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Earth

   (76 reviews)

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About This File

Ten level episode replacement for first episode of Hell on Earth.

Story Line You arrive on earth to find it subverted by savage aliens. Your point of arrival is a rocky coastline with rolling surf: Levels: The Ruins (MAP01): You stand facing out to sea with rolling breakers splasing on the rocks. Behind you are the ruins of civilization, haunted with alien hellspawn. Seek the Sword of Damocles... The Tomb (MAP02): To have hope of freeing the world, you must take back the one place the enemy considers special... Mines of Moria (MAP03): Like its Lord of the Rings namesake, it is crawling with evil things... The Chasm (MAP04): The enemy is bivouacked in rugged coastal terrain. You mission is to clear them out... Strategic Defense Command (MAP05): A deep underground command and control center, one of the last great hopes for mankind in repelling the alien invasion. However, it seems to be off line, You need to find out why... Observation Station (MAP06): This place has seen some action before it fell to the enemy. Beware!... The Emerald Tower (MAP07): Your mission is to capture the Emerald Tower. Short, sweet, and relatively easy!?!... Ammo Pit (MAP08): This is the domain of the arch-vile. Trick him into helping you... Islands (MAP09): You arrive on an rocky island in a rugged fjord. Out to sea and somewhat up the coast is another, larger island that you must somehow reach... The Hill (MAP10): You must capture a heavily defended hill. Then home at last! You arrive in your comfortable penthouse suite where you end the episode...

Combat These levels contain a wide variety of combat situations requiring different strategies. To win these levels, especially at the more difficult skill settings, requires thinking in terms of fields of fire, looking out for your flanks and backside, and keeping open lines of retreat. Most of the monster placement is randomized so that their location and response are different each time these levels are played. Hence, you will be unable to count on finding specific monsters at specific locations. The monsters occasionally show sneaky behavior due to features in the level designs. Setting: This episode is set on a rocky coastline. with spectacular outdoor views. These include high vistas and overlooks, live surf crashing onto the rocks, scenic elevator rides on the outside of tall buildings, and a spectacular bridge crossing the canyon in THE CHASM level. General: Secrets generally have some clue that the thoughtful and observant player can spot. These levels are designed to be winnable at the easier skill settings without finding the secrets, but to win the more difficult settings requires locating most of the secrets. There are no totally hidden hazards or traps; there will always be some visual or audio cue to warn of there presence. Some of the pools and slime pits have depth, ie, you will sink into them, sometimes up to your eyeballs. One final note; cliff edges at most of the high vistas are lethal to fall off of (one cannot expect to survive a fall of several hundred feet in real life).

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Argenteo

  

Interesting and nice visual tricks, lots of exploration, random encounters, some too dark places and curious midis. To visit not so much to play. I love the green alien tower.

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Percy T

  

4/10, more lacking in gameplay and style that Phobos had, but still alright. Heres my video review if you got the time.

 

 

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TheBoltDoomer

· Edited by TheBoltDoomer

  

It has some good construction's for '98 but nowadays is not so good compare to other maps. One of his good aspects is that it has an RNG system for Teleporters making for each reset a new encounter variation but the areas are too dark forcing you to change the Gamma Correction.

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valkiriforce

  

This had lots of fun exploratory elements and fancy visuals, but I wasn't so keen on the abundance of dark caves crammed with the larger Doom 2 beastiary. At first it started to feel like a commitment playing this wad with the first few maps leaving much to be desired, but I started having more fun when I reached maps that had more breathing room for running and gunning. The lesser maps really feel like they were early efforts, with some consisting almost entirely of cave crawls - made worse by the fact that many of them have hidden lines on the automap. Another thing to note: Ritenour seems to like putting things very close to the edge like a key or a switch, so make sure you check every corner carefully, as some solutions were very close to a cliff edge. Falling off could spell your Doom, as often the lower cliff ledges damage the player with no escape. There were also very thin ledges which could be climbed, so that was another easy to miss solution. Despite the low points dragging the experience a bit I greatly enjoyed the visual work of crashing waves, a clever skybox and nice island locales with mountainous structures and buildings. It was worth a visit in Doom's earthen vanilla equivalent - and it's quite the achievement for something this old, I just wish I could see where I was going in those darn caves...

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Walter confetti

  

Some pretty good concepts here and few amazing maps, but nothing really extraordinary as i tought from the first time i've played this... really long ago.

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Cacodemon9000

  

The most nice thing I found in this wad is starting view and fisrt level itself worth playing, really nicely done. But most part of the wad is just dark labyrintine identically looking caves and some large empty outdoors areas. To make things worse automap is disabled in many cave areas. Running around almost blind without properly working automap in search for another key most of the time isn't something I enjoy. 2/5 only for nice visual tricks.

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Marcaek

  
Nice waves and beach, then it's appropriately brown ashwall for the rest of the set.

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Kingpin3

  
Doom engine in "realist" style...Take his other pwad "phobos" too :)

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joe-ilya

  
The startup view is the only good thing about this mapset full of boring maze cave areas with hidden lines on automap.

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Guest

  
LOOKS LIKE EPIC.WAD with different models and such but Im gonna admit it's a pretty great map.

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Guest

  
Load it up, admire the neat wave effect and beachhead, close Doom, play something actually good.

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Guest

  
Besides the cool waves in the first map, filling a cavity at the dentist is more fun than running around in these darkly lit rectums. Its peculiar how a mind who cooked up the plane in "Phobos", and the other very clever and creative effects these maps are known for, could be so infuriatingly flat with the overall design. To top it off, he decided to remove the automap lines in the majority of the cave areas. Thank you for the frustration.

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Guest

  
Dude, This Is So F*cking Cool. I'm Downloading It Right Now.

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Guest

Unknown date

  
Absolute garbage!

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Guest

Unknown date

  
not legendary, but i liked the under the bridge idea, very creative wit the two bridges, never seen anything like it. 4

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Guest

Unknown date

  
A classic, must download! -- 5/5

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Guest

Unknown date

  
The caves are annoying as hell. Other than that, it's pretty darn good.

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Guest

Unknown date

  
me no rikey! great ideas but poorly executed. the gameplay went fishing. sorry ;)

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Doomkid

Unknown date

  
I always liked these maps. 4/5

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Guest

Unknown date

  
4/5 Funny

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Havoc Crow

Unknown date

  
A rather lackluster old WAD. Deserves some kudos for having vaguely nice architecture for the time, but the gameplay is dull and annoying (long, empty winding passages; ultra-dark areas; automap denial.) Not recommended.

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Guest

Unknown date

  
Almost epic journey. Why "almost"? Well, random monster placement and overdarkness are frustrating factors. So I play with modified colormap, +25% gamma correction (id=9069). Also last level is short and dumb, sadly had no proper challenge. Anyway - it's a pretty darn good stuff.

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Guest

Unknown date

  
Lovely. A lot of boom, doom, and death. Another reminder of why I never tire of this game no matter how many newer games I try.

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Guest

Unknown date

  
individual track . smart , beautiful, original . a little too much of the dark flight.

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Guest

Unknown date

  
a fuckin 5 for visuals alone

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