thoughts on Thy Flesh Consumed

[Final Verdict]

 

Ahh, episode 4...I liked all of the Doom 1's episodes but for some reason episode 4 always looms large in my memory of Doom, even though it came out much later. Specifically, M1, M2, M3, and M6. Besides the obvious E1 maps those are the maps that pop into my mind whenever I think about Doom.

[NoXion]

Thy Flesh Consumed is a worthy addition to the Doom canon, let down only by its fucked-up difficulty curve. Who on Earth thought it was a good idea to put two of the hardest maps in the entire episode right at the start? I know it was made at a time when people had gotten much better at playing Doom, and the mapmakers were willing to oblige, which is fair enough. But would it have killed them to ease us in a bit better?

[Final Verdict]

19 minutes ago, NoXion said:

Thy Flesh Consumed is a worthy addition to the Doom canon, let down only by its fucked-up difficulty curve. Who on Earth thought it was a good idea to put two of the hardest maps in the entire episode right at the start? I know it was made at a time when people had gotten much better at playing Doom, and the mapmakers were willing to oblige, which is fair enough. But would it have killed them to ease us in a bit better?

 

I have to agree with this, if there was one bad thing about E4 then it was the unusual order of the levels. That and replacing E4M4 entirely with....anything other than Brownhug. 

Edited July 16, 2020 by Final Verdict

[Boaby Kenobi]

34 minutes ago, NoXion said:

Thy Flesh Consumed is a worthy addition to the Doom canon

 

I used to hate E4 but I've come to appreciate it a lot more now. The box art for the PC release is also incredible.

[Endless]

55 minutes ago, Final Verdict said:

 

I have to agree with this, if there was one bad thing about E4 then it was the unusual order of the levels. That and replacing E4M4 entirely with....anything other than Brownhug. 

But I believe that's precisely why Thy Flesh Consumed is remembered with such esteem and respect; the fact that it doesn't play around with you from the beginning. It becomes your own ^Doom

[Chip]

1 hour ago, NoXion said:

Thy Flesh Consumed is a worthy addition to the Doom canon, let down only by its fucked-up difficulty curve. 

I actually think its difficulty curve is realistic. in all media (movies, games, books, etc.) the hero starts off on the easiest level, and makes his way up to the final showdown against a beast he's never went up against before. although in real life (as if there were demon invasions) wouldn't they send out their most difficult opponents first? the demons don't want you to stop their invasion.

[NoXion]

4 hours ago, LiT_gam3r said:

I actually think its difficulty curve is realistic. in all media (movies, games, books, etc.) the hero starts off on the easiest level, and makes his way up to the final showdown against a beast he's never went up against before. although in real life (as if there were demon invasions) wouldn't they send out their most difficult opponents first? the demons don't want you to stop their invasion.

I see your point, but the ramping up of the difficulty is part of what makes games fun. Seems like it would be a bit anti-climactic for a wad to start off with the player killing a bunch of cyberdemons, and end with the player hunting down the last imp.

[Starduster]

Thy flesh consumed, for me, is the best Doom episode. In E2 and E3, it felt like iD's mapping quality was falling back into the way it was back in the wolfenstein 3d days. Some maps were ultimately a large, decorated maze, and gameplay suffered as a result. But that is just a theory. E4, however, was almost like a harder but slightly less polished E1. I say E4 > E1 because it felt like a legitimate challenge for me on UV.

 

Now, enough of my theories that nobody will agree with. The difficulty curve is definitely missing, but, as @LiT_gam3r mentioned, can all add up when you think of it. The levels also felt nicely designed and diverse from one another. For example, E4M6 felt like it had a story behind it, as if you were breaking into a castle. E4M7 had Dr sleep written all over it. And finally E4M8 had a nice, climactic ending, as you find keys and switches that allow you to access the "boss" room.

 

I will admit, however, that E4M1 can go back to hell... it has so many issues lol. There's barely enuf ammo and health if you go for 100% on uv, but also another stupid problem. In the room with the red key, monsters can shoot at you through the freaking walls. Why. Moving on to E4M2, you can find 50 percent health to heal up, which I guess Romero begrudging added to keep ppl from quitting the game so early. What you need in this map is strategy to succeed. After that, the rest of tfc is still challenging but tame. 

