maps that broke you, for better or for worse!

[rita remton]

for the better, [advent]. i was a complete newbie with slaughterwads back then, and still is to this day (i'm no skilled player). it took me 4.5 hours on map2 of the mapset to complete it, whereas the par time was just 15 minutes :P

[Woolie Wool]

"In The Womb" from Sunlust broke me to the point where I started cheating at points, and "Inverti in Darkness" was where I was like "fuck this, I'm out".

[Daytime Waitress]

Definitely Dark Dome from Alien Vendetta. I'd never powered through a megawad before, and this map made me think I just might not be able to. Like maybe finishing a full 32 non-id maps was something the big kids did, and I wasn't going to be in that club. I'd played a lot of the AV maps in a stretch before hitting this one, so fatigue was definitely creeping in, but this felt like a gut shot. Up until then I'd had tricky points to deal with, but map 26 felt like, no matter where I started my approach from, it was going to rail me.

 

But I eventually broke it down methodically into manageable sections ran screaming from sector to sector, dragging every fight three-quarters of the way across the map in the hopes of having everyone else kill each other, and limping to the exit with absolutely jack all resources left.

 

That experience fundamentally changed how I approach combat encounters in Doom: it definitely taught me the value of using resources and tactics wisely and how invaluable infighting is, things I still, consciously or otherwise, utilise in every map, big or small, today.

 

Buggered if I've been back to it though.

[RICHIE B]

EVITERNITY Map 12 - Brisk

 

For years I had been religious about no in-map saving, which came to bite me many times in the ass - especially that bloody final room in Plutonia Map 09 - Abbatoire. Would keep falling in the pit then start the whole level from the beginning every time.

 

I would do this with every map until my first experience of Brisk. After 26 deaths, including after I'd finally reached the final room, it broke my long tradition as I just couldn't take it anymore.

 

Now I save, within reason, as I now play the custom wads in the last couple of years which are harder than the PWADS. There's just not the time or patience in life for doing without anymore.

[Jimmy]

Update:

 

Have actually beaten God Machine.

 

Spoiler

good christ man

 

[Lila Feuer]

@Jimmy How'd you go about it? I played all of Sunlust on HMP and it's harder than most thing on UV so I think that was the right call for a first-time playthrough. I never save during fights (unless I can break line-of-sight and get into cover for a guaranteed breather) so needless to say that was probably the craziest battle I've had since MAP30 of Scythe II, which I totally had to savescum because that wad's difficulty went off the rails in the last five or so maps, at least on UV. Doing the final battle with the barons and arch-viles in the last room one by one in one go after like six or seven tries felt legit good but I was almost beginning to wonder if I'd met my match regarding skill ceiling lol.

[Skronkidonk]

"Refueling Base" and "Suburbs" were probably the first two maps that stumped me when playing Doom.

"Fire and Ice" is definitely one that took me a while to beat.

I honestly always found "Go F*ck yourself" to be harder than "God Machine" but both of them definitely destroyed me".

"Dark Dome" from Alien Vendetta is not only great but also pretty insane and it took me a while to beat that one. Also "Stench of Evil" was pretty brutal, a 30 minute map that doesn't give up. 

How can we talk about maps that broke us without talking about Scythe II? "Whispering Winds", "Gaia's Temple", "Forgotten City", and" Afterlife II". Insanely beautiful and insanely rude maps for sure.

Some honorable mentions are Hell Revealed 1 & 2 and Sunder... Too many maps to name.  But to name one specifically "Beyond the Sea", one of the few maps in Doom that I genuinely dislike.

[june gloom]

On 6/7/2024 at 10:16 AM, Jimmy said:

God Machine.

 

  Hide contents

Still haven't beaten it.

 

 

Sunlust taught me how to be a better player, period.

[Li'l devil]

There were many maps that made me quit megawads and many maps that made me change the way I play Doom, but there were no maps that left permanent changes to the way I play it. So far I kept changing my playstyle constantly. I kept jumping between all skill levels, kept changing my mind on saving, on what port features I should enable or not, etc. And every time I thought that I was permanently settled, it turned out I wasn't.

[Bobby :D]

Back when I was baby lurker, dead.air was one of the wads that got me back into Doom modding. It also whooped my ass, I was not ready for anything remotely close to "slaughter", let alone a map of that magnitude. I could barely beat Doom 2 on UV. That, combined with Scythe 2 and Sunlust gave me huge challenges for a few years.

 

[Raith138]

Bastion of Chaos kicked my ass. It being my first modded experience it made me enjoy slaughter to this day and is still an amazing map.
 

[Jimmy]

18 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

@Jimmy How'd you go about it? I played all of Sunlust on HMP and it's harder than most thing on UV so I think that was the right call for a first-time playthrough. I never save during fights (unless I can break line-of-sight and get into cover for a guaranteed breather) so needless to say that was probably the craziest battle I've had since MAP30 of Scythe II, which I totally had to savescum because that wad's difficulty went off the rails in the last five or so maps, at least on UV. Doing the final battle with the barons and arch-viles in the last room one by one in one go after like six or seven tries felt legit good but I was almost beginning to wonder if I'd met my match regarding skill ceiling lol.

 

I had no small amount of help from savescumming, plus a friend (@KeaganDunn) playing the map alongside me on Discord, who was already intimately familiar with the workings of the Divine Contraption. He was giving me pointers on each fight's hyper-specific criteria for survival and how best to conserve resources. It was a considerable test for the both of us.

[Lila Feuer]

24 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

 

I had no small amount of help from savescumming, plus a friend (@KeaganDunn) playing the map alongside me on Discord, who was already intimately familiar with the workings of the Divine Contraption. He was giving me pointers on each fight's hyper-specific criteria for survival and how best to conserve resources. It was a considerable test for the both of us.

That's awesome I'm glad you beat it finally, it's a genuinely good wad and I think its reputation as this Dark Souls-esque terror in the Doom scene is misrepresenting it, it's just very good arena combat and it never feels truly unfair.

[PsychEyeball]

Lately a map that broke me was Gutter Grave from The 3 Heures D'Agonie series. What especially broke me was that so much of it revolves around the same kind of infighting-based encounters that I happen to find flavorless. I hate massive encounters that force you to be a spectator to the action and punishes you for actually engaging with the enemy. I want to shoot enemies, not watch them die from outside interference.

 

The map just really drove me up the wall for some reason.

[Cinnamon]

Hell Revealed. (Pistol start uv max)

 

MAP23 - Ascending to the Starts.

I save scummed the chain gunners. The rest was legit.

 

MAP24 - Post Mortem.

Almost broke me but I beat it spending some 6 hours on it.

 

MAP26 - Afterlife.

I quit on this one. Mostly burned out by the two already mentioned.

[SkidyBoobFish]

Final Doom : TNT Evilution

 

Map 21 : Administration Center

The first time i played this was a nightmare, I was able to get trough the inside of the building. But on the outside, i had to go into God Mode.

 

The second time i played it i didn't cheat and i found it more enjoyable.