Adam blathers about wads (now playing: NOVA - The Birth)

[Capellan]

e1m9
I did not like this very much. It's definitely a level that overstays its welcome. Not that it's especially huge, but it had a constricted, bitsy form of progression that requires too much switch-flicking and more than a little back-tracking.

The western section of six identical rooms is a good example of the switchitis of the level. Rather than one interesting fight, we get a series of small, tedioius, chokepoint battles. Yawn.

The level does introduce a new enemy: an immobile gun turret. They're chaingunner-esque, capable of flaying away a lot of health, which is a real issue in a level where healing is as scarce as it is here.

Visually, the level lacks any 'wow' moments, and the brown144 tunnels look pretty bad.

A disappointing entry.

[Capellan]

e1m4
I liked this a lot more than the secret level. Like every map since e1m2, it's visually less detailed and impressive than e1m1 was, but in this level the textures that are chosen are generally appropriate for their purpose (for instance, if a wall is more than 128 high, a tecture that tiles well vertically has been chosen).

I also had a lot of luck with getting the gun turret enemy to infight on this level. There are least three of these enemies on the map, and I only had to kill one. Monsters (in one case, another turret) took out the other two.

I found 3 secrets, at least one of which was a nice change of pace: rather than simply giving goodies (though it did that), it also gave you a better tactical position from which to fight. Nice.

Speaking of fights, these were also a step up from last level: while the map still had discrete 'clumps' of resistance, it varied the size and placement of those clumps, and gave them more space and a sense of ebb and flow. I especially liked the section leading up to the switch that opens the way to the blue door.

[Capellan]

e1m5
One recurring issue with the mapgame levels is backtracking. The design often requires you to do part A of the map to get a key or flick a switch to do part B. Then you go do part B, which gives you a key or switch to open part C ... but to get to C you have to run through A again. And of course when you do part C and get access to part D, you get there via B.

That issue is in full effect here, and is compounded by the fact that one of the areas you revisit - the metal1 'squares' - was pretty dull the first time. Coming back through it later with no new monsters to fight, just so you can reach the blue door, induces a rolling of the eyes.

Which is unfortunate, because this level has some nice moments: the illusion of the raising floor after you teleport to the exit area being a particular case in point. Kudos for also offering a route back to the main part of the map so the player can search for secrets and picked up goodies they left for later.

Gameplay remains centered on E1 enemies, plus the gun turrets. The key to making genuine challenge out of this opposition is using multiple angles of threat and forcing the player to prioritise. This level does that reasonably well at the outset, and again at the red key trap, but other than that the enemies generally funnel in from a single direction, making it very straightforward to deal with them.

An okay entry to the wad, but not a great one.

[Capellan]

e1m6
I liked this level. I thought it had a good exploratory vibe for most of it. There was a little bit of the common problem with the last few levels, in that we got some rather linear corridor-shooter bits, but these were compensated for with some fun secrets: I especially liked the grilles leading to the soulsphere (as well as to an alternate route to the yellow key) and the shootable switch leading to the blur sphere.

Combat remain easy, thanks to the episode's self-imposed monster limits. The pop-up turret near the red door was a good surprise, though the turret's slow firing animation made it pretty easy to strafe & gun.

I have mixed feelings about the chaingun replacement. On the one hand, the flight time of the projectiles limits its worth at long distances against moving targets. On the other hand, it seems to kill enemies quicker up close than the chaingun did, and its lack of 'bullet spread' makes it lethal against distant turrets.

[Capellan]

e1m7
By now, "competent tech base" is pretty much the default expectation for every map in the episode, and it's what we get here, once more. I'm not hugely enamored of some of the textural and architectural choices - I think this wad's look and feel peaked early - but there's nothing bad.

Paricularly good elements? I liked the turret fights in this, actually. They're well positioned, giving you opportunities to sometimes use them to your advantage if you're clever, and to always have a fair shake at engaging them in any case, without them being entirely nerfed.

