The DWmegawad Club plays: Vile Flesh

[Cynical]

Map 12:
Hey, that was pretty cool! Not difficult in any way (I beat it on my first try and left with over 160 health/armor- I did find the Megasphere secret), but there's enough action to keep you busy thanks to the very open layout with a lot of firing angles. I don't know about the wisdom of the items available in the RL secret; this one, for me at least, wasn't really available until I had found the Megasphere, so the Green Armor was meaningless, and I wanted nothing to do with that Blur sphere. The Plasma secret, I thought was particularly clever; it's clearly hinted at, but you've got to be paying attention to get it. I personally didn't find any of the switch-hunting onerous. It takes you around the level nicely IMO, and it's usually pretty logical what's happening when you hit any switch; even the red bars were pretty easy for me to figure out, since the red switch is in view of one of the upper platforms.

Interestingly, quite a bit of the construction here reminds me of "The Cage" from Sunder, although the action obviously has nothing in common.

Very cool map. Easily the best in the wad so far.

Map 13:
Veinen: There is a rocket launcher here. It's hidden, but not marked as secret:

Spoiler

In the room with the Cacodemon ambush, there's a WR linedef that opens up a switch on the pillar nearest to the entrance to the room; hit that switch, and you magically get a rocket launcher

Strange. I don't know entirely how to react to this level, or even if I liked it or not.

We'll start with the good:
I love the use of lighting to affect the fights in this one. I'm a huge sucker for moments when "aesthetic" elements affect the action, and this one succeeds at that, despite its general ugliness (that sure is a lot of right angles for a natural setting!). This lead to the Light Amp being used to successfully bait a trap. That might be the first and last time that sentence has ever been written.

The bad:
How many Nobles does Gwen want me to kill with a shotgun?!?! Seriously, why does he keep doing this?!?!?! Holy crap, it's almost as though I'm playing an endless Zone 300 exit corridor.

The false nonlinearity in this level is massively stupid.

What on earth is with those silver lifts near the red key? What's the point, other than slowing the level down for no reason?

The way that Rocket Launcher is hidden is the goofiest, most nonsensical thing I've ever seen in Doom. It doesn't even register as a secret! I'll give it this much, though: after looking at it in Doom Builder to see exactly how he did the effect without usage of Boom tricks, I'm amazed at how far he went to keep coop compatibility.

[vdgg]

Demon of the Well said:
Excepting its relative lack of lighting effects (a mostly reasonable omission, given the outdoor setting), this map is a good example of the overall aesthetic sensibility of Vile Flesh. On any given map it uses a small number of stock textures to create a very pronounced theme, and marries this with Williams' propensity for using expansive spaces (in both a vertical and horizontal sense) to create a succession of strikingly different realms to explore. This variety in setting, I think, comes to be one of the main draws of the WAD as one gets further into it.

Nicely said.

MAP13. One of the most memorable maps. I like it a lot. Some good primary texture choices are present (finally), there is a good sense of an adventure, etc. but let me nitpick a bit. SSG and RL are in secrets (and RL secret is bullshit, this is something I would never find legally). Some railings block rockets for no reason (I would appreciate if someone explained why they are constructed this way). Exit area = bad.

Edit: @Cynical.The trick with the RL is not "magic", I mean, nothing new, in TNT MAP18 there's the same trick.

[Cynical]

vdgg said:

Edit: @Cynical.The trick with the RL is not "magic", I mean, nothing new, in TNT MAP18 there's the same trick.

Yeah, after looking at it in the editor I understand it, but when I first saw it, my reaction was "how did he move a Voodoo Doll onto a pickup without a conveyor?"

Also, after looking in the editor to find the SSG, IMO that secret is much more bullshit than the RL. Sure, there's a texture change for the pushwall, but it's also a texture that he uses all the time in places where there isn't a secret. Argh.

