Not Jabba's Not the Cacowards Review Corner (rd reviews The Iron Forge)

Hey, thank you for bringing some attention to Return to Daro! It's always great to hear that folks enjoyed it. Two years and three WADs later, RtD is still the project I'm most proud of.

On 8/19/2019 at 8:57 PM, Not Jabba said:

Castlevania: Simon's Destiny by @Batandy

 

     

     

 

Recreating Game X in Game Y is one of the most common forms of project in a lot of modding communities, and if the idea is often synonymous with low-quality vaporware, that's probably because it's usually the first project of an inexperienced game designer. Batandy, however, has stuck with it and made it the focus of his mapping career. Ideally, a mod like this combines the best of both games into a hybrid form, keeping what works and rejecting what doesn't, and Doom: The Golden Souls 2 is a masterpiece of exactly that -- drawing from all sorts of games, but focusing on the Super Mario series to transform Doom into a cross-genre universe that's both lighthearted and violent, a blend of familiar and unfamiliar (but always intuitive) gameplay mechanics. The original Golden Souls, which I still have yet to play, is by most accounts great fun as well, albeit with a different set of strengths and weaknesses, and I'm highly anticipating the recently announced third installment.

 

Castlevania: Simon's Destiny is a bit of a different animal, and although I don't think it translates the Castlevania mechanics into Doom as well as the Golden Souls series does for SMB, it's an interesting hybrid that leaves a strong impression if you can stick it out -- and a lot of people seemed to love it when it was released. Somewhat in contrast with GS2, it recreates all the tropes of the early Castlevania games with absolute faithfulness, and therefore plays something like "Castlevania in Doom" rather than "Castlevania Doom." All of its best points -- and all of its worst ones -- are ultimately born out of this decision. 

 

On a lot of levels, Simon's Destiny is brilliant homage with a great sense of authenticity to it. The settings for each map feel so much like locations you'd encounter in the series that you'll probably find yourself trying to remember whether they're referencing specific Castlevania levels or not. Every map is backed up by the sorts of high-energy monster-masher tracks that helped make the series so famous (though I don't recognize any of them entirely -- I'm not sure if they're remixes or tracks from later games that I never played). All the most memorable monsters are there: the Goddamned Bats, the bone-chucking skeletons, the fish men that pop up out of the water, the infinitely respawning wavy medusa heads, the many and varied flavors of living suits of armor, the turrets made of dragon skulls, the boss fights against the likes of the twin mummies, Frankenstein('s monster), and Death. Combat is melee with the whip plus special items like throwing daggers, axes, and holy water, which are fueled by hearts that you get from smashing things (Note: these use alt-fire rather than being inventory items, which took me a little while to figure out). All of this can be really fun to discover; a lot of the experience of playing the mapset is getting that nostalgic spark with each new element that's introduced, and seeing how faithfully it was done and how it all plays out in the Doom engine.

 

On the other hand, there's a lot of frustration in seeing how a lot of these tropes don't adapt as well to the Doom engine as they do in a 2D platformer. The focus on melee combat can make the game more of a grind, especially in later levels where ammo for the special items becomes more scarce. Many enemies, particularly harassers, become more of a pain due to being harder to hit with three axes of space rather than two. The boss battles compound on these problems, and I found them mostly infuriating, even (especially?) the very first one, which is against a giant form of Goddamned Bat. Gathering heart ammo and other items becomes a huge grind simply because it takes time to smash every decoration lining the walls of a 3D room, as opposed to having them simply be in your path in 2D. The rooms and halls that make up most of the maps are very boxy and plain, in comparison to GS2's environments, which were hugely varied and more freely shaped, even though both games use linear map design. The common thread is that a lot of stuff simply doesn't execute flawlessly in 3D space, which is a problem that GS2 avoids by taking inspiration for many aspects of its design (most notably the weapons) from Doom. In keeping with the source material, Castlevania also puts a lot more effort into being Nintendo Hard, which makes anything you might not like about it all the more frustrating. And again, this contrasts with GS2, where I tended to feel like I had a firm grasp on the challenges thrown at me and felt like I could own my mistakes more -- though I could say the same thing about any classic Castlevania game vs. the Super Mario games from the same era, so maybe that's just a matter of taste.

 

Simon's Destiny ramps up in intensity just as much as you would expect, and it's at its best when it's going full-blown homage to the more interesting elements of the Castlevania games -- when you're hopping across pieces of crumbled bridges, when the fish-men spawn wave after wave as you rush forward, when the ground crumbles out from under you as you try to make it to safety while being dive-bombed by a dozen boss bats. The final map is the one that perhaps does it best, a fully mechanized castle with lots of vertical movement and conveyor belt platforming that requires some pretty precise timing, not to mention the requisite multi-stage final boss battle. The thing that makes this mapset difficult to love unequivocally is also its greatest draw: Simon's Destiny is so utterly, unapologetically an homage to another series of games that it's hard not to be charmed by it.

SD should've won a Cacoward. I still consider it a scandal that it didn't get one.

Return to Daro was one of my favorite mapsets, even though I still haven't fully played STRAIN, I really enjoyed on its own.

54 minutes ago, Master O said:

 

SD should've won a Cacoward. I still consider it a scandal that it didn't get one.

Melee combat doesn't translate very well on a 2.5 engine, I guess not everyone was a fan of how the whip worked.

4 hours ago, Gothic said:

Return to Daro was one of my favorite mapsets, even though I still haven't fully played STRAIN, I really enjoyed on its own.

Melee combat doesn't translate very well on a 2.5 engine, I guess not everyone was a fan of how the whip worked.

Yet Lilith won one and you could barely see anything given how it was total glitchfest.

I saw the screenshots for Simon's Destiny and thought "cool, I can't wait to play it"; then I saw a gameplay video and this became "ehh, okay, I'll just give it a miss".

Spending 90% of playtime destroying light sources to grind random drops isn't my cup of tea.

26 minutes ago, Master O said:

Yet Lilith won one and you could barely see anything given how it was total glitchfest.

Lilith is glitch art, yes.

Of course not everyone is going to like something like that, something that is deliberately ugly and confusing. But I found it very effective at evoking the feeling that something is wrong, at a very deep level. No matter what you do, no matter how much you fight, the corruption, the wrongness remains here. Of course if the glitches don't make you feel like this, then it's just going to be an obnoxious set of unplayable levels.

On 9/6/2019 at 7:54 AM, Not Jabba said:

*Return to Daro review*

Thanks for the heads-up, that was a sweet little set. Liked the much refined from strain visuals, progression through interesting means and secrets were very interesting to find, although not always integral to the gameplay. Unfortunately last map was a highlight on how bad slot 7 weapon is. 

Very nice review !

Quote

While some of the earlier maps were the source of mixed reviews internally and explain it not surfacing above the sea of candidates, the ending stretch is undeniably strong. 

Just for information. At the beginning, one of the rules of the project was to make maps not too long, but by a motivation push probably, we achieved some pretty ambitious levels. The first 4 maps are the first ones made for the project (I also think for the 10th but I have a doubt). The last ones were done in 2017 when interest in the project had reached its peak (the RC1 was released at the end of 2017)

I made map 07 and a part of map 09. Map 07 was my first "real" map except speedmaps. I was strongly motivated. I learned a lot about detailing , it was time-consuming but instructive. :)

Would be great to see a review of Endless Torture, a neat 2015 megawad for Ultimate Doom made solely by Datacore.
I found it a few months back and it really peak high with the crampped and short but challenging levels. I don't know if you will like it, @Not Jabba, but it went completly unnoticed pretty soon after release and it also didn't catch much attention in the later years.
 

Thank you for the review! Your take pretty much matches exactly how I feel about the map in hindsight. I cringe at some of the rudimentary encounters now, but that being said I do still feel quite proud of some of the ideas I had, even if the execution was a little hamfisted.