I also very much appreciated the final rush of monsters, with a few cacodemons finally enlivening the onslaught. They're not hard to deal with, but they do at least vary the opposition a bit. Was a mistake to have them appear on the walkway, though - they should have been sniping in from the outside to creat crossfires.



e1m8
A solid boss level, with the barons positioned in such a way that you can't readily bunch them up. This means you can't just rocket them as a helpless clump of meat, and also that green fire is coming down on you from multiple angles. Good fight.

I also realised liked the ending room, with the maw of hell and the strange noises it made.

Overall, a very fine conclusion to the episode.




I'll be taking a little break from this thread - other than maybe a single level or two - as I'll be doing a playthrough of HYMN this month in addition to Fava Beans and Double Impact for the Megawad Club.

I should be back in June though :)

[Capellan]

Realm of Shades
So all I know about this is it is from 1998, and it has 7 maps.

Map01
So, using multiples of 8 for heights is not going to be a thing in this map, it seems. Nor is any semblance of any 'real' place. Details are apt to be thin on the ground, too. Lots of long, uninterrupted, straight lines around the place. There are soe lighting sectors though, so that's something. Still, for a 1998 level, the looks are fairly crude.

Gameplay is pretty good. The first fight in the courtyard is a good one, with sniping revs and chainguns above, plus a motley selection of enemies at ground level. Probably the best part of the map, really.

Once you clear that, it's a pretty simple bit of corridor shooting to open access to the blue key. This brings another flood of monsters, but quite a lot of them got stuck up in the north eastern part of the map, reducing the potency of the encounter.

The final act of the map is one I largely just ran through. Lucked into finding the elevator I needed pretty much straight away, used the first teleporter; guessed I needed to go back where I'd 'ported from, and found the second teleporter and the exit. I ignored pretty much everything in the nukage area, fighting-wise.

Not a bad level, but the later fights were not as well orchestrated as the opening.

[TimeOfDeath]

What made you play RoS? I played it a couple months ago and liked it: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=9040

[Capellan]

TimeOfDeath said:
What made you play RoS?

vdgg suggested it above, and when I looked at it on idgames it seemed interesting.

Soldat said:
I'd like to make a request for the next play: The (original) Plutonia Experiment.

I'm not generally a fan of Casali levels, to be honest. I only own Final Doom because it was cheaper to buy Rage as part of an "every iD game ever" pack on Steam than to get it by itself.

[Capellan]

Map02
Well, this is a pretty square level of squareness, with orthagonal buildings containing orthagonal rooms, connected by orthagonal hallways, and surrounded by orthagonal courtyards.

It's also a level with a rather tiresome penchant for distant/high chaingunners with dominating views over open spaces. That gets pretty tiresome.

Other than that, it's a reasonably fun level, for gameplay. The flocks of cacos are entertaining, as always. I also liked the HK/sergeant fight leading up to the blue key becoming available. It was a battle where taking out the shotgunners around the edges was much more important than the goatboys in the middle. And I don't mean Daniel Bryan.

The cyber fight was something of a lowlight ... he got a decently menacing build up, but is very easy to cheese when you finally do encounter him.

[Capellan]

Map03
I rather enjoyed this sprawling techbase level. It's not going to win any prives for looks, and continuous play pulls a lot of the teeth from its fights, but it's a fun 90s romp. I had 100 rockets coming into this, and about 90 as I leave, but I must have expended a good pile of them in the course of the map.

Favorite moments: the multiple switches in the first major nukage area were amusing, as each opened yet another closet, rather than the exit. The big brown canton with arachnotrons and revenants across it was also fun. I liked the cacos hiding in its depths, and the teleport jumps to cross it. Fun.

The end room trap was thoroughly sign-posted. I think it might have been more fun in a larger area with the HKs not confined in cages, though. I got caught on a stray vertex or something the first time I tried it - a flat piece of wall, but it snagged me good and proper. On the second attempt, things went much more smoothly.

