Team Rocket: Blasting Off at the Speed of Mapping

It's truly awe-inspiring what can be done in the span of 24 hours. Team Rocket 1 was a 24-hour streaming event held by 4 main mappers with 5 guests that produced a full megawad plus a couple bonus maps. Some few of the maps are simplistic, which can be a good thing, and a decent chunk are gimmick maps, also which can be good, but most are just well designed speedmaps that are worth a look. 

A lot of the maps have interesting layouts with clever progression and good flow; it's fun to run around them and exploring is equally satisfying, even in such small maps. I liked the clever use of multiples of a certain keyed door in a couple maps to present what seems to be a nonlinear setup in what turns out to be a linear design, as the doors wind up being entrances or exits to/from previously cleared areas, creating a new linear path through an old one; it's a nice, concise way to add interest to the exploration side of things. Similarly with walls that lower and other stuff; not necessarily limited to keyed doors, though I think keyed doors are a bit less commonly seen on this general trope and are a bit more overt in that they add some extra level of intuitive conveyance to players that lowering walls don't necessarily bring to the table, so worth a mention.

Gameplay is really the largest mixed bag of these maps and it's such a shame because they are otherwise great maps in a hugely inspirational mapset. Ironically it wasn't the gimmick maps that hurt this set for me, though I also tend to like gimmick maps so grain of salt on that, heh, but more-so the maps which were far too overtuned in their supplies, permitting few mistakes on the part of players. Additionally frustrating was that some of these maps in particular didnt have difficultly settings implemented. I hate to be judgemental but that's just lazy and inexcusable, especially when hot fixes after the event are a thing, but also especially when it takes 2 seconds to add more health or uncheck a box for a troublesome monster to account for lower difficulty settings. I'm honestly torn between giving this a 3 or a 4 star rating because of this.

The other loss of points for me comes from that overtuning of some of the maps. To some degree I can see what was being aimed for and I'll also qualify this review by stating that I played through this on the touchscreen, so I was at a definite handicap when compared to if I had tackled this on the laptop using kb+mouse, but at the same time the goal of the game should be to have fun, not to throw players to hitscan rng with little health pickups to recover with, or smack in the face with cheap/dirty gotchas that only work the first time (without preknowledge), etc, and the maps that fit this mold constricted my ability to make my own fun into one particular playstyle that I just didn't enjoy. Honestly tho idk if this was more frustrating to me or the lack of difficulty settings in the maps that really needed it. Thankfully ITYTD is a thing, but even just halving the damage taken doesn't make some of these maps easy, and that combined with double ammo still doesn't make them much more fun. It did help a little though. I was under the mistaken assumption that this first one was a zdoom mapset so I played this in gzdoom; knowing now that I could have used prboom makes me cry a little knowing that some of the worst offending maps would have literally been easier without zdoom's differing behaviors.

That's really it for the negatives from me, I enjoyed most of this megawad. Even the maps I did not have fun with I can appreciate as good and well-built maps. Something funny about restaurant reviews can be similarly drawn to my experiences here: the worst reviews are most often from bad service rather than bad food, and even just looking at the food itself presentation is half of how it is received. The maps I didn't have fun with could have been fun to me with only minor changes; it was ultimately just the balancing of the maps that made them unpleasant. To some degree there was questionable monster placement as well, but mostly it was just the balancing. What a shame to ruin a good map with poor quality control on balancing. I think it would be good in the future to have better testing and qc wrt how the maps play as a whole and fit together for the next iteration(s) of these events.

My favorite maps were: 9, 10, 11, 16, 17, 21, 23, 27, 29, 31, and 34.

MAP09: Acceleration - Dragonfly - has a viscerally fun hot start

MAP10: The Oppressor - AD_79 - has a nice concept and was well done, though a bit tightly balanced

MAP11: Down With The Thiccness - Matt Tropiano - is a silly, punchy (not as in using the fist) sort of rocket map against midtiers

MAP16: Frank Lloyd Wrong's Aqueduct - Matt Tropiano - has an interesting progression and fun gameplay

MAP17: Petrichor Gardens - Jimmy - has a great atmosphere and feels good to explore

MAP21: Jog On - Dragonfly - yes. Maps like this are good. I came into this map on easy difficulty and was happily surprised to see monsters present blocking the path when I bumped it back up. I love this type of concept and it was well done here.

MAP23: Bug Collection - Jimmy - what a cool gimmick for a map. I mean I guess it's been done enough times to be a clear enough trope when you see it to figure out what's going on intuitively, though the map also does a good job of conveying that in the first room. What I like about the implementation of it here though is the essentially neverending supply of bugs, which adds a nice layer of complexity to an otherwise simple map. The timed door was mean tho ;p

MAP27: Snow Problem - Matt Tropiano - I actually liked the ice physics here; I guess fitting with my like for gimmicky stuff I generally don't dislike ice physics in most general cases, but it was certainly fun to play around with here. Fairly lowkey use of it too; there isn't a whole lot of action that really happens on the ice; just grab the rl and return later to clean turrets. Doing circles was fun tho, as was moving at super speeds ;p

MAP29: Papyrus Containing the Spell to Summon the Breath of Life Enshrined in
the Collected Scrolls of Sheryl Crow - AD_79 - is a fun, chaotic slaughter map centering around the bfg; nice!

