors managed to create some nice looking areas using mostly stock and custom textures. A few maps play with lights variation, such as having to find resources in darkness while waking up tons of enemies. The music selection is a mix in between iwad tracks, several others from well-known pwads, and also unused Doom tracks, I had no idea those even existed, really cool soundtrack. 

 

As a community based project, there's a lot to see in terms of progression and combat. Each author shows their own style, and the contrast between them is quite notable once you make further progress. I'm not sure whether some of the authors were completely new to mapping or not, since part of the contrast I mentioned before is due to the quality of the content by all meanings (visuals, geometry, combat, etc). This is not to say the ones that didn't stand out for me were bad, because others might find them more suitable to their tastes. However, I was more keen to the maps that provided a higher difficulty while having more than one way to deal with them, and not exactly to particular authors. Speaking of the mappers, you'll probably several contributions from the same guys, such as JC, FranckFRAG, and Datacore. The former one provided some old school slaughter(y) levels, I really liked his earlier maps where you are subject of crossfire in fairly open spaces, indoors or outdoors, he usually put the monsters in the way to find your weapons. I wasn't a fan of the symmetry of certain maps though, nor the repetitive combat that came with that, but still generally fun gameplay. On the other side, FranckFRAG opted for bite-sized maps with small but effective monster placement and traps. His maps are sometimes hard to taste given how short they are, I preferred those where after 2 minutes I still had more enemies to kill lol. Datacore didn't stick to one single style, incidental combat in the majority,  the weapon progression is what can put off some players, as using just chaingun for 300 imps in a big box didn't seem so exciting, to name an example, although I did like his second to last map. Other notable contributions include [WH]-Wilou84 maps, his last level was hard to digest, I'm not so fond of that sort of clausterfuck gameplay, personally speaking. There's also the Darkwave0000's biggest map, which was everything I expected from them, and it kicked my ass a lot of times, neat and brutal level. Oxyde's map is another one I really liked, it's heavily congested and has many surprises that can catch one off guard. The rest are some hit-and-miss, such as ZyklonB's two maps that were a little boring, or the HR-ish level by subject_119 which was weird and fun. Necrotikflesh maps can result in a funny or horrible experience, depending on how much you like darkness, or shotgunning a cyberdemon, all I'll say is I made an exception for my "100% everything" rule in the second case. 

 

Secret-wise, I don't remember any lol, well being super short maps there isn't much to talk about secrets, FranckFRAG maps surprisingly have more than 1 secret, that they are meaningful or not depends on each one. For favourite maps I'll pick 08, 15, 16, 19, 26, and probably 29 even though I had my anger moments. 

 

Overall, a success in my opinion, it might not be the most consistent megawad, but it does provide a little bit of everything for everyone. People seeking a fun time with short maps will surely find something up their alley here. So yeah, my rate is 7/10.

Nice mapset, I have fun with most levels and most of them are enough short so I like them, except map27 and map29, both are slaughterfest maps, maybe some love them, but I tired when keep dying on map27(layout is too cramp and small, ammo placement just weird),when I arrived on map29 I just give up, even I take some rest on map28 and since archviles goes nuts on later levels, sorry... 4/5 -playerlin

First 26 maps were great - a very enjoyable wad until then. Then you get map 27 which descends into the worst of the worst stupid slaughter fests. But then... map 29 - the dumbest, most juvenile stupidity I've ever had the misfortune to play. Aside from 1100+ monsters, there's ~50 Arch Viles running around the place reanimating everything. The dickwad that is responsible for this crap needs to be strung up by the balls and beaten with a rubber hose until he promises to never touch a Doom editor ever again.

better than its sequel, short, fun stuff. I like Oxyde's MAP19 most.

some really nice maps in here

French mappers seem to favor short, intense maps, where you dispatch several hundred foes in a couple minutes. Reminds me of other French project Survive in Hell, the best parts even reminiscent of Scythe, IMO... Darkwave's map 29 is really not impossibly hard, just a big slaughter map (just run around and don't get killed- they'll mostly take care of themselves!). A number of maps are low grade and #13 seems to be bugged (3.5/5 for that), but overall an enjoyable experience!

4 stars because some maps are inequal to each other, but 5 because it's so awesome to play a frenchy megawad!

Darkwave's map is so good it puts the others to shame.

Pretty darn good. I liked the small and compact feel to a lot of the maps, and the battles were challenging, without being insane. Map 29 was pretty nuts though! Recommended. -TRRobin.

Really cool maps!

Very good wad consisting of small maps ranging from easy to very hard. Of course quality varies as with most community projects but is surprisingly good. 4 stars

JC's levels are pretty solid and worth playing. FrankFRAG's are short, but by no means easy, with an apparent concentration on fully developing as much as possible for three hours and no more. All of them make nice maps, small or even tiny but intense. [WH]'s two maps are well worthwhile, though you have to be pretty good for Sang Innocent. Map19 is a nice tough tricky space tech level. Map29 is your worst nighmares come true. The others I didn't care for mostly, but enough nice maps to be worth it.

I'm not going to go into any great detail about each author's style, but FranckFrag, Darkwave0000 and Wilou84's offerings were the most satisfying. On the other hand we have many fillerish maps from Impulse and others. 3,5/5

i was really enjoying it up until map29. i got as far as pressing the yellow key switch and then i got slaughtered, and im not going to make another attempt at beating that map. ill vote 4 stars

Fun short, sometimes a bit challenging maps. Good for casual play, as well as speedrun. Nothing exceptional or new but it's a very nice wad with a lot of variety.

Some maps really suck but overall this was a pleasant experience. favs : 1, 15, 22, 27, 29.

This wad is awesome. For survival too! :) @ Monsterovich

Often short, usually difficult, almost always enjoyable. 4/5 - ZZ

JC's maps: rarely special, but usually solid worthwhile work (the last two 24 and 30 are weakest). Frankfrag's maps: quite brief but packed with good intense gameplay (except Map03, that is kind of too short for anything). WH-[Wilou84]'s maps are short/medium and challenging. Oxyde made a nice challenging techbase, and darkwave made a brutally challenging penultimate. Didn't care for the other authors, but this is definitely enough for a recommendation from me, play those maps :)

I pretty much enjoyed this. Even the slaughter maps. 4/5 - Optimus

Great fun, a few duds in there as usual with community map sets but most of the maps in this are enjoyable. Maps 27 and 29 are awesome!