The Joy of Mapping #3 - MANDATORY JOY

The Joy of Mapping #3 is a community speed mapping megawad that manages to be amazing with compact, competent and fun maps. As stated in the .txt file its a 3 hour event and that seems to be enough time for quality with great maps without being large or confusing. While it is a bit of a mixed bag with the first map being the shortest, the rest offer big action, tricks of advanced developers and good traps. Everything felt like a good, even challenge with moments of dread coupled with moments of power to mow down enemies.

I appreciate speed mapping megawads as I know what I'm getting into rather than playing a single 2 minute map that took me 2 minutes to find, download, read the text file and load up. I'd rather play them all at once to get this good experience. Because its all 2 - 5+ minute maps, its good for a full play through in a shorter amount of time. There's a lot of diversity from map to map and if you didn't get the drift earlier, nothing overstays its welcome.

Most maps seem like they have a good variety of heights, textures and even themes within themes. Its staggering how good most of these turned out. I say most, because there are a few rougher maps and I'll point out the waterfalls in the darkness as the real exception to this rule. Fighting enemies in pitch black without night vision felt like something I just did not want to do, so when I died, I skipped it.

One head scratcher was a few of the maps had an exit door where enemies spawn in or walls open up behind you... but when you're already at the exit why would it matter if they're behind you? Maybe the 100%ers out there that need to kill everything to quench their blood lust would turn around to keep fighting. It could have always been a rush, finish situation where the 3 hours was up, let's just slap an exit here. Bam. Done.

The megawad includes a few new midis from big bands and its always welcome to have some fresh music to go with the action. Another thing I like is the forced pistol start. That way everything is as the author designed it rather than walking into a map with a rocket launcher that was designed with lesser enemies sprinkled about.

For fans of shorter levels where you see a lot of themes in a short amount of time this is for you. People that like big action without being a slaughter map or getting confused where to go, this is for you too. If you need more of a marathon with big maps, puzzles or secrets, keep on looking.

A pretty successful speedmapping with all maps being of at least decent quality, and most being just simply good. The final few err a bit on the difficult side, where you might get numbed and tell yourself "Oh, another death. Whatever." But really, good visuals, interesting gameplay, a bit tight on ammo but still, mostly fair.