EDIT: Oh, I see what you're saying about the "magic" rocket launcher. When I said "magic", I meant from my "player perspective" that expect things to work, if not "how they'd work in the real world", at least "in a manner that at least is occasionally congruent with the real world", rather than "from my mapper's perspective that's reverse engineering everything".

[vdgg]

MAP14. I believe this map can be a chore without prior map knowledge, but it really shines when you know it (and I know it well). The most stupid secrets, heh? So match this SSG secret, guys who din't play it before.
Very original map, I rate it just slightly lower than the previous one.

[Veinen]

Cynical said:
Map 13:
Veinen: There is a rocket launcher here. It's hidden, but not marked as secret

Huh, now that's interesting. And ridiculous, there's literally no way I would've figured out something like that without help. It's a cool trick but how about something less obscure mr. Williams?

Map14: The Pits

This was... unique. I thought the concept was pretty cool and well executed, although I can imagine some people not enjoying it very much. I did not find the SSG secret and looking at DB it's uhh, well hidden to say the least. I did find the RL stash though so I didn't have to slog through the entire map with just the shotgun. Finished it with my first go and with the exception of a few traps, I didn't find this particularly difficult. The Archie that teleports in at one point was kinda tricky since I only had the rocket launcher as a truly viable weapon to kill it with, but even with the relatively close quarters I somehow managed to handle the situation without taking a scratch. The potential for getting hurt is absolutely there though. The second "tricky" trap was the one where a corridor suddenly opens up on both sides and a random assortment of enemies come at you immediately. I had my fists equipped which made it even worse haha.

Really a pretty memorable map and I definitely liked it personally.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 13 -- Subterrainia - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
This map feels very 'TNT' to me. A lot of it is the music track, I think, but the big, spacious chambers of dirt and metal (complete with odd little bits of marble here and there) certainly don't hurt the impression, either. The huge room with the undulating silver platforms (which I imagine are supposed to represent pistons in some gigantic, unknowable earthworks machine) and the initially covered L-shaped lava pit absolutely screams 'Evilution' at me; something about this sort of representationalism that's so vague it's practically abstract seems like it would fit right into that half of Final DooM. The orthogonality mentioned by others doesn't bother me so much in this case (since there's the sense that the areas you traverse are mostly the product of intelligent agency rather than natural caverns or whatnot), but it's true that some of the areas look pretty bare, especially the periphery of the grand hall where the RL secret is located. More lighting effects or a lower light level in general probably would've been a sufficient remedy for this, but perhaps Williams was making a point of saving the lighting contrasts for the next map.

About the hidden rocket launcher, while it does seem somehow a bit awry that it's set up in such a way that it's not technically a 'secret', I'm a little surprised that so many had such trouble locating it--there's a clear (repeatable) auditory clue to its location, although I suppose that clue could easily get lost in the BGM if you happen to arrive in the hall at certain parts of the track. I feel that the computer map secret is a lot trickier (although in its case there's a small automap clue); this was, again, the first playthrough where I was able to find that one.

On the subject of hidden weapons, whether you find them or don't doesn't really have a game-deciding impact on your success in this one, as ammo is pretty plentiful (especially shells) in most portions of the map...maybe there's more of an issue if you go left first? I've never done that, always led to the right by the little piles of shells. By the same token, most of the combat is pretty straightforward, with no real killer traps or the like to speak of, and little that you really need advanced weapons for (although they're nice to have purely for efficiency's sake, of course); I think the most dangerous thing that happened to me this time around was injuring myself with the rocket launcher on account of the solid railings all around the lava pits--incidentally, good monster usage in that room, even the Barons to a degree, though they'd of course have been more effective if the whole room were smaller. I'd disagree with vdgg about the exit room/battle, I think it's okay. Very straightforward/not at all challenging, sure, but Vile Flesh is a WAD that mainly uses small numbers of monsters in any given encounter, and I think the pace of the overall experience benefits from occasional spates of mindless bloodshed, like this or that one keycard fight in map 05.

