What's the consensus on The Master Levels?

[RHhe82]

On 5/7/2024 at 10:36 AM, QuaketallicA said:

I've played them a couple times but haven't revisited them as much as the iwads. They're just a collection of maps from the 90s that were maybe a cut above most for the time. What's more to say about them?

That’s my stance, too. I have little desire to revisit them, as they are the epitome of 90s design that has aged badly. (But, surely, ”cut above” with regards to 90s shovelware-wads rings true to me; in 1996 I would have gladly played these on regular basis, I suspect).

[yakfak]

kvernmo and jim flynn own and the other levels have their charms. i think uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

the way new people come here asking to play "megawads" is sort of one meta-reason people don't like the master levels? having to re-enter the launcher, having to hear d2runnin makes the experience more like playing old shovelware and less like a single product. but that's what I like. my first forays into doom custom content featured cover disks with random level selections on them and i never heard about requiem etc until later

 

ps: you've aged badly, the levels are exactly as they were

Edited May 10, 2024 by yakfak

[LadyMistDragon]

On 5/8/2024 at 5:45 PM, Murdoch said:

Mixed bag, but Fistula can fuck right off. It's one of the few maps I have ever played that made me actively angry.

There was a point where I fully agreed with it....and indeed, running into a Pain Elemental when coming from the wrong direction in a poorly-signposted map was....really not the best experience. Although I would also say many of the traits here are also evident in Klie's other maps, but just feel more condensed here due to the layout. Honestly though, it takes a lot to make me actively angry like that, at least these days.

[Li'l devil]

Quoting my friend, "Disaster Levels"

 

Never played them, but I watched DoD's review and I liked some moments. My favorite moment was a completely unavoidable crusher if you dare to pick up the plasma gun, lmao.

[LadyMistDragon]

10 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

Quoting my friend, "Disaster Levels"

 

Never played them, but I watched DoD's review and I liked some moments. My favorite moment was a completely unavoidable crusher if you dare to pick up the plasma gun, lmao.

The Combine....ugh, I never went back to that map when that happened.

[elf-alchemist]

On 5/10/2024 at 6:17 AM, yakfak said:

kvernmo and jim flynn own and the other levels have their charms. i think uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

the way new people come here asking to play "megawads" is sort of one meta-reason people don't like the master levels? having to re-enter the launcher, having to hear d2runnin makes the experience more like playing old shovelware and less like a single product. but that's what I like.

 

Being a spoiled little doomer, having played the classic games for the first time in 2020, I could never imagine actually enjoying the master levels like that, I had just pirated masterlevels.wad back then (of course, today I own full copies on Steam), and even then i didnt think very much of them. but since I just made my "Masterpack for Doom II" I started having a lot of fun with them, after i finished the Inferno episode i was almost holding back tears after Waters of Lethe, it was really something.

 

That and Titan was crazy too, like that Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy game, it was a frustrating but deeply changing experience to me.

 

@Soundblock's Cabal was my personal favorite fun time to have, tho. It's a very meaty episode, lotsafun to be had, just murderlizing daemons. I like it :)

 

I don't know, maybe I'm just too young to appreciate the shovelware-style play of the 20 _raw_ wads, but I like them way better as a proper collection.

 

10 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

Quoting my friend, "Disaster Levels"

 

Never played them, but I watched DoD's review and I liked some moments. My favorite moment was a completely unavoidable crusher if you dare to pick up the plasma gun, lmao.

Funny, it took me until my second playthrough, knowing what the Forum Kitsune told me about Chris Klie, his limited PC and assumption his maps were going into a megawd, to really start to appreciate it, and I still think the Plasma Crusher™ was stupid bullshit.

 

[Li'l devil]

I think the Plasma Crusher(tm) is just such a funny troll. Of course, not funny when you actually play it.

[Andromeda]

14 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

My favorite moment was a completely unavoidable crusher if you dare to pick up the plasma gun, lmao.

I believe you can avoid it, but you have to be quick.

[Celestin]

I've played them for the first time a couple months ago (packed into a single wad file and with a midi pack). I don't hate them, there are a handful of solid maps here, but the rest gives off this shovelware feel I'm just not a fan of. I get it was the peak of 1995's Doom community, I respect that, but things were moving rapidly and The Master Levels feel dated compared to wads released just a year or two later. I feel like I've seen what I had to see and don't plan to return.

[Devalaous]

5 hours ago, elf-alchemist said:

I don't know, maybe I'm just too young to appreciate the shovelware-style play of the 20 _raw_ wads, but I like them way better as a proper collection.

 

Having some way to play them one by one from some sort of system helps immeasurably with the original presentation, like the old Master Levels Manager for ZDoom which even racked your scores (but broke horribly due to bad support for TEETH due to its secret level)

 

 

Doom Launcher is part of the reason I made patches for the individual levels as well as the PS3/homebuilt masterlevels.wad, it makes the original historic flawed presentation so much easier to digest. Once they are in the database, I could just fire one up at a random point, get that little dopamine hit of marking it off as completed with 100% stats, and move on to another. Sometimes I think about adding the Titan, Inferno and Cabal maps to this tab.

 

4 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

I think the Plasma Crusher(tm) is just such a funny troll. Of course, not funny when you actually play it.

 

I laughed when I encountered it, its delightfully dickish and that kind of trap is found in a LOT of Klie works, as you'll see in BF Thud. He liked to use the level as an obstacle just as much as monsters, likely to get the most out of the small levelspaces he worked with. If it was a slow crusher, THEN I'd be mad..

[TVdinnermasterchef]

I played them on the PS1 back in the day. The first map on that (the one with the SSG in between 2 flights of stairs with an opening leading to a central outdoor courtyard, flanked by 2 parallel corridors which circle round via a computer-control room style section) is amazing. I actually thought for many years this was the official Map01 of Doom II. 

 

However, going back as an adult, I've realised some are complete toss, and should be avoided. Don't live up to today's offerings, but were an additional set of levels very early on that most people, I'm sure, appreciated at the time.