 

Overall, 9.5/10 for me, I loved it so much that I decided to do a saveless run on uv and beat it on attempt ONE. If you are on the fence because of difficulty, give it a try on skill 2 or 3. You'll probably love it as those are more forgiving. 

[Lippeth]

I'll admit I've never played it all the way through, though I've started it hundreds of times. It always felt somewhat tedious to me, but I think you've all convinced to give it another shot on a lower difficulty. Why do I never think to lower the difficulty, damn the pride!

[NoXion]

1 hour ago, Starduster said:

Thy flesh consumed, for me, is the best Doom episode.

Perhaps even the Ultimate Doom episode?

I'll get my coat.

[Starduster]

4 minutes ago, NoXion said:

Perhaps even the Ultimate Doom episode?

I'll get my coat.

I guess it is, technically, cuz it's the last one. Lol

[unpike]

I believe that it would fit better in doom 2 since its intense difficulty would be compensated with the ssg

[TriTT]

Episode 4 is the one I've played the least, but there is more than one reason for this. When I first played Doom in the 90s I was unaware of Ultimate Doom and only had the registered version of the game. So for some time in the late 90s I knew nothing about it until around Quake II time, that's when I first found out about episode 4 I'm pretty sure.

 

I didn't get the Ultimate Doom until sometime in 2004 or 2005. I remember Doom III had just come out and so did the movie, but for some reason I still didn't play the 4th episode, at least not all the way through, until just a few years ago actually. I only play on UV these days so that's what I beat it on.

 

The first two levels, in my opinion, were not in the right place for this episode. I feel like they are the hardest levels in the episode, amd the levels that come after aren't much harder than anything you'd find in episode 2 or 3. It wasn't bad in terms of level design, but I felt the last level sucked because it just had the 2 bosses from the previous episodes. I think they could've at the very least made it a big monster or two from Doom II the bosses as a teaser for what was to come next, but that's just a nitpick. I also feel they could've gotten Bobby Prince to edit some of the unused tracks from the game and repurposed some of them for the new episode (sort of what 3DR's did with their 4th episode for DN3D), instead of just using songs from previous maps, but again that is only another nitpick.

 

I also felt the ending was sort of tacked on and lame in general. The rabbit thing was something I always found kind of stupid. I liked the ending of episode 3 because it was so random and out of nowhere to see the dead rabbits when the music changed and showed the burning city, but episode 4's ending just feels like they had no idea how to end it and just made up a random story about revenge over a pet bunny, which feels very much like a placeholder story to me.

 

If I had to rank the episodes I'd say the order they appear on the "select the episode" screen are the order in which I'd rank them as favorites.

[Raz]

The aesthetic of Thy Flesh is really great I think, the biblical level names, the green marble / wood buildings and the apocalyptic sky. The difficulty at the start is also good as it's like a B mode from a classic Japanese game or something, it's just a shame the difficulty tails off so quickly on E4M4. My own personal edit to that map is to stick a cyberdemon in the red key room, that makes it much more exciting.

 

The TFC maps as presented in PSX Doom possibly worked better as they replaced all the Barons with Knights and I find killing Barons in Doom 1 is always a chore. But PSX Doom also removed the cyberdemons and I liked how they were used as a regular but rare monster in this episode. Though I think only Romero used his in an interesting way on E4M2 and E4M6, the one on E4M7 is a bit dull, the classic Doom thing of just giving you an invulnerability sphere and a BFG every time a non-boss cyberdemon is used. And with regards to the BFG it might have been better to either keep it out of the episode altogether, or only give it to you on the last map.

 

I think they should have also used a few spiderdemons throughout the maps as a rare monster as plonking one at the end is a bit underwhelming. A better end to the episode might have been an arena battle with lots of monsters teleporting in, in a similar fashion to how PSX Doom 1 ended on MAP30: Threshold of Pain.