It's interesting you mention it feels like a map from the late 90s. When I returned to the Doom scene after a 15 year break and decided to make Foursite, I made the (perhaps somewhat ill-considered) decision that I didn't want my first map to be influenced by any other custom wads. I wanted my first map to be purely me. I played Doom to death in the 90s as a kid and I wanted what I made to be a reflection of those memories. So I made it without exploring a single thing the community had produced since about 2001. I didn't even engage with the community as I made it, with no playtesters bar myself. My only frame of reference was basically the IWADs, and a distant memory of early PWADs like Doomsday of the UAC.

I have since come to realize I needn't have worried, and even if you wear your influences proudly on your sleeve anything you make is still undeniably yours. In truth even just a cursory playthrough of the map from a more experienced Doomer would have yielded all kinds of beneficial improvements, and there are without a doubt a great many basic things that could have been improved with even just a little more personal experience of what makes a good PWAD.

But all that being said, I don't regret the process I took. I feel I played suitable homage to the 10 year old Bauul discovering Doom 2 for the first time. And I have to say, it's been an absolute blast now catching up on the last two decades of Doom mapping, and I thoroughly look forward to the next two!

No Sleep for the Dead by @Jan

I've drifted into more critical territory in some of my recent reviews, so I figure I'll hit the reset button by saying this up front: No Sleep for the Dead is bloody excellent. 

Jan Van der Veken was a household name in the early Doom scene, but had almost moved on by the time I made my way to Doomworld in late 2004, so I only knew him as a periodic namedrop in discussions about classic mapping, and as the creator of some Darkening E1 and E2 maps (which are great, but I couldn't tell you which maps they are), until No Sleep came out. I played through his earlier major works last winter along with Chris Hansen's catalogue, so for those unfamiliar with his mapping, here's a quick rundown of his awarded episodes, by way of introduction. His first release, the never-quite-finished Dawn of the Dead (it has a one-room placeholder for E1M5), starts out seeming like a simple E1 replacement, but then it quickly begins to sprawl out into huge maps with surprising city-like layouts, big open areas, and hellish influences. The Classic Episode (not to be confused with Hansen's also-creatively-titled Retro Episode) is a more conventional Phobos/Deimos-style base that shows Van der Veken tightening up his mapping style quite a bit, with more flowy and compact layouts and any excess grind trimmed away. The Classic Episode 2, the most detailed of the three, offers a more unusual concept: a faux-hub where every other map takes you back to the same central area, with slight changes and fresh monster populations each time.

No Sleep for the Dead appeared suddenly after a 10-year hiatus and is ostensibly the sequel to Dawn of the Dead, which came out in 1997, though thematically it could just as easily be a sequel to the Classic Episodes. Van der Veken's skills didn't languish during all those years away, though—as far as I'm concerned, No Sleep is the best thing he's ever made.

This episode deals in the usual design principles and aesthetics for retro E1 and E2 replacements—tending more toward E1 toward the beginning and more toward E2 toward the end—but it really does a damn fine job with them. Every map holds true to the basic idea that you should always be moving freely and quickly, know exactly where you're going, and have fun getting there. The episode also follows the core E1 trope of making sure you can see other areas through windows and grates almost constantly as you move around the maps, giving them an extremely grounded, immersive feel that's augmented by the way the branches within the layouts tend to wrap around each other, periodically interconnecting or eventually looping through in ways that feel complex but are pretty simple at heart. Simplicity is really key here—and I don't say that lightly, because simplicity can often be a bit of an easy way out, an excuse not to worry about developing keen perceptions and methods as a designer. Van der Veken's simplicity is disciplined and consistent; it communicates to the player with perfect clarity. The combat moves easily and steadily, applying heavier pressure at times but eliciting no stress and always offering a path to freedom and a better attack vantage as long as you don't sit around waiting to get hemmed in. Even the face-off against a Cyberdemon on a bridge in the last map is more of a cathartic "fuck yeah!" than a climactic trial by fire. The whole episode is like a dance, something familiar that you feel in your bones, swaying and strafing and turning and advancing in time with the music and your trusty buckshot backbeat, just letting it flow.

There's a surprisingly strong sense of place for a classic episode replacement with stock textures, particularly in the later maps. E1M5 plays with the theme just enough to really feel like a power plant, within the context of iwad-style abstraction; E1M6 has just enough laboratory elements to really bring out the feel of the setting, again without relying on detailing that would change the overall aesthetic. Something about the way the layouts shift and expand, morphing their individual themes without losing their sense of identity, makes these maps feel very real and functional to me. The atmosphere becomes progressively heavier and more Deimos-esque, with dim, pervasive shadows and high-contrast lighting cutting around pillars and other obstacles in the way that us Doomers love so much. If you're well versed in Dawn of the Dead—which I'm not, but I poked around the older episodes again in preparation for writing this review—you'll likely notice that "Power Plant" (No Sleep E1M5) bears some striking similarities to "Nuclear Plant" (DotD E1M2).

Secrets are sprinkled all over the place and are handled with the same philosophy as the combat—as long as you stay aware and try to find them, you probably will, because you're meant to appreciate them, and having them be hard to find would take away from the intended experience of playing the maps. It adds a nice extra element to the gameplay, something to do on a final pass of the map when things are quiet that lets you appreciate the smoothness and clarity of Van der Veken's design in a new way. 

I should mention that there's also a bonus map in the E2M1 slot. This map is E4-themed, and as you might expect, it's considerably tougher than anything in the main episode. You can easily be overwhelmed right out of the gate, and if you survive that, the rest of the map is a constantly moving puzzle where you have to squeeze past opponents and try to scrounge up the ammo to deal with everything that's still wandering through the tight, claustrophobic knot of hallways, screaming for your blood. It's a wild ride with lots of adrenaline, and it proves how much range Van der Veken has as a level designer—which just goes to show that the easy-going nature of the main episode is a disciplined design choice rather than some sort of laziness or weakness.

I'm told that No Sleep for the Dead was taken very seriously by the 2016 Cacowards team, though it didn't end up making the cut. I think this is probably because it was seen as a bit too simple—which is the sort of critical assessment that I would agree with in most cases, but not in this one. 2016 was a dense, competitive year with several high-profile snubs, and the heartbreak that caused is a part of what led us to expand the number of runners-up the following year. Personally, I think that No Sleep for the Dead is among the best classic-styled UDoom episode replacements I've played, and if you haven't tried it yet, you may want to do that instead of sleeping tonight.

8 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

No Sleep for the Dead by @Jan

 

It is very good, something I did agonize over. Per Veken, E2M1 is actually an iteration on an original, alternate episode closer for DoDEAD. The 1997 version is pretty crazy and drops a Cyberdemon on you in the central hub.

Ok, I'm like super late to the party but thanks for your very detailed review of 'Altitude'  @Not Jabba 
The map has sort of a special place in my heart, considering it's less inspired by the works of others than anything i made before or afterwards. A grab bag of ideas and weirdness that i had in my mind by the time. Perhaps it kinda went under the radar due to that, but yeah. Anyway i really enjoyed reading the write-up. Cheers

 

On 8/28/2019 at 5:23 AM, Not Jabba said:

I always think of his contributions to Nova 2

I remember you mentioning this before. A bit hard for me to comprehend as i consider this maps as awful nowadays, outcomes of a pointless strive for detail without much thought of good gameplay. M29 is an exception but without Ribbiks guides and influence the map would have ended up completely different, not in a good way.

Thanks for your time and write up with which I whole-heartedly agree, except one point (see at the end of this post). As my second map Hurt was basically an exercise in "building stuff" with little to no pre-planning of actual architecture or combat scenarios. One week I am building a room with huge stone pillars and the next I want a "library" in my map. That's why many or almost all areas seem kind of "disconnected". So yeah, it's clearly flawed and in hindsight it's a pity that I didn't postpone the release and trim some fat, as well as fix the combat scenarios a tad more. But, that's what new maps are for, so we'll see how things will plan out with my other maps.

The thing I don't agree with is the title of "most promising newcomer". I distinctly remember "Demonastery", which was by a newcomer as well iirc and featured amazing visuals as well as good combat. Well and then came Aurelius with his "Remnant", so yeah... :P

Big big thanks to anyone and everyone who played Hurt, I feel deeply grateful because I know how many incredible releases this community is producing on a weekly (!) basis and it can be hard to give everyone a honest chance and play someone's map.