MAP31: Sleep Forever - Dobu Gabu Maru - is a good challenge map but it made me learn the final encounter and I found the process of one of the few neurons left in my brain forming a new connection to another painful so 0/10

MAP34: Vermilion - AtronxGH - is a fun, small map

Also special mention to the cool IoS setup used for map 30.

I loved the music choice in all of these maps; so on-point and from many talented musicians that I respect. Couldn't ask for a better track listing.

I guess that's enough ranting and gushing for one review; the main point is that this megawad is good and it's so inspirational to see what can be done in just 24 hours by a group of well-practiced, highly motivated artists. Simply amazing.

Aside from a couple of stinkers (I'm looking at you, maps 20 and 33), this was a pretty fun and challenging map set to play through. For the time limit imposed in order to make these maps, they're of pretty nice quality, I think. While I wasn't the biggest fan of the (in my opinion) overusage of Arch-Viles and Revenants, it was still a fair challenge.

This wad is tough to rate, as part of what makes it so unique are the circumstances of its creation. Four mappers, Dragonfly, MTrop, Jimmy, and AD_79 endured 20 straight hours of mapping with few breaks. That they were able to accomplish this is an amazing feat.

Maps consist of a variety of themes, from techbase, to Hell, to gothic and beyond. There are 35 in total (some from guest mappers). Because the maps were mostly made by four people in one day, gameplay is not always the most refined. For example, a lot of them seem to center on the concept of Archviles being an immediate menace. While these type of maps can be fun, they can also get tiring one after another.

That doesn't mean Team Rocket: Blasting Off is bad. To the contrary. It is a fun, very well made set. As far as level design and artistry, it is great. There are a few standout maps with concepts I did not even know could be pulled off in boom. One level, for example, continuously sinks into lava. Another is in a snowy tundra and actually has ice physics!

There are also a few tedious maps. As another poster mentioned, map 20 is a bit of a chore. I also found the ice map annoying at parts, but to be fair, ice physics are difficult to pull off.

Overall I give the wad 3 out of 5 stars. On a personal level I would give it 4, but I understand that the repetitive and sometimes unpolished gameplay can get in the way. That said, this wad is still an amazing accomplishment, and everyone involved should be proud.

And thus, Team Rocket is finished, played through GlBoom+ on UV.

So starting with the beginning, Team Rocket is a 32+ level megawad created by various mappers in less than a day (20 hours more exactly, if I'm not mistaken), including a few guests. It features new textures, a few new sounds, a menu background, music, status bar, but no new enemies, ENDOOM screen, or weapons.

It is designed only with pistol starting in mind as every level features suicide exits. This was, no doubt, done for the purpose of balancing it much easier for something very specific as opposed to both pistol starting and continuous, which is a good thing considering that it was created in less than a day, it was impossible to be perfect for both, so they authors took the easy route. Even so, for pistol starting it's pretty well balanced and the effort, attention to detail, and polish that was put into it is very obvious. The amount of polish is probably the most impressive part of the megawad, I was unable to notice any problems with the levels or the enemies, so it's not quite possible to tell whether it was done in a very short time span or not thanks to this.

Although the levels look good, it's not the only focus of the megawad, the other aspect being the gameplay. It's skill based and finishing many levels is not exactly easy as some of them do require some trial and error or a few attempts to succeed, primarily the maps designed by AD_79 which are easily the most difficult in the entire package. Memorization of the enemy placement and the layout does pay off especially in his levels, so don't expect them to be just a walk in the park.

Despite being created by multiple authors it's pretty consistent although at the same time it's also very easy to differentiate the levels made by a certain person since they all provide an unique experience and different gameplay styles and thus don't give the impression that anyone tries to copy the style of someone else. The levels are short and straight to the point with low enemy counts, only very few of them have over 100 or 200 and a single map is slaughter. Good as it is however, I can't say I really have any favorite maps, they are all good but at the same time nothing really caught my attention in a particular way to make me say "damn, there's something different about this map, it really shines and stays out of the crowd". Likewise, there are no bad or seriously flawed levels, though a few were a bit underwhelming, particularly MAP08. A fun level, but nothing particularly impressive.

Balancing is good most of the time, however there are a few maps which don't seem to provide enough ammo to kill all enemies, so maxing them out could prove a challenge in itself, and I'm not entirely sure doable.

At the end of the journey we're presented with an Icon of Sin on MAP30. It is a bit different from the standard IoS map as finishing the level requires the player to destroy some devices which will then cause the IoS to die. It's an interesting take that works. My only problem with this level is the transparent bridges which can make the navigation a bit frustrating, yet at the same time, the map would not be the same or quite work without them.

All this being said, it's short and sweet, meaning that it can easily be finished in a few hours or a day, if you're slower, but it's worth the time.

wow this was...mostly annoying, utilizing such tropes such as low ammo, lots of running around just trying to find the best weapon to choose, and mancubus snipers. I felt trolled. at least Jimmy is a good mapper though. MAP30 was the best map overall.

loved all of it except map20. that map sucked the life out of me. really great stuff all around.