Solid map, good for sightseeing if nothing else. Good intro for the next one (which is really cool), too.

[Cynical]

Map 14:

I'll admit, I didn't beat this one, and I'm not about to spend any more time trying to play it. Holy shit, this map is a disaster on every single level.

The visual look is striking... for about 5 minutes. And then you realize that there's never going to be any variation, aside from the worst RedRock-And-Right-Angles sequence of rooms I've ever seen. The best part is how the look is used to create invisible walls that act as impassible linedefs tossed into the middle of rooms with no midtextures- HAHA, sure got you there!

Actually, no, the best part is how it's used to make invisible hitscanners. I mean literally invisible, at least on my monitor. Remember those stupid "Chaingunners in the dark" waaaay back in map 4? Well, now you've got a whole map of them! Isn't that great? No, it isn't.

And when you're not getting shot by invisible Chaingunners, you're shotgunning HKs, again. Or you're shotgunning Lost Souls in elevator shafts too narrow to dodge, where you can't move off of the elevator because your path is blocked, so you ride up-and-down-and-up-and-down, holding down the trigger. Either way, the action is about as much fun as your bi-annual prostate exam, and without any of the benefits.

This might be the biggest trainwreck of a level I've ever seen outside of the likes of Mock 2 or DO-TIMS. I guess the MIDI is at least pretty cool- too bad it wasn't used in a good level.

[vdgg]

I should have been more specific about the exit area on MAP13.
One thing (obvious only for me, I admit) is that I'm used to UV Max-running without any hint regarding kills % (PRBoom+ with HUD as normal "vanilla") and the moster teleporter is slow and inefficient. I ended up with 99% kills a few times because of that.

Another thing is for casual playing. If you ignore the chaingunner on top of the teleporter and go to the exit so he doesn't see you, you can wait for the wall to lower and no monsters will teleport because the chaingunner will be be blocking their teleport destination.

[Rook]

MAP13: Subterrainia (UV, NecroDoom)

I must admit the level title of MAP13 worried me, but it's actually not too bad. I think this map (like the last) provides an example of why relying really heavily on switches instead of keys probably isn't a great idea. On the most obvious level, keys are just something a player needs to get hold of in order to progress – but there's another advantage to them, which is to do with navigation. If I see a door marked as requiring a red key, I know that I should return there when I've found said key. In a map like this one, there are very few cues about where you are and where you should be going because switches often don't provide that. Similarly to MAP11, this one allows you to battle from the spawn point through a whole bunch of enemies in order to get to a door you can't open – you then have to return to the spawn point and go a totally different route to find the key.

To me, this approach is just inelegant and confusing, but seems to happen a lot in Vile Flesh.

MAP14: The Pits

Good grief, was there ever a map so aptly named?

[plums]

Rook said:

MAP14: The Pits

Good grief, was there ever a map so aptly named?

Hahaha, brilliant summary.

[Veinen]

Map15: Village

This has to be the worst offender yet regarding secret weapons. SSG is given at the start and that's about it, but if you're observant enough you can aquire the entire goddamn arsenal. It's hilarious really, I found the the hidden weapons on my first playthrough so the map was an absolute breeze with a capital B. With just the SSG though... I can only imagine. The fourth secret I found was the huge ammo/backpack/megaarmor sidewing which further helped my cause. Other complaints include needless backtracking to the switch pillar and random hidden Blue Key. Also I was a little disappointed that the finale didn't have a Cyber but merely a handful of Arachs. I thought the alleyway seemed like a good spot for a Cyber ambush and there was a lot of spare ammo too.

There were a few decent fights included too though, so it wasn't all crap. The Archie ambush in a tiny room was pretty surprising and the area around the BK well had some cool battles. Overall the combat is really just more of the same that we've seen in the previous few maps.