[Capellan]

Sorry for the long break. Playing 80-ish "100 lines" maps has kept me rather busy.

Map04
Wow. As map03 is to 01 and 02, so map04 is to 03. Much bigger, much better looking, much more architecturally ambitious ... and a whole heck of a lot harder! The red key was an especially nasty fight, taking several attempts and about 500 cells when I finally completed it. I'm glad I wasn't trying this level on UV, as the map has twice as many AVs and revenants on that setting. It was mostly the AVs who got me on this one: on several occasions the map puts you up against them in places with very little cover.

The definite highlight of the level is the layout, which intersects with itself in numerous places, creating links back to earlier areas, or to zones you've seen from another direction but been unable to enter.

I got stuck for a while looking for the blue key; not the most intuitive progression there, but I did eventually trigger the trap that was needed to proceed.

Comparing this map to map01 is like two completely different standards.

[Capellan]

Map05
This map feels like a slight step back from map04. It's also large and technically proficient in its construction (though the blue key room had some strange alignment issues). The structure of the level as a whole, however, is less interesting. Firstly, it's a hub-spoke map, which is a pretty linear and uninteresting structure at the best of times, and doubly-so when it's the bog standard "no key, 1st key, 2nd key, 3rd key" approach. The map adds the wrinkle that you have to do the 2nd key wing twice to get the 3rd key, but that's not an especially interesting wrinkle to add.

The map also suffers because the final fight is entirely skippable on difficulties below UV (on UV, the mastermind might make a run to the exit less appealing!).

These weaknesses of the map are a shame, because it has some nice architecture, interesting textures (I like the grimy crates), and challenging fights (the first run through the red key wing being the highlight IMO).

I imagine this would be pretty tough on pistol start, especially on UV. There are quite a number of PEs about the place, and UV has a lot of extra barons, which are real ammo sinks. You do get a berserk or three though, which will help.

Ten secrets on the map; I found only one, but it was the one to find: the BFG :)

Well actually, I found two, but the second one I got when I was doing some random exploring in nukage, and I couldn't be bothered to go get it when I went back to finishing the level (it was a long trek to get a rad suit, and the reward was only a box of bullets).

A decent map, but not quite at the level of 04.

[Capellan]

Arise, my creation! Rise from the dead!

So I got distracted writing movie reviews and stuff, and a year went by. Oops.

I might get back to RoS over Xmas, but the save game is on my old PC, so in the mean time I fired up Community Chest 2.

I'll be playing continuous, HMP, with no music.

Community Chest 2 - map01
I liked this. The main area's texture selection is one I think is fairly easy to make look decent, but I like the use of height. The parkour sequence to the Hell Knight room was nice. The room itself was a surprise: very different in appearance to the rest of the level. Not a fan of the non-damaging lava. Sneaky CG trap once you go through the teleporter (I liked said teleporter - simple but decent looking structure).

I cheesed the final room, because it gifted me with a mega armor and health and a straight run to the exit.

[Capellan]

Community Chest 2 - map02
This is a slick-looking tech base with some nice architecture. I especially liked the way the 'core' of the level started up split into separate areas and then became joined. Liked the 'spinning' light too. Good use of a voodoo doll, that.

Was less a fan of the 'out of nowhere' ammo and power-up drops. That's always struck me as a kind of goofy gimmick. And sure, the core conceits of Doom are pretty goofy to begin with, but that's not a good reason to make them even goofier :)

The beginning of the map, with its back and forth between switches, was probably my least favorite part of the level. Things got better once I was through the red door, though. I already mentioned the 'opening up' of the core, and I also want to mention the post-yellow door sequence. Had a good 'Knee Deep' vibe to it.

Action was solid and consistent. I never really struggled, but I was also never bored. Given we're still in map02, I thought it was about right.

[drifter20k]

I think you will enjoy CC2. I had fun with it except for 3 maps, 2 of which were complete bullshit. It is better than CC1.