Plutonium Sandpit by @Kristian Nebula (review adapted from The /newstuff Chronicles)

In 2016, the dynamic that existed between segments of the Doom mapping community was...different, let's say. Around the time of Blade of Agony's first release, the discussion around GZDoom vs. classic mapping was at something of a breaking point where neither side was prepared to tolerate the other at all, to the point where I've simply decided to rewrite a chunk of this review rather than accept my moderate-but-still-rather-dumb 2016 thoughts on the matter. I've already written about this second major division and synthesis of the Doom community in The Roots of Doom Mapping, and won't repeat too much of that here. I regard the 2014 release of Adventures of Square as the candle that lit the bonfire, but I think 2017 was the year that GZDoom mapping began to fully merge with the mainstream; that year's diverse offerings, which included Void and Rainbow, Shadows of the Nightmare Realm, Waterlab GZD, and Lilith, often had little to do with the Square-inspired school of mapping I described in the last chapter of the Roots article, but were nonetheless too finely polished, and too obviously dependent on the Z-ports' features, for people to ignore how useful those advanced features could be.

But 2016 was before all that, and the big GZDoom releases were Blade of Agony, Warphouse, and Plutonium Sandpit, all of which were deeply Tormcore. I'm not going to call them a last gasp for UTnT-style mapping, because there's no telling what the future holds, but certainly they represented the pinnacle of what people have done with that style of mapping so far. Each of them used features so thoroughly and so well that 2016-me (who seems to have somewhat forgotten how much he appreciated the arcadey cheese of KDiZD and UTnT, let alone the futuristic appeal of Putrefier) was forced to grudgingly admit that they were on to something. I think that playing it and other 2016 GZDoom releases for /newstuff (some of which are reviewed below) helped pave the way for me to better appreciate the really cool Z-port releases of 2017.

*    *    *

And so we get to Kristian Aro's Plutonium Sandpit, a GZDoom map that, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with Plutonia but quite a lot to do with sand. This goliath of a level has everything you could possibly want in GZDoom blockbuster: atmospheric effects, fancy lighting, bulletproof glass, about 20 different "you can't open this door yet" messages, and a crapton of custom content, from decorations to powerups to monsters. Thing-wise, the new monsters are the most obvious additions. Early on, you'll fight several slightly more powerful Imp variants and a couple of custom zombies, and although they don't really add anything to gameplay, they succeed in what they set out to do, which is add some unobtrusive flavor to the level. Aro doesn't go whole hog with a zillion different variants of every monster, which is a good thing; mostly you're dealing with standard Doom-style combat against your favorite classic demons. Toward the end of the level, you face a few more hellish monsters, including a fast-moving fireball thrower (Hellions, for those well versed in the Realm667 Repository), a powerful flying Mancubus, and two different Baron-based minibosses with fire-themed attacks. The minibosses are a fun addition, and the variety they contribute to the combat scenarios is welcome in a level that takes an hour plus to beat. The Hellions aren't as useful an addition, since you mostly fight them in more confined spaces where their speed is less of an asset. They still look cool though.

Did I mention this map is huge? Plutonium Sandpit carries on the tradition of gigantic ZDoom-based megamaps such as the ZDCMP series and Ultimate Torment & Torture, and even though the monster count is a somewhat moderate 500 or so, you'll want to have a serious chunk of time free to commit to your playthrough. The level is divided up into three distinct sections. The first is a nonlinear base crawl with lots of the usual trappings, including crates and air ducts; combat is pretty light, but the scattered enemies tend to be shooting at you from multiple directions, and there are a fair number of perched snipers that you'll need to watch out for. After that, you'll move on to the huge, open sandy courtyard for which the level is named. This area has multiple side buildings and is generally linear (find the switch or key to open up one area at a time), with heavier combat against larger groups of powerful enemies and several bosses and minibosses. The fog and other ambient effects create a nice sandstorm-like atmosphere out in the courtyard and start to make the level feel like it's part of a more modern game (Serious Sam era, maybe) that just happens to have sprite graphics. The last area is the hellish source of the invasion, and Aro uses GZDoom's features to really lay the atmosphere on thick here, with heavy reddish fog and various fiery effects. After some simpler hall-to-hall combat, you make your way to the final arena, where you're likely to get walloped by a nasty battle against all of the toughest enemies in the expanded bestiary, followed quickly by an Icon of Sin fight. The lengthy progression through the three main areas helps to give the whole map that grand cinematic feel that's so common among Tormentor-inspired GZDoom creations, and the heavy atmospheric effects do wonders for the mood—you practically want to hunch forward and brace yourself against the blowing sand, even from the other side of your computer screen.

Plutonium Sandpit is nothing if not impressive. Although it's an unabashed adventure map and has been fairly criticized for the slow pace of its gameplay, I find it hard to argue with the epic sweep of its construction or the consistently immersive use of special effects; it is Tormentor-style mapping at its finest.

Cursed Realms: Path Over the Abyss by @StormCatcher.77 (review adapted from The /newstuff Chronicles)

Remember when Stormcatcher was primarily known as a GZDoom mapper? No? Ok, well, gather round.

Cursed Realms: Path Over the Abyss is a single moderately large GZDoom map with nice visuals and an almost purely green/gray/black aesthetic. It's set in a void-like otherworld that's sometimes reminiscent of Quake. It's also full of lethal bottomless pits that you will probably come to hate and fear (but since this is a video game, mostly hate). This isn't to say that the gameplay sucks—the level is well put together, and the challenges are fair. Be warned, though: much of the gameplay revolves around platforming, and the most difficult challenges come from having to deal with platforming and combat at the same time. It's easy to accidentally strafe off the edge of the abyss, and the level requires jumping to progress in several spots. In and of itself, the combat is pretty moderate, with no hitscanners and few Revenants or Arch-Viles.

This level is carefully designed, and I appreciate that. Everything about it is deliberate. The author knows exactly where to put those pits, and exactly what to throw at you while you're trying to cross them to make your life difficult (mostly flying enemies, in case you're wondering—the platforming adds a whole new level to closing in on a Pain Elemental). There's no slow weapon progression here; you're given the SSG right off the bat, your next major weapon is the plasma rifle, and the chaingun is nowhere to be found. I think this is a good choice given the gameplay focus, since you don't have to worry about weak weapons slowing you down and can focus on how to move around.

Though the aesthetics are a far cry from Stormcatcher's stunning 2019 maps, Path Over the Abyss is certainly handsome, with a consistent aesthetic and good use of features. The map is built around steep slopes and warping, flowing liquids that trail off into the bottomless abysses, and the smoky floating platforms that appear throughout are a nice touch that make the platforming feel more meaningful. Despite my various biases at the time, I still found this map pretty enjoyable; not only is it nice to look at, the combat is also surprisingly well designed thanks to the pressure its design motifs put on the mapper to think critically.

Note: This map took third place in the original Vinesauce mapping contest.

Black Magnetic by @Angry Saint (review adapted from The /newstuff Chronicles)

Black Magnetic is a single level, but it's essentially a total conversion, with a wide array of new weapons and enemies as well as a gritty industrial texture set by NMN. It was one of the six entries created for Tormentor667's "Doomja Vu" E1M7 remake contest (which also gave us the Cacoward-winning dead.wire by Xaser), and as with some of the other entries, it morphs the level's layout completely beyond recognition, so it doesn't feel like you're playing a remake at all.

Black Magnetic's layout is probably the high point of the wad, in fact. It uses ZDoom's true 3D capabilities to create two levels of architecture, one above the other, and the whole thing is nicely nonlinear while still making your objectives mostly clear. That said, I found the level very confusing at many points due to the pervasive darkness, the similar colors of nearly all of the textures, and the fact that many doors and switches blended in with their surroundings and were very hard to spot. I think that more varied lighting, particularly spotlighting around the important switches and such, would have improved the experience by leaps and bounds.