[Rook]

MAP15: Village

For a while, I was actually having fun (!) with this map – some of the buildings look vaguely cool, I had a good laugh at the Doom furniture, and there were a reasonable amount of enemies to shoot using a reasonable amount of ammo. The marble section felt very out of place but actually worked very well, feeling quite slick when the stairs raise up after you've secured the yellow key.

Then, the attempt at what should be a fairly straightforward series of key/switch-activated barriers becomes a real problem due to the rather illogical nature of the design. It took me a while to realise that one of the switches in the central hub didn't require a key, and then I was able to exploit the Z-axis trick to hit said switch without having raised the bridge you're meant to use (I later did that accidentally while stumbling around looking for the next damn thing). The end of the map is a very ugly “ambush” of arachnatrons rising out of the floor for no apparent reason.

Beside all that, the nicest thing I can say about MAP15 is that it isn't MAP14.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 14 -- The Pits - 106% Kills / 100% Secrets
This is one of the most interesting levels in Vile Flesh, very aesthetically striking from the word go. Were it not for the small bits near the middle (crackle-rock/railings section) and at the end, it would be one long strange journey through an interplay of shadow and light; I actually agree with Cynical about the inappropriateness of the crackle section, simply because it breaks the mood for no really apparent reason. Of course, from a gameplay standpoint this is both a highly linear and a fairly easy affair (even without secrets, to whit), and so if the map theme doesn't capture your imagination the various idiosyncrasies in design here are as liable to irritate as anything.

Myself, I was quite fascinated with The Pits from the time I first played it, and so even at this late date, after having not played Vile Flesh in years, I still remember it intimately, even those secrets. Yes, the SSG/soulsphere secret chain really is complete bullshit, and the only excuse I make for it is that none of the stuff that's in it is remotely necessary for a competent player to comfortably finish the map, given the free berserk pack early on. For the record, I myself only found it through blind, desperate wall-humping back when I first played the map (I was intrigued enough by it to want to know how all the secrets worked, as said). Assuming you have decent spatial/situational awareness, most of the combats can be navigated quite safely, although some of them require a bit of caution on first sight. I think that's one of the things I like about this map....most of the time, Vile Flesh can be handled with straightforward reflexive combat skills as long as you're doing well enough that you're not being seriously damaged at every turn, but a lot of the setups here sort of test your wits more than your fire/movement skills--the red skull room, the mancubus platforms, the arachnatron corridor, etc. The lone arch-vile that's on the mandatory path probably represents the most directly dangerous encounter, particularly if he surprises you (which he is pretty good at doing) but even if you're only packing a pump-action shotgun by the time you meet him, the various light fixtures offer enough cover to eliminate him safely. Can't say I can really relate to the concerns about 'invisible hitscanners', since nearly all enemies in the map are encountered in or around areas of light that will either bathe them directly or silhouette them as targets downrange, although I suppose my familiarity with the map might be seeing me eliminate them before they've been active more than a few seconds.

I think it's a compelling little adventure, although I can see where some of the unusual particularities that its aesthetic enforces on the gameplay could be quite uncomfortable for some. I suspect that vdgg is probably right when he says that most players will probably enjoy it more with foreknowledge than on a blind run.

[Cynical]

Map 15:
I was somewhat excited for this one, given the name; I'm always a sucker for the "Urban Sandbox" style, and the name indicated that was what I'd get.

That wasn't what I got, but what I actually got wasn't too bad itself.

Despite being really "switchy", the progression here was pretty simple to figure out; everything was pretty logical. I found the BFG and Rocket Launcher secrets, but it seemed like the map would be perfectly doable without either one, given that I wound up collecting shellboxes at almost 50 shells quite a few times later in the map (never found a backpack), and I only used the BFG a few times to save ammo against Barons. The action here was ok; the monsters were mostly simple projectile tossers, but the map's relative openness allows them to strike from multiple angles, which keeps this from getting bogged down and sloggy.