[Linguica]

Can't wait for you to get to Map28 so I can spill all its dark secrets

[Capellan]

I've gone back and put the name of the wad in the last couple of reviews so that it's obvious which ones are CC2. Figured that would help remove confusion between this and RoS :)

Community Chest 2 - map03
Another tech base. I liked this, and was in fact a little disappointed when it ended as soon as you got the blue key (or near enough, anyway - a few teleporting spectres and one demon in the exit room do not much opposition make). I'd have liked another section just as big behind the blue door. Pretty much always a good sign for a level when you wish it was longer :)

Architecture and texturing is good. I'm a sucker for the STAR texes, and it is always nice to see them used well.

Gameplay-wise, there's a heavy reliance on teleport traps here. The author makes them all pretty obvious, though, so if you blunder into them unexpectedly, you're probably not paying enough attention :)

My favorite sequence was the caco and skull swarm after grabbing the red key. That's a fun fight given the many windows in the area and the fact that you've just been given the SSG.

[Capellan]

Community Chest 2 - map04
This is the first map to break away from the tech base motif; starting with marble we move onto wood, then rock and brick. It makes the occasional bits of tech base that do creep in look a little odd, to be honest.

I liked the opening area of this, with the almost-mirrored marble halls. The wooden section was a bit samey from a visual perspective but things picked up on the gameplay front with the big courtyard . I wasn't a huge fan of how this looked, either - the wood and brick corridor fronting onto the gray and rock expanse was an odd combination - but this was tactically quite fun. I'd have liked the floor-level courtyard baddies to be a bit more threatening through the windows than they actually were, but they created a sense of multiple angles of menace. Dealing with the turreted rev and mancs was fun too.

On the other hand, I thought things lost their a little after the teleporter beyond the yellow door. A snippet of myhouse.wad plus two retreads of the 'courtyard surrounded by corridors' motif didn't really do it for me.

I would have liked the level better if it ended after the yellow door: the last act didn't really bring anything new to the table. Still, this was a solid outing overall.

[dew]

You've triggered the first Gene Bird map. If I have my facts right, cchest2 didn't have enough maps to fill an entire megawad, so it was padded with a bunch of "free for the taking" maps by Gene Bird. They feel very early-90's in style and substance, they're not very enjoyable and they clash with everything else in the mapset, imo. I'd say it was a poor decision to include them.

[Demon of the Well]

I'm sure you've probably mentioned it before, Capellan, but I can't remember which port you habitually use. It's worthwhile to note that map 24 of CChest2 (probably the most renowned map in the WAD, incidentally) has a ZDoomism in it that renders it uncompletable in other ports, so when you get there you'll have to switch over (or just be willing to IDCLIP through an unopenable door, I suppose).

It's always interesting to see how people feel about the CChest WADs. I actually think that 2 is actually the weakest of the four (I seem to like Sphagne's maps from 1 a lot more than most folks do), but there's still a lot of stuff worth seeing, particularly in the second half of the WAD.

[Capellan]

dew said:

You've triggered the first Gene Bird map. If I have my facts right, cchest2 didn't have enough maps to fill an entire megawad, so it was padded with a bunch of "free for the taking" maps by Gene Bird. They feel very early-90's in style and substance, they're not very enjoyable and they clash with everything else in the mapset, imo. I'd say it was a poor decision to include them.

I wouldn't be as harsh as to call this map "early 90s in style and substance". It looks decent, stuff's properly aligned, and the action is decent though not terribly original. But then, I've been playing Serenity for the Megawad Club so I've just had a refresher course in what the early 90s were really like :)

Demon of the Well said:

I'm sure you've probably mentioned it before, Capellan, but I can't remember which port you habitually use. It's worthwhile to note that map 24 of CChest2 (probably the most renowned map in the WAD, incidentally) has a ZDoomism in it that renders it uncompletable in other ports, so when you get there you'll have to switch over (or just be willing to IDCLIP through an unopenable door, I suppose).