The gameplay is a dramatic departure from Doom's standard projectile-dodging arcade fest. Half the enemies are hitscanners, and the other half shoot projectiles so fast (and in such tight spaces) that they might as well be hitscanners too. Virtually all the enemies have high health, with the Zombieman equivalent taking a full shotgun blast to kill and the chaingunner equivalents taking more like two or three shells' worth of damage. Everything else is basically a damage-sponging miniboss. Terms like "hitscanner hell" are sure to be bandied about by many people who play this wad, but it's worth taking a step back from the initial gut reaction and looking at it on its own terms. This wad requires you to rethink how you play, and I'm not sure whether extreme caution/corner strafing or throwing all caution to the wind and shooting on the move is the better tactic here. Doom's standard weapons are present with slight modifications, except for the rocket launcher, which is replaced by a pair of arm launchers that shoot mini missile clusters (don't miss these—they're awesome). To some extent, the weapons feel more powerful to counter the high power of the enemies, but I'm inclined to say the balance is tipped a little too far in favor of the enemies—their health is too high overall, and the really effective guns appear too late in the level, as I only really had fun when I finally had the SSG and rocket clusters. As with the visuals, I think it's on to something but needs a few tweaks in terms of execution. I do, however, admire the author's commitment to making such an unusual gameplay style work, and it makes me wonder how much more polished it could become.

Give it a try if you find the ideas appealing—I have a feeling some people are going to love it and others will hate it.

12 hours ago, Not Jabba said:

Plutonium Sandpit by @Kristian Nebula

 

    

Hi, big thanks for lifting this one up. In retrospect, I might have made the last battle a bit too challenging as I fiddled around with the IoS demon spawner to add the spawn possibility of a miniboss... And you have to be very precise to get through the hovering blocks to pump rockets into the brain of the beast... Otherwise I'm quite happy as it was my first attempt at scripting and GZDoom. It took a whopping nine months to complete. Also, should have looked into gldefs to get the skybox working without the glitches it has when texture filtering mode is on. I never use it so I didn't realize it could happen before the release.

Next one that I'll do (once I have time) will be a GZDoom/UDMF Hell map with OTEX but that might take a while. Thanks to anyone who has played this through and a happy 2020 to all too ;)

@Not Jabba It was unexpectedly nice to know that this map was still remembered! Thank you very much! For me, this is another precious piece of New Year's mood. Now I can't even remember how I made this map in 9 days... I can't do something similar again in same time now.

I don't know what else to say... Just cool :D And thanks for reviewing all that good stuff. 
I am not familiar with most of the projects mentioned here, with a few exceptions.

@Not Jabba thank you for the review! Yes, maybe if I had more time to polish, the level would have been better. But I was on a deadline and "time is a tyrant".

Absolute Dishonor by @valkiriforce and 40oz (review reposted from The /newstuff Chronicles)

Valkiriforce and 40oz may sound like a bit of an odd pairing—or at least, they wouldn't have been anyone's obvious choice for a team-up. Valkiriforce is an extremely prolific mapper who has pretty much always worked within vanilla Doom's limits using few custom resources, creating levels that are often described as throwbacks to the era of Memento Mori and Requiem. 40oz is best known for detailed, atmospheric maps that make heavy use of custom textures. What the two share is a love of classic gameplay, and that love definitely shines through in Absolute Dishonor, a set of eight mostly stock-textured vanilla maps.

Valkiriforce's and 40oz's maps in this set couldn't be more different from each other, but what's most interesting is that neither of them were working in their own established styles. Instead of medium-sized, semi-linear maps with arena-oriented combat setups, valkiriforce created a bunch of huge, sandboxy, very exploration-oriented levels. As for 40oz, not only was he working with few custom textures, he also eschewed the large spaces and bigger, more complex combat setups that characterize most of his maps in UAC Ultra and Mutiny in favor of compact layouts, low monster counts, and nerve-wrackingly intimate close-quarters combat, not to mention some puzzle elements.

To elaborate a bit on the individual levels:

OK, so I lied a tiny bit; valkiriforce starts us off in map 01 with a rather short shotgun-fest against lots of zombies and other weak enemies in a stone/water/base setting that would look perfectly at home in Reverie or Vispire. Map 03, on the other hand, is the polar opposite. It's the biggest and most complex map in the set, with so many branching paths everywhere that it's better to just give up trying to keep track, pick a random direction at each crossroads, and see where the wind takes you. Wandering through all those halls and rooms is really a lot of fun, and it gives you a great sense of accomplishment when you finally make it to the exterior ocean walkway that you keep getting peeks of throughout the level. Map 05 is similar, but the keys make it slightly more straightforward, dividing it up into several large, nonlinear sections that you complete in sequence. It takes place in some kind of mining complex complete with train yards and tracks, and it has a great secret involving a train and a Cyberdemon that I won't spoil. Map 08 feels more like a city (a la Peterson's "Downtown" or "Suburbs"), with lots of open spaces ringing individual buildings. It has a few too many Barons for my liking, but again, it's very explorable, and many of the monsters have free rein to wander all over the place, which keeps things interesting. Throughout all of these levels, the opposition comes in large numbers and is packed in fairly densely, making for a good challenge, but there aren't any forced arena battles that I can remember. You're always free to push forward, flee, try to lead enemies into a different area, or look for an alternate way around, whichever you prefer.

Then there's 40oz's levels. Map 02 sets the tone for what's to come. It's dark and spooky, the layout winds around in knots and repeatedly visits the same central locations from different angles, the enemies have a habit of getting in your personal space without asking, and the whole thing revolves around a spatial puzzle in which you try to raise a bridge across the main chasm. Map 04 is eerily quiet after the chaotic trials of valkiriforce's massive fortress in map 03, and you know right away that something nasty is waiting for you...somewhere. The level features several tough ambushes, some tricky Arch-Vile battles, and an elaborate, fiendish puzzle that you have to solve to get the red key. Map 06 is the most straightforward (not that it's easy): a brown-stone fortress that's strongly reminiscent of classic megawads like Requiem. Highlights include an intense battle with silhouetted Demons and Hell Knights in the dark, as well as quite a few close encounters with Revenants. Map 07 is more of the same tricky goodness, wrapping up with a series of battles against teleporting enemy waves as you navigate each portion of the final puzzle.

Ultimately, valkiriforce and 40oz *are* a bit of an odd pairing—but so were Joshy and darkwave. That comparison is pretty apt; one of the big reasons why Absolute Dishonor is so successful is the dramatic contrast between the two styles. Every level you play is totally different from the previous one, and it makes every map feel like it delivers a totally fresh set of surprises—something that you can't ever quite get from a one-person mapset. And when you consider that each mapper was working outside his usual comfort zone, trying something totally new, it's amazing how natural these maps feel. Absolute Dishonor is a classic transplanted into modern times, a throwback to a time long past that somehow doesn't feel derivative at all. It doesn't get any Doomier than this.

Lilium by @Lainos (review reposted from The /newstuff Chronicles)

Even if he hadn't just won the Mapper of the Year award for 2016 (in part for creating Lilium), Lainos wouldn't need any introduction. This strange, twisted genius has left an indelible mark on the Doom community as a whole, and especially on the Russian community, which seems to me to have evolved largely around the eerie, ultra-realist mapping style that Lainos created for Sacrament and other early Clan [B0S] wads. His maps are all haunting and unapologetically dark, but Lilium is probably the most deeply personal one he's made so far.

In the textfile, the author says he created this wad while going through a rough time emotionally and that it ended up absorbing a lot of those negative emotions. Like all of his settings, the wintery cityscape of Lilium is shrouded in mystery, full of symbolism and references that I can't clearly identify, but the posters of Putin wearing a crown that are plastered all over the walls and the words "-45C without you" scrawled on a frozen fountain are probably the clearest indications of what was going on in Lainos's head when he made this. In addition, the level starts out next to a highly detailed and rather graphic train wreck—not one of the bloodiest scenes I've seen in the Doom engine, but possibly still one of the most disturbing.