In the crate maze... is this a mandatory S50? The only way I could figure out to do this area was to S50 off of the first lift onto the first set of crates before the lift dropped, then do an S40 from them to the outer platforms on the left edge of the room. If that's the intended method (as opposed to me just missing something obvious), then that's pretty crass IMO.

Pretty fun.

[vdgg]

MAP15. Above average level. Starting with an SSG, wow. Clever layout, though the wooden theme is maddening in the long run... Pcorf convention introduced (?) - coloured stripes near switches don't mean you need a key, but they will lead you to a key. A dick move which ZDoom / Risen3D users probably won't notice (depends on their compatibility settings). Anyway, there is a moment when two barons attack you at close range and a solid hanging corpse high above is blocking your movement. I didn't bother with mega-complicated secret exit, I'll try it now with DoomBuilder :-P

Oh yes, the first crate jump is not intuitive, but normal strafejump is enough. When the lift is being raised and almost on top, jump towards the corner of the crate.

[cannonball]

Right then, I've failed again haven't I :P
So I am pulling out the megawad club thread until new year. Simple story is I have been offered a job which involves relocating which I start in early December, as of which I will be too busy this month and behind in December so I see little point in trying to catch up. So enjoy the rest of Vile flesh everyone :)

[Suitepee]

http://youtu.be/7iBUdiIj0Wo = promo video for part 2.

This coming Sunday, I shall resume my quest to butcher my way through Vile Flesh for the Club at 7pm GMT/BST time on my twitch channel (in my signature below)! Dare you join me for the vilest of commentaries, the fleshiest of gameplay and quite possibly some minor raging at chaingunners and Revenants?!?!

[vdgg]

MAP15 secret exit happened to be easy. It was the megasphere secret the tricky one, as it required a few secrets to be revealed before.

MAP31. This looks like an older version of MAP02, with lower monster count and higher secret count. Any mapper should abandon these filler maps IMO, but then whe have situations like the 1st release of Scythe 2 and stupid comments "why not 32 maps?".

MAP32. Not bad. The start is awesome, arachnotrons killing big mothers (or cyberdemons, but it doesn't happen here) are always fun to watch. After that, we have a 1monster.wad map with 130 arachnotrons out of 189 in the entire WAD (on skill 4). Boring.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 15 -- Village - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Yup, I remember this pretty well, too. This time it's a quaint (though sizable) old village of sandstone, stucco and wood sprawled out on an arid mountain plain. As one might expect, the main civic centers (and thus the hub points in the player's mission) tend to spring up in the immediate vicinity of water sources, and lots of demonic activity now does the same. While the warehouse fittings encountered at one point suggest that this settlement temporarily thrived as a sort of supply point for the UAC research complex we have lately been blasting our way through, the decidedly medieval, death-fixated bent of the village's styling suggest a sensibility that's a mite mordant, to say the least. The UAC were studying the ancient gateways again, and maybe the folks that once lived here knew something we don't. Hmm....

Anyway, this is a pretty well-rounded level. While Subterrainia was (perhaps counterintuitively) characterized mostly by big, spacious chambers and The Pits were, naturally, mostly rather constricted, the Village sees Williams strike a nice, even balance between tighter confines and the big open spaces he so likes to use. Orthogonality continues to reign, but there's a pretty good degree of height variation over the course the map. Combat varies as well, with some direct engagements in the big open spaces contrasting with some close-range closet traps in the indoors, and a spate of ferreting out entrenched enemies in the warehouse section. All very palatable, although I wish it were a little more intense. I reckon that this is probably the easiest map in the second episode, come to think of it.....while armor remains very scarce (at least outside of secrets), and again high-end weaponry is found only in secrets, the overall supply balance, and especially the free SSG at the start, certainly tilt the odds in the player's favor. Indeed, what Rook refers to as an 'adequate' amount of ammo I would personally say is a tad 'excessive', especially in the later stages of the map, and especially if you don't find the backpack secret. Even without any secrets I reckon you should always have plenty of ammo to work with, but without the backpack I reckon you'll spend a lot of downtime running back to previously cleared areas to pick up a box of shells or the like. The secrets themselves are mostly among the easier ones in Vile Flesh (read: so it's pretty likely you'll get at least one big gun, with the BFG oddly being the easiest to find), but satisfying nonetheless; I particularly like the way the RL secret segues into the plasma rifle secret, which in turn reveals the megasphere secret, all in the span of a few moments.

The switch-hub orientation of the map's progression seems pretty intuitive to me, but of course I've played Vile Flesh before. Also, I've played years and years of PWADs, and so at this point whenever I see keystripes around a switch I've developed the habit of testing the switch to see if it needs the key, or if it uses what has lately been called 'PCorf convention', and somehow enables acquisition of said key. Said convention only actually shows up at one point here, and apart from that progression is pretty straightforward. There's no special trick to any of the crate-jumping in the warehouse; you can actually clear all of the necessary gaps with basic non-strafe 'jumps' if you aim well, although to make the first one that way you have to trigger the lift once in order to get on the correct side of its motion sensor. My only complaint in this department isn't really about the progression per se, it's just that I feel like the backtracking involved in returning to the switch-hub presented an opportunity for additional combat either in that area or on the way back, and said opportunity is only realized in a very marginal way.

The secret exit's not too difficult, or at least not very involved (e.g. doesn't require you to find a bunch of sub-secrets all around the map, or anything). I agree with vdgg that map 31 is pretty much textbook filler material, but I do think map 32's worth seeing, and so I'd recommend having a look around in the final parts of the Village just for that.

[Rook]

MAP16: Cathedral (UV, NecroDoom)

I can see what Williams is doing here – and there's nothing wrong with making big, epic castle/fortress style maps and using them to show off a couple of mapping tricks. The problems come in when this castle (it doesn't look much like a cathedral to me) is – for all its scale – largely empty. 200+ monsters feel like a very measly sprinkling against a backdrop of this size, especially when so many “encounters” consist of two imps in a corridor or a single demon defending a connecting room... and this is MAP16, on UV. The environment itself is just inexcusably plain, especially the almost utterly empty exterior areas.

The mapping tricks work on a technical level, but being treated to a death exit at this apparently random juncture after such a struggle to build up a half-decent arsenal feels very cruel and the teleport trick only serves to set up not one, not two, but a full three boring cyberdemon appearances. The layout could be worse, but again there is an over-abundance of both switches and backtracking to slog through. In addition, the overuse of hell knights and barons maybe even steps up a level here, with seemingly every other door featuring another one of the miserable bags of hitpoints lurking on the other side, neglected and alone.

I really feel that Vile Flesh in general and possibly this map in particular show why it's a bad idea for mappers to pick up a few tricks, get a decent understanding of how maps work technically, and then say “hey, I'm ready to make a full megawad!” The gameplay balance is consistently poor, the secrets are just too obtuse in my view (and sometimes too necessary), and there's just no sense of flow for me at all. I don't mean any of this as an attack on Williams, nor a denial of how much work a megawad involves – but I do think Vile Flesh should stand as a monument to what happens when such projects focus on scale and tricks and fail on flow, layouts and balance.

With all that being said, I feel that this map for all its faults is still one of the best in the WAD so far. It does have that scale, and there's no maddening darkness or cramped areas, at least.

Incidentally, I didn't bother to look for the secret exit in MAP15 - it doesn't sound as though I missed much.

[vdgg]

MAP16. Eternall Doom style map #2. Pretty ugly level (and yes, plain, I agree). Symmetry everywhere. I cheated a bit as I had no idea what to do after revealing 2 teleporters around a lion switches, I stopped playing, opened the map in DB, checked what I needed to check and resumed playing. 3 cyberdemons look threatening, but I didn't need to deal with them at all. Interