PUNISHER.WAD

Surprisingly fun, and quite challenging for its age. Despite being an obvious predecessor to Go 2 It, this one is generally a bit less generous when it comes to resources (though it does have a few invulnerability spheres in UV), but there are many more opportunities for infighting in the opening half of the map.

That said, I don't feel that it's quite as evenly-paced as its Final Doom successor, and there's a few sections that are just slogs. I would say that the beginning is the strongest, with the initial rush to scavenge any resource you can find and deal with whatever opposition you can take. The middle is a bit of a slog, punctuated by an "exciting" baron closet (filled with so many barons that I had to turn my volume down). I'm still trying to figure out how I felt about the ending rush. There was quite a bit of action going on, with about a half dozen cybies and a bunch of arch-viles running around (among other things), but it almost felt like I was being funneled down a particular route due to the monster placement. That felt kind of jarring, as the map had been fairly non-linear up until that point.

Still, I had a ton of fun with this, especially given its age. Go 2 It is a far better experience across the board, but it's kind of cool to see where the slaughtermap concept originated.

Punisher is pretty much Dario Casali's version of Go 2 It. 

From the start, the map seems to have more 2 it. The monster count is three times higher, you start getting attacked right away and there seem to be Pain Elementals everywhere. The problem is, once you gain a footing, the levels becomes much easier than Go 2 It. Monster Placement here is very haphazard, meaning that even with fever power-ups, you shouldn't have a problem. This also results in lot of infighting and not the good kind. Most of the population just kill each other even before you get 2 them. Punisher has one last trick up its sleeve though, and that is releasing a load of archviles once you progress far enough, which thankfully makes the map much more challenging again. 

Overall, it's a good early slaughtermap. I think it looks better than Go 2 It, but the gameplay in its middle gets too easy, as the monster placement isn't as good as Go 2 It. Then again, it was built in 2 hours.

Punisher is still entertaining and worth playing if you like Go 2 It and want to see Dario's take on the concept. 

Also, it has not new music so I suggest throwing some custom midi at it. 20 minutes of D_RUNNIN can't be good for your health.

Extreme map 01 clone by Dario Casali in about 2 hours build time. Lot's o demons for you.

"They’ll be waiting for me. When I arrive, they’ll wish they’d sent me to heaven." Punisher.

Before Plutonia's Go 2 It, there was Dario Casali's take on expanding Doom 2's MAP01 into a difficult and action packed level. Punisher can be seen as sort of a prototype for Go 2 It in that it was released a year before Final Doom and the map is rough around the edges to play. There are far more many monsters in Punisher than there are in Go 2 It, starting off with about 600 enemies, which is three times more than Go 2 It's initial start of about 200 enemies. It sounds like Punisher is more difficult than Go 2 It for having more enemies and a rougher layout, right? Well, actually no, Punisher is easier than Go 2 It though at the same time, Punisher has its difficulty issues that can make it annoying to play.

In Punisher, a variety of enemies are placed together far more frequently, meaning infighting happens immediately in the areas they are in. There are some rooms where only a single enemy type is in to prevent easy infighting, but even still, you can take advantage of monster infighting far more than you would in Go 2 It. Another thing, you don't always get up close to tough monsters like the Cyberdemon so you can pretty much skip them at times, which is unlike Go 2 It as that map has you getting up close to them or at times killing them to progress.

Despite Punisher encouraging something of a aggressive and fast playstyle like you Go 2 It and other Plutonia maps encourage, it doesn't exactly feel like you can do it as freely here. There's a ton of open space so trying to draw attention of monsters to cause some infighting yourself can be annoying to do, an Arch-Vile can hit you out in the open and Pain Elementals can be very problematic, so you might find yourself peeking in and out of cover often instead of blasting monsters away with rockets and a BFG. That's not to say you can't blast through the level if you played it multiple times much like Go 2 It, but even so, the pacing and fights here feel a bit messy.

Punisher is not bad to play and I found it fun to play despite its gameplay problems. I found it interesting to compare this map with Go 2 It to see the differences and how much more refined an expanded Doom 2 MAP01 turned out in the end. If you're into maps with tons of monsters to kill and don't mind some odd pacing, Punisher is good to play, though it definitely shows its age.

Dario Casali's take on his brother's famous Go 2 It. Overall, I feel like although this is a decent take on the idea, Go 2 It is still a far better level.

The two levels are very similar, being based on expanded versions of Doom 2's Map01, but with lots more monsters. Generally speaking Punisher has the tougher monsters. Compared to Go 2 It, Punisher has more enemies, more cyberdemons, more masterminds, lots of chaingunners, and a legitimately problematic amount of pain elementals. However, even with the extra firepower, I feel like Punisher doesn't quite meet the difficulty of its counterpart. Go 2 It has a lot of homogenous crowds, meaning infighting can be troublesome at times. Punisher, on the other hand, is so varied that everything basically starts fighting immediately, making the large crowds pretty easy as long as you know what you're doing.

In the looks department, Punisher is also worse than its counterpart. Naturally, being a Doom 2 map, there are no fancy Plutonia textures to be found. This means that Dario instead had to fall back on Doom 2's rather bland brown brick and stone textures. Monster and item placement are scattered everywhere without much organization, making a lot of areas look messy. It's not a very aesthetically pleasing map, but it gets the job done (and the gameplay is the focus anyway.)

Is Punisher a bad map? No, certainly not.
Is it worth playing? If you like this kind of map, absolutely!
Does it hold up very well? Unfortunately, not really much at all.