It's always interesting to see how people feel about the CChest WADs. I actually think that 2 is actually the weakest of the four (I seem to like Sphagne's maps from 1 a lot more than most folks do), but there's still a lot of stuff worth seeing, particularly in the second half of the WAD.

I use prboom-plus. Just checked "bugs" section on the wiki page for the level and apparently there is something I can set to get past the point in question. All I'll have to do is work out how to set it :)

I liked Sphagne's maps in the first CC as well :)

Edit: found and set the "use passes through special lines" option in prboom-plus. Hopefully that fixes this issue and doesn't break any other maps :)

[Capellan]

Community Chest 2 - map05
This is a nicely put together level featuring a subterranean tech base in the middle of a cave system.

I liked the use of sergeants here: big floods of the guys coming from a fairly wide arc but with some cover for you to use to your advantage. They usually had troopers and imps to act as shields, too. You don't often see smaller tier monsters used so effectively as pressure. I did it once, in the level now known as 'Chaos Zone', but not on this scale.

Some of the cave sections were rather dark - so dark in fact that I think the spectre that tried to jump me there was easier to see than he would have been if they'd been a bit less gloomy!

The tech base is nicely done. Pretty tightly packed at times, meaning you have to engage barons and revenants at point blank range. Can be pretty hairy, but it also really gives the SSG a chance to shine, and I will never complain about that.

I got stuck for a while because I couldn't find the blue key. Eventually I noticed I'd already picked it up. Oops :D

This had the closest thing to a decent spiderboss battle you're likely to get. I used up all my rockets, but managed to kill it off. Realised I'd missed a switch after that and had to go back to flick it and open the exit, which actually worked out well, since it meant I picked up the soulsphere then and exited with 200% health.

Good level. I definitely think CC2 is off to a stronger start than its predecessor, and I very much doubt my opinion will change with map06 :)

[drifter20k]

Nice
I had to replay level 5 as I was playing UV and when I got to the exit there was a Cyberdemon and I did not have enough shells for the close quarters battle as I use SSG most of the time to battle him. So I reserved 60 shells for the exit battle. The beginning can be hard with all those hitscanners and I couldn't even see the spectres in the tunnels so I am punching blindly and feeling my way around with chaingun.

The subterranean techbase was fun to clear out but it did get hairy at times. The SSG was weapon used for the up close thick meat and I used chaingun bullets as much as I could for everything else.

[Capellan]

Community Chest 2 - map06
Let's start with the things that I liked about this level.

It looks good. It's a lot busier texture-wise than I tend to be in my maps - which may have contributed to my 0% secrets - but it all works well. The layout and architecture and varied and interesting to just look at (well, except for the area after the red door), and I really liked the way you often looked into future areas or back into old areas (where monsters were often reappearing).

I also liked the use of items; we often overlook the 1% powerups, but this map is festooned with them, which I thought gave it an interesting character.

The action too is often very solid. There are several good set piece battles and the map sometimes has a couple of tardy monsters who turn up late and give you a nasty shock. Don't know if that was deliberately engineered or a happy accident, but it kept me on my toes.

So are there things I didn't like? Well yeah, it's me. First off, the two mancubus fights were both worthless ammo sinks without any risk or entertainment value. I know their size and slow movement can make them hard to use, but this map did a worse job than average.

Also, while I mentioned that the set pieces were good - and they are - the map is a bit too heavy on them for my taste, with a lack of organic firefights that just emerge in between the big fights. This felt strongly like a series of discrete encounters, with me just running around suctioning up ammo and power-ups in between them. At least the set pieces varied in intensity, so that it wasn't limited to the two speeds of "stopped" and "full out". I did roll my eyes at all the pop-up monsters appearing out of solid ground, though. I heartily dislike that gimmick.

Finally, I wasn't a fan of the post-red door area, either in looks or in play. After the second monster I thought "I wonder if there is any reason to hang around and fight these guys?" and legged it past them all. Turns out the answer is "no", as I merrily sprinted past them all and into the exit. I'm all for having optional areas in maps, but they probably shouldn't be on the main path :)

Despite my complaints, I did enjoy the level. Like I said, it looked good, and although it was set piece heavy they were mostly good set pieces.

[drifter20k]

I liked the outside firefights toward the end with the section of walls opening up and monsters pouring out. I wiped them all out, I felt the need to kill them all and grabbed the Megasphere before exiting.

[drifter20k]

I just played this level (Map06 The View) again after work today pistol start UV. It was fun, 100% kills and only missed 2 secrets. The monsters popping out of the floor is annoying, I had forgotten about that.

The next level is a big techbase map I remember having fun playing and it has a nice twist to it in homage to Dead Simple.

[Capellan]

No spoilers please :)

[Capellan]

Community Chest 2 - map07
I'll give this map points for mixing up the standard Dead Simple formula by having the mancubi and arachnotrons as a simultaneous threat (and threat to each other) rather than the usual "kill the mancs to release the 'trons" that so many map07s use (for an idea of how endemic that approach is: in 100lines I just flipped the order to 'trons first, and people praised the originality of that simple inversion).

I'm not really a fan of the yellow light used in that area of the map, though, as I found it strained my eyes. Though perhaps that was the intention.

I liked most of the tech base section of the map, except that the 'flick switch, get revenants' thing got a bit overdone, and the various key switches were hard to spot on the automap. Other than that I thought it looked good, and I liked that you at least got the choice of which way to go through the main section of the level.

The baron in the exit area seemed kind of pointless busy work - not exactly challenge to deal with!

[Capellan]

Realm of Shades - map06
It's interesting to look at this map in DB2 and see just how much of it I never found. My secrets percentage was 33 IIRC, though on the whole I think I got the most important one - the yellow key that allowed me to exit the level with 200/200. At least, on my second attempt at the area behind the yellow door. My first left me very dead :)

I liked the sprawling, exploration-based feel of this level, and several of the areas featured memorable fights - the opening is strong for instance, and the area with the yellow and blue doors is another highlight. There is one area in that room where it is possible to get irretrievably stuck, though, which is unfortunate.

I also liked the yellow key room, which made a few HKs into a fun dance.

All that said though, this level somehow felt like less than the sum of its parts, to me. I had fun, but it never quite 'gelled' as a cohesive structure. Perhaps that was due to some immersion-breaking layout issues, such as where you look out of a window to see nothing but sky, but the level then doubles back on itself in such a way that you clearly should have been looking at a wall. Perhaps it was due to the wildly disparate texture-usage. Perhaps it was due to the level feeling more like a video game level than a real place.

A lot to like here, but that little something that makes a level 'great' was missing, I felt.

[Capellan]

Realm of Shades - map07
It's Xmas morning here, and I decided to finally finish off RoS as a way of celebrating.

The last map of the pack is quite a different experience from the others. It's much more a series of arena-type battles, reflecting the Doom2 intermission text from map06-07 quite well.

Ammo, health and armour are strewn liberally about the place, allowing you to take on the waves of enemies in fairly direct combat. There's little need to corner camp or anything like that. Which is not to say that the wad offers no tactical challenges. I liked the combination of PEs and cybers, for instance: makes relying on the usual rocket duel a bit more perilous than normal.

I also appreciated the relatively subtle use of the special map07 tags, as well as the fact that the level was far from over once they'd both been triggered.

I did get stuck with the 667 tag for a while though - spent some time wandering around before locating the 'trons I needed to kill.

The final staircase is a bit pointless, as you can just mow down everything with the cells provided, but other than that this is a fine conclusion to the wad. I expect it would make for a very entertaining LMP if undertaken by a skilled player.


Edit: yep, Belial has a pretty sweet set of LMPs for the whole wad. http://doomedsda.us/lmps/collections/rosmaxes.zip