The gameplay is pretty much given over to the storytelling; it's not so much about creating engaging encounters as it is about giving the city its own population of inner demons. As a result, some of the gameplay can be annoying, particularly if you're trying to max kills. Near the start of the level is a park with a labyrinth of fences, and each section of path that you take causes groups of Imps to appear, resulting in many tedious minutes of maze running and dull shotgun/chaingun combat if you actually want to get them all to appear and then kill them. After that comes a more straightforward network of streets with enemy ambushes at pretty much every turn, and although the combat is more challenging here, it's still pretty monotonous after the first couple of ambushes.

If you can get through these two areas, the level really hits its stride after that. All of the remaining locations are beautifully designed and interesting to explore. There's the abandoned street marketplace with merchandise hung up along every passageway, and then the big, shadowy water treatment complex. Eventually, you find yourself in a cardboard box village where the city's homeless population must have lived—at the risk of repeating kmxexii's Mapper of the Year writeup, it's got to be one of the most unique locations I've ever seen in a Doom wad, but it's also dripping with very real social commentary, which isn't something you see every day in a modding community. The level seems to reach its climax as you face off with what might be Vladimir Putin's spiderborg stand-in, but the real final battle takes place inside a mall, where floating candles and water lilies contrast beautifully with the barrage of rockets coming your way and a strange bunny image watches over you as you attempt to find your way up to heaven... or something like that.

Part of the fun of this level is just trying to figure out what it all means. You don't have to love allegory to appreciate Lilium, though. You just have to love wandering around and soaking up the atmosphere. Like all of Lainos's other levels, it's about the thousands of little clues and stories that the dead have left behind, painting a picture that's entirely mundane but still strangely moving. Lilium isn't as much of a masterpiece as Comatose, 5till L1 Complex, or Doxylamine Moon, but it's worth delving into. Just don't expect it to lift your mood.

Nex Credo by @Jayextee (review reposted from The /newstuff Chronicles)

2016 is the year of the partially completed megawad, it seems. Nex Credo suffered the same fate as Somewhere in Time: the author set out to create a full 32-level megawad, lost steam, and (luckily for the rest of us) decided to polish up what they had made so far and release it as a smaller mapset. Vispire has a somewhat similar story as well. I've reviewed all three of these wads for T/nC now, and in many ways, Nex Credo is my favorite of the bunch. It uses only stock textures and no music from outside of the Doom 2 soundtrack, but other than that, there's really nothing conventional about it.

One of the first things you're likely to notice about the levelset is how slowly it introduces the weapons and monster types. The first three and a half levels are full of low-tier monsters and revolve almost entirely around the shotgun, and the pacing is very quick and fun. Revenants are thrown in sparingly, almost like minibosses, to keep you on your toes. You get the chaingun in the middle of map 04, right at the point where you're starting to really wonder where it went, and the difficulty increases dramatically shortly after that—though I never found the levels to be too much harder than the iwad.

For me, the best thing about Nex Credo is that it totally nails the feeling of the original Doom 2, and not in the way you might expect. Doom 2 the Way id Did captured the feel of the original iwad as well, but it mostly did so by creating an idealized version of Doom 2—one in which the id team stuck very closely to the core of their mapping styles and didn't do anything really weird. But as much as I love D2tWiD, we all know Doom 2 wasn't really like that. Whether it was McGee constructing a barely serious boss encounter around a gigantic crusher, Petersen filling a level with barrels, or Romero cramming zombies into every corner of "Industrial Zone" and making you jump off a tall building onto a tiny island so you could enter a secret level full of cartoon Nazis, Doom 2 was a weird-ass set of levels—and that may be what makes it so great, what makes it still worth playing no matter how many brilliantly refined mapsets there are now.

Nex Credo reminded me of that constantly as I was playing through the levels. The first couple of maps feel a little like practice, but from map 03 onward, Jayextee starts to hit his stride, and everything feels just that little bit weird. Map 03 has a cool key progression, an interesting figure-8 layout, several nasty traps, and (as I mentioned before) pure shotgun gameplay. Map 05 has a great motif with nine blue tech pillars that keep popping up throughout the level, and whichever pillars you lower with switches or leave raised remain constant throughout each set. It also has a really cleverly designed ending.

Map 06 has a nonlinear layout with a lift hub in the middle and a sewer full of Lost Souls way off at one end of it. Map 08 has a nasty opening trap, several spatial gimmicks that revolve around rows of chaingunner-manned platforms, a couple of weirdly identical industrial areas with keys in them, and then your choice of platforming gauntlets to get to the exit—either running across timed platforms or under a set of crushers, but either way you'll have to watch out for the chaingunner snipers in the middle. Map 09 has an elaborately winding layout with lots of criss-crossing paths and spaces that open up later; you're forced to do a ton of backtracking to get both of the keys for the exit, but at least the author gives you plenty of new threats to worry about on your way back through the level.

Map 10 deserves special mention, as it revolves around silence. There are around half a dozen Cyberdemons in the level, all of which will wake up and make your life miserable if you fire a shot; you have to either sneak past them, or, if you want to kill them all, find the secrets and telefrag them. There are some strategically placed imps in the level as well to make it difficult to navigate everything while remaining silent. I loved this level—and it's another detail that reminded me of Doom 2, in which every single Cyberdemon/Mastermind fight is either optional or offers you a workaround so that you don't have to face the boss on its own terms.

Nex Credo isn't just about gimmicks, though. Throughout every level (except for the cautious map 10), the gameplay is fast and fun, and every level is quick to play through. The major encounters are well designed, the monsters are often used in interesting ways, the heavy use of weak enemies makes you feel powerful up until you get slammed with Revenants and Arch-Viles, and there's plenty of fun with barrels.

There are a few low points in the set, however. Map 07 isn't quite a Dead Simple clone, as there are no Arachnotrons, but it's still a little arena battle with waves of powerful monsters, one type at a time, and I found it a bit annoying. It ends with a Cyberdemon battle that makes really poor use of space; the Cyber can't leave the room in the middle of the level, and the pillar placement requires you to either strafe back and forth really close to the door or just stand off to the side where the Cyberdemon can't hit you because of the doorway's edge and simply shoot it until it dies. Map 11 is an okay city level, but it doesn't have any of the gimmicks that made the base maps interesting, and since it was intended to be the start of a new episode, it feels like a really anticlimactic ending to the set. Just think of map 10 as the finale and map 11 as a bonus level, and everything's fine.

Despite those couple of levels, Nex Credo is a fantastic mapset, and easily one of the best classic-styled wads released in the last few years. Hopefully Jayextee's decision to end development on the megawad doesn't mean we've seen the last of him.

The Becoming by Jayextee

If you like Nex Credo, you might also check out The Becoming, a 2018 E2 replacement that's also by Jayextee. The set is generally simple and pleasantly retro, with a bit of a story-driven or atmospheric bent to it. I remember having the impression that ammo was overly tight, such that I had to save all rockets and cells for Barons and most bullets for Cacodemons or else be forced to whittle them all with the shotgun; and I personally prefer to have a lot more leeway than that for having fun with the more powerful weapons. E2M8 has also frustrated a lot of people, judging from comments and reviews, and I'd count myself among them. It's a battle against a Cyberdemon and a few Barons on a zigzagging ring of a platform, except that you instantly die if you move off the platform—and unfortunately, "off the platform" can mean skimming slightly over corners, which is where it's really likely to get on your nerves. In all other respects, however, it's a lot like any other good episode replacement: sculpted from simple lines, nostalgic in its aesthetics, easygoing but with a bit of bite due to the tight ammo and occasional close quarters or denser arrays of monsters. The whole episode is also backed up with a nice custom soundtrack by Ed that fits the '90s aesthetic like a glove and is especially on point in the more atmospheric maps.

I have to give special mention to E2M3, "Ghosts," which is hands down the best map in the episode. It's a beautiful map with a lot of attention to detail, but it's also very concept-driven, and as a result it reminds me a lot of the things I loved about Nex Credo. A grim derelict atmosphere, an extended monsterless opener, a beefy bouncer, a trip into Pinkieland for heavy weaponry, the ghosts of fallen enemies let loose all over the main complex...I won't go into more detail than that, but it's great fun, and since it's only about 40 monsters and a few minutes of playtime, it's worth a play even if you decide to pass on the rest of the episode.

Note: For those who are interested, Jayextee recently teased development of Nex Credo 2. I, for one, am hyped.

Reviewer's Note: These two wads, along with Elf Gets Pissed, were what got me more interested in the peculiarities of Heretic and inspired me to start mapping for it. RoP was also my second ever /newstuff review (after Nova 2). If you're not into vanilla Heretic, Realm of Parthoris is a lot of fun with The Wayfarer's Tome. I recommend playing Emerald Bathhouse unmodded, just because it's so simple and Tome-oriented that the mod would be overkill. 

Realm of Parthoris by various (review reposted from The /newstuff Chronicles)

Each year, Heretic lovers are given approximately one major new wad, plus a handful of poorly made deathmatch maps. For 2015, the major release was Realm of Parthoris, a single-episode community project with a relatively short development cycle of just 11 months. The project imposed a limit of 200 monsters per map, and although three or so maps exceed the limit on Smitemeister, they tend to be medium sized and relatively quick to play through.

Players who appreciate aesthetics will no doubt be pleased. The episode has a killer soundtrack that's almost all original music by the likes of Alfonzo, Viscra Maelstrom, and Eris Falling (though E1M9 uses "Plasma" from Duke Nukem 3D), and the songs do a solid job of sounding like they belong in Heretic rather than Doom. ROP also includes a pretty large selection of new textures and flats. I had a hard time telling which ones were new, but that's probably a good thing—the new resources blend in well with the originals, but they add a lot of depth, eliminating the feeling of uniformity that Heretic tends to have due to its small texture selection.

I don't have a great sense of what makes a "good" Heretic level in the same way I do with Doom, but it felt like all levels were consistently well made. The gameplay styles vary quite a bit, however. E1M1 is a short level that takes place mainly in a nicely interconnected outdoor canyon area. E1M2 starts out with a pretty intense fight in a large outdoor area full of exploding pods before progressing to a set of dark halls that are filled with surprises. E1M3 is a twisty little dungeon crawl with a funhouse maze of waterfalls and a pretty nice arena battle at the end against four Liches across four connected rooms. E1M4 has you fighting your way through a narrow, mostly linear canyon and feels almost like a side-scrolling arcade game at times, with enemies teleporting in from both sides or moving out of previously hidden nooks as you move into a new section. 

E1M5 is a well-crafted combination of dark, creepy passageways and larger setpiece caverns/rooms, with a fair share of lava to force you to think about how you move around; the unpopulated intro area, detailed ruins, and nonlinear layout with a central hub create a strong sense of atmosphere and exploration. E1M6 uses bigger, more dramatic fights than any other level so far, including several boss arenas. E1M7 is a bit of a pleasant calm between storms, unpretentious and with little in the way of major setpieces, just the right amount of fighting to keep you on your toes, a few good ambushes that don't feel cheap, and a great flow.

E1M8 makes a vague attempt to stick to the project's monster limit by keeping it under 300, but don't be fooled—it's a massive level with plenty of big, beautiful spaces to look at and mostly higher-tier monsters to fight through. It ends with a battle against D'Sparil and a huge swarm of Disciples, all while the bars to the exit slowly lower over the course of many minutes.

E1M9 is a pure puzzle level with only three Liches for combat. Some of the puzzles are actually pretty interesting and require careful observation, though a couple of them are really just switch hunts. I have to admit I didn't quite have the patience to finish the whole level, but it was pretty good overall, and it has a nice atmosphere.

The bonus level, E2M1, is the only really weak map in the set, which is probably why it's a bonus level. The layout and monster placement seem pretty random, including Sabreclaws that can't reach the player and boss fights in spaces that are too cramped. The music is great, though, and I ended up playing through the level just to listen.

If you like Heretic wads, you've probably already played ROP, but if you haven't, I'd recommend it. It's no History of Fruit or Curse of D'Sparil, but it's a satisfying dose of new Heretic levels to blast through.

Emerald Bathhouse by MorbidBrute (review reposted from The /newstuff Chronicles)

Emerald Bathhouse is a simple, smallish to medium Heretic level with a nice green and blue watery setting and a few new textures that help set the tone. It was intended as an episode starter and fits the E3M1 slot, so pretty much all of the combat is with the wand and gauntlets, unless you find the secret shot...er, crossbow. To balance the low firepower, you're mostly fighting the weakest enemies in the bestiary (Gargoyles, Golems, and Knights, with almost no ghosts), with a couple of other enemy types added toward the end to keep things spiced up. The combat is quick and easy, and the small selection of armaments doesn't get old or feel tedious; in a few spots, you're handed a Tome of Power and pitted against larger mobs of enemies, which helps to vary the pacing. It also helps that the level looks really nice for Heretic—I don't think there are a huge number of custom textures, but the few that are used really work wonders, and the architecture has a good classic feel to it.

This level definitely feels like the start of an episode, with just the right amount of challenge to get your blood flowing, and the gameplay and general flow of the level make it feel like it could have been perfectly at home in the original game. It's pretty basic, but well designed and fun to play.

Somewhere in Time by @Katamori (review reposted from The /newstuff Chronicles)

Somewhere in Time is a set of 15 short-but-sweet mostly-vanilla maps. Katamori cites Scythe, TVR!, and Reverie as his main inspirations, and although the mapset lacks the silky smooth, can't-even-stop-moving-if-you-try flow of Erik Alm's levels, comparisons to van der Velden's and Krizik's work seem very appropriate. Many levels reminded me of the laid-back gameplay and almost cartoony faux-realism of TVR!, while others, with their increased intensity and slightly more understated detailing, felt a lot more like Reverie. There's only one level in the set that has over 100 monsters on UV, and the majority of them top out between 30 and 60. The soundtrack mostly comes from Iron Maiden, Metallica, and other metal bands, which I might find annoying if the levels were longer, but the galloppy, driving midis work well for the short, fast-paced levels. 

In recent years, most of the community's star mappers have been known for making very difficult levels, and as a result, the whole idea of good level design tends to be associated with pushing players to the limits of their skills. To me, Somewhere in Time represents the other side of the coin. Most of these levels are pretty easy—and certainly none of them get near the kind of ovary-busting difficulty you find in Sunlust or Ancient Aliens—but I was continually struck by Katamori's attention to detail. At the end of map 03, you get thrown into a fight with a pair of Mancubi, and even though it's not a very difficult fight at all, Katamori sets it up to feel like a boss fight, just because he can. The setup is sort of dramatic, they're the toughest enemies you've fought so far, and there are crates to hide behind everywhere, even though you probably don't need them. It's cheesy, but it's also really fun. The whole mapset is full of those sorts of details; it's like Katamori put the same kind of extra care into it that a designer would put into a whole new game where the players are supposed to be complete newbies and the level design has to help prod them into learning how to play and how to think about the game world.

The difficulty progression is a bit odd, with many of the easiest levels located toward the end of the set—it looks like many of the later levels were made first but were placed at the end due to having a more hellish theme. The middle levels tend to be the most challenging, and there are definitely a few nerve-wracking situations. The end of map 06 takes place in a cool tech-void setting that combines a lot of open space with a lack of interconnectedness in the platforms to put pressure on you each time new enemies appear (especially when Arch-Viles show up). The Arachnotron section of map 07 has the spiders firing at you from distant platforms, forcing you to put some effort into killing each one of them while simultaneously avoiding the plasma fire from every other direction and a sizeable horde of Lost Souls. The last level is an Icon of Sin battle, but rather than trying to destroy the brain, you have to figure out how to open up the exit before you get overwhelmed by the enemies filling up the level's small main courtyard.

Somewhere in Time really shows what it means for a mapset to be well made without being very difficult. It reminds me of why TVR! has been one of my favorite megawads for years, and I would highly recommend these levels to anyone who isn't afraid to not be hardcore every now and then.

Vispire by @valkiriforce (review reposted from The /newstuff Chronicles)

Vispire is a set of 17 speedmaps by valkiriforce, who until this release had (understandably) been a lot less active since releasing two and a half megawads in 2011 and 2012. I'm not the sort of player who really finds the word "speedmap" appealing, as I prefer to see mappers spend a lot of time on detailing, selecting resources, and coming up with unique, clever layouts. As a result, my expectations weren't very high, and fortunately the mapset exceeded them. 

Vispire is a pretty good set—nothing about it is bad, although nothing about it is outstanding either. The mostly Doom 1 soundtrack sets the tone well enough and doesn't get annoying. The lighting is moody enough to add some atmosphere, though this is mainly accomplished by making every level uniformly dim, at least up until the sky change at map 12 (there are a few really nice bits, though, like the flickering slimefalls and torchlighting in map 10). There's not a lot of detailing, and not as much of a strong sense of place as you find in the more memorable levels of Reverie and Eternally Yours, but the texturing is good.

Which brings me to one of the things I like best about Vispire: the episodic themes. Maps 01-06 are primarily red brick and water, maps 07-11 are green brick and nukage, and maps 12-17 have a seaside/ocean islands theme with a twilight sky. The episodes really help to tie the set together and tell a bit of a story (even if it's rather abstract), and there's enough variation to keep the texturing from getting old. The first and last episodes in particular use themes that aren't very common, which kept me wanting to see what valkiriforce would do with them next. I never thought I'd appreciate those red bricks so much, but I like the way they're used in this set.

As far as gameplay goes, the maps feel more like sets of isolated challenges than coherent, flowing levels. The majority of the levels play the same way: you start out in some kind of hub area, and you teleport (or occasionally take passageways) to about three separate arenas or islands to get the keys/hit the switches you need to exit. Hordes of a single monster type are very common, especially Demons and Revenants, though there are also many mixed groups. I found that this basic level design had started to wear out its welcome by the end of the set, but there's no doubt that valkiriforce is good at creating these arena challenges. Probably my favorite was the opening of map 09, where you have to hold back a giant oncoming horde of Pinkies in a narrow passageway while Hell Knights try to take you out from the sides.

Not every level fits the hub/island mold, either. Map 05 takes place in a single fast-paced, fairly complex faux-urban area with small monsters all over the place, tempting you to rush deeper into the mess and get yourself killed. Map 10 is, for lack of a better term, a dungeon crawl. Map 13 is my favorite overall, with some interesting connectivity and a lot of that great sense of place that I loved in Reverie—it's set in a little island town with passageways that go down underground into the cellars and, beyond that, an atmospheric cavern with a set of intense battles. Map 15 is surprisingly puzzley, with some great combat in the huge, open main area. Map 17 is a large, interconnected fortress, though the huge numbers of monsters made the gameplay feel like kind of a slog to me.

Don't play Vispire just because you love valkiriforce's mapping style, as it isn't much like Reverie or any of his other major works. However, if you want to shoot your way through a series of difficult mini-challenges, you can't really go wrong here. This is one of the best speedmap sets I've played, but I haven't enjoyed many speedmap sets, so maybe that's not saying much. In the broader picture, I'd still say Vispire is a solid mapset though.

For my second-to-last round of reposts, here are a couple of 2016's weirder offerings!

Asbestos Queen by @Jaxxoon R (review reposted from The /newstuff Chronicles)

Asbestos Queen is a 7-map set by Jaxxoon R, one of the many newer mappers whose names I mainly recognize from levels I liked in Nova 2. In this set, Jaxxoon seems to be experimenting with lots of styles, which leads to some nice variety from level to level—and the author does a pretty damn good job with all of them.

Map 01 is a base map with techy details and a very smooth flow. One thing I noticed is that pretty much every raised surface is low enough to the ground that you can walk on it, creating an unexpected level of freedom of movement. Hell, there's even a lift so low that after you've lowered it, you can just use it as a step up instead of waiting for it to rise again. It's almost like the whole level is slathered in Vaseline—a pretty weird thing for the UAC to do, and occasionally it led to me accidentally strafing out a window into the wrong part of the level, but it was definitely fun.

Map 02 is a quick little level with a strong Team TNT vibe. It's one of my favorites visually due to all the plant growth. I also like the tiered layout and the teleport transitions into the more hellish fortress area at the end, not to mention a cool sky-within-a-sky effect that I'm not sure if I've ever seen before.

Map 03 feels like it could have come out of the Russian community, with its grandiosely weird yet genuinely epic OGG track and quirky realist details (most notably the elephant in a cage near the start). It's set in a large, watery cavern with the remains of an old building complex at the center. The open, explorable layout is fantastic and makes this my favorite map in the set.

Map 04 is a boss arena battle against a Cyberdemon and his minions, followed by a very short underground key hunt to get to the exit. The large amount of space makes the battle pretty easy, though I imagine it's a lot tougher if you're pistol starting, as you'll have to search around to find the weapons and ammo you need to win. The level has various small side areas that you can complete in any order, making it feel more sandboxy than your standard arena fight.

Map 05 is the sort of thing you'd find in a typical high-profile modern megawad. It's set around a series of beautiful floating towers in the middle of an endless red sky, with lots of teleport hopping to get around. It's one of the more hectic and challenging maps in the set, mainly due to the large final arena battle where platforms keep lowering to reveal more enemies as you try to deal with the ones you're already fighting.

Map 06, in contrast, is a slow-paced, creepy haunted mansion where you hunt around in the dark for the three skull keys. Like most of the other maps, it's pretty simple, but it has great atmosphere. It doesn't have any puzzles that I remember, just exploration.

Map 07 is a battle against a custom boss, sort of. The giant creature you face is an environmental construct like the Icon of Sin, but it doesn't spawn monsters and feels very different from the Icon. Jaxxoon has done a pretty good job of creating one of those head-plus-two-hands monster bosses that were so common in '90s console games. The boss's attacks seem to come from a few normal Doom monsters hidden behind the custom graphics, and the whole thing felt like it went down in a matter of seconds despite the Cyberdemon and other monsters that teleport to its aid, but there are some pretty neat effects that make it seem like you're destroying the monster piece by piece.

There's another custom monster as well, a plasma-shooting zombie that first makes its appearance in a map 03 secret and starts showing up in earnest around map 05. It's basically a slightly slower-moving reskin of the Alien Trooper from Ancient Aliens, with no stealth effect and an appearance that fits in much better with the standard Doom aesthetic. I like these guys: deadly but easy to kill, and the sprites look good.

I should also mention that the whole sountrack is awesome, though most of the tracks are pretty bizarre. All of the music is in OGG format, and many of the songs are strangely jazzy, creating a bit of a surreal feel just from how much they clash with the blood and grunge of Doom. Any one of them could get stuck in your head for days.

Asbestos Queen is a great coffee break type of mapset, since it's very quick to play through and every level is pretty much its own separate game. It does lack a certain degree of polish, though. The bonkers gameplay shifts are pretty cool, and the concepts are well executed, though none of the mapping styles can be fully explored in the space of such short levels (except for map 03). Still, Asbestos Queen is great for a wad that doesn't take itself too seriously, and every map offers its own breed of bite-sized fun.

Spidersilk by @yakfak (review reposted from The /newstuff Chronicles)

Zan-zan-zawa-veia (better known to forumgoers as yakfak) is known for creating weird, challenging levels with somewhat puzzle-like gameplay, and Spidersilk is no exception.

In some ways, however, this map is a lot less extreme than yakfak's Cacoward-winning Sheer Poison. It can be tough to know where to go next in the large, interwoven dungeon, but there's never a spot where you literally hit a wall and can't go anywhere until you've solved some obscure puzzle; keep hunting around, and you'll find everything you need without much trouble. Ammo is pretty plentiful, though the placement is intended to keep you moving; it sometimes feels tight if you try to fight every monster as it comes, but there's always a small cache of ammo around some nearby corner, allowing you to stock up quickly and return to the fray.

The real challenge is in the enemy placement. The level is full of windows and fencing that give you a view into nearby areas, which means that monsters have plenty of opportunity to shoot at you from multiple directions as you try to run the gauntlet. The major areas are populated with Mancubi*, Arachnotrons, and a couple of Spider Masterminds, and you'll start encountering these high-tier monsters very early on, when you don't yet have the resources to deal with all of them. The most profitable strategy is to clear out the weaker monsters (Sergeants, Imps, and Cacodemons) as you make your initial push through the level, let the more powerful opposition get softened up a bit through infighting, and then deal with them as you return through the main areas later with better weaponry and more ammo. The Spiderdemons in particular will help you by killing some of the other enemies, but yakfak's use of them is excellent, and I was never able to eliminate them through infighting alone; they remained a constant threat as I moved through the level until I was finally able to kill them.

There are a couple of modified enemies that add to the challenge as well. Cacodemons are faster and shoot two balls at a time, but they only take a single SSG shot to bring down. As a result, they're a more immediate threat than ever, but you can combat them without having to slow your pace. There's also a spectral version of the Arch-Vile that has lower health and no ranged attack, but basically just runs around the level resurrecting enemies. These guys will be a thorn in your side until you manage to kill them all, especially since the layout allows them to travel all over the level.

If you add up everything I've said so far, you'll realize this level is all about constantly moving around, trying to stay ahead of the threats, collect resources, and figure out how to progress. It's exactly the sort of puzzle I like to see in Doom—the kind that makes you examine the big picture rather than just staring into every corner trying to find tiny switches.

The wad also has an alternate gameplay mode ("Painful and Stupid") in place of skill 2. This variant makes the level even more open by removing some decorative obstacles, ditches the spectral AVs and spiders, and completely overhauls the enemy balance. It's full of difficult or meaty enemies that weren't used (or rarely appeared) in the regular version of the level, including chaingunners, Hell Knights, plenty of Pain Elementals, and at least one Cyberdemon. I didn't go very far in this mode, but it looks quite tough, and it seems like it's even more focused on forcing you to collect ammo and weapons at the start in order to get your feet under you. Many people may enjoy this mode more; personally, I prefer the strange and spider-infested UV.

*It's my party, and I can spell this however I want to now without getting edited by Bloodshedder.

Looking forward hopefully to seeing other 2019 snubs covered...and fresh 15/16 stuff! I think this is already quite a good place to start for those wondering 'what are some of the best wads from 2017 and 2018 that didn't make it into the Cacos anywhere'.

Last set of /newstuff reposts, covering a couple of stray reviews of standalone maps that happen to be at opposite ends of the level design spectrum in many ways. Over the years I've gotten more used to maps in the general style of Ave Exitium (and I loved Maskim Xul, of course), but the review below should give you a pretty good idea of whether you want to play it or nopetopus right past it. I seem to recall that even Obsidian admitted in response to my review that the ammo was too scarce, but I think it's still an interesting combat puzzle anyway.

Ave Exitium by @Obsidian

What to even make of this map? If you open up the automap, you'll see the words "Jesus Wept," which I think roughly sums up my sentiments on the matter.

I think this has to be the most difficult map I've ever played with under 200 monsters, or the most difficult map in which monster count was not a major factor in the difficulty. The first time I quit in frustration was after just a few attempts, because I couldn't get past the first few rooms. Then about 10 minutes later I tried again. And quit again...and so on. Ave Exitium is that kind of map. It's very much a puzzle that leaves you feeling like there must be some way to beat it, and makes you keep coming back even after you've relinquished your review claim in disgust and abandoned the wad for like three weeks straight.

So what's so daunting about it? First and foremost, there's hardly any ammo. There's no chaingun, so the bullets you pick up aren't good for much, you don't get rockets until the last couple of fights, and although you get both shotguns early, there are only a few boxes of shells. If you are using your SSG against anything other than Arch-Viles, Pain Elementals, or monsters that are actively blocking your escape route, you're doing it wrong. If you follow this advice religiously, you should have enough ammo to make it through the first third of the level, at which point you get the Berserk pack and it becomes a very hard Tyson map. The chainsaw appears earlier, but it seems to require some kind of straferun trick to get, and I couldn't reach it. Throughout all of this, you're trying to get around tough enemies like Revenants and AVs in fairly small spaces, it's dark, and you have to puzzle out the progression as you go while under fire from enemies you can't kill. The layout can be pretty confusing, as there are passages that sneakily transport you to the other side of the level, and most of the rooms look pretty similar. There are many switches to find and hit, and some of them open up in small nooks in areas where you've already been with no warning; I'm thankful for ZDoom's automap rendering with color-coded lock-and-key lines, because I don't think I'd have ever found the locked switches without them. Also, there is only one difficulty setting. Also, the walls are actually Mancubi and shoot fireballs at you. Even the secrets don't give you more ammo, though one of them does give you the privilege of Tysoning six Revenants at once with no cover for a Megaarmor.

At one point after hunting down most of the switches, I ended up finally finding the rocket launcher and the level's final ammo cache (hallelujah!), only to realize that I was stuck in a puzzle room with no obvious way out. After riding blood floors up and down for 15 minutes, I ragequit again...and then half an hour later, I restarted for the nth time and tried again. It turns out that to solve the puzzle,

Once you get out, you're almost free—all you have to do is take on a couple of Cyberdemons and a small horde of other enemies blocking the exit lift. You can get the Cybers to help you kill everything else, but if you have enough ammo to kill the Cybers, I don't know where you got it from. It's kind of interesting that there's yet another layer of challenge there; sure, you can run past them and beat the level, but can you be even stingier with your ammo and kill them next time?

Don't get me wrong, this level is pretty cool. The blood-filled fortress setting is nice, and although the detailing is on the simpler side, the clean texturing and moody lighting do wonders for the map's atmosphere. The little spinning skull cube things are also neat—Obsidian is always good at creating new content that expands the Doom universe in believable ways, even if it's something as simple as a single decoration. And although the design can be kind of dickish at times, the whole level is a very carefully crafted puzzle that requires some serious thought and effort. I would only recommend Ave Exitium to masochists, but if you genuinely love a challenge—and I mean seriously love it, not like you're just saying that because you don't mind dying sometimes—you may really enjoy it.

Moonsong by @SaladBadger

In most ways, Moonsong is just your standard medium-sized techbase level, but the starry sky and accompanying moonlit night atmosphere help to set the mood and make it more memorable. It's also very well designed for being the author's first map. It flows smoothly, the rooms are pretty well sculpted, and I didn't catch any texturing errors or other bugs (except for a Sergeant that seems to be stuck in a corner in the second room). The combat is generally pretty easy on UV, but it definitely increases over the course of the level, and the last few areas should be able to keep you on your toes without being frustrating. Up until that point, the map has a nice casual feel to it, which is aided by a fun, slightly jazzy Jimmy midi that I hadn't heard before.

The level is pretty dark overall, especially indoors. Given the night sky, it seems kind of odd that the exterior areas are so well lit and the interiors are all so dark, but it's not exactly a bad thing; playing it, you get the impression of a very bright moon (fitting, given the level's title) and an almost completely unpowered base interior. The almost constant darkness in the early part of the level was occasionally annoying, but on the other hand, it also laid the groundwork for one of my favorite fights—a couple of Spectres chasing me around in the dark, visible only in my gunflashes, while I was trying to fend off several Cacodemons that were converging on me from all sides.

Ammo was overabundant, and the author had a tendency to use Imps in large clumps that don't really pose a threat. The flaws are all minor, though, and InsanityBringer strikes me as a mapper who will continue to improve quickly and steadily. The ending text sets us up for a sequel (apparently set in Hell), and I'm looking forward to playing it.

Note: Moon's Call, the sequel to Moonsong, can be found here.

Always enjoying your reviews even though I am not always replying here directly. Thanks for doing this, my backlog is growing constantly due to your reviews. Which is actually not a good thing... ;( No time to play so much stuff.

Cheers for the in-depth review. 2016 was a tough year for me and that map is kind of an expression of that, hence the sadistic tendencies and somewhat grim themes at work. Mechanically it's something that I'm proud of, but I wouldn't recommend it all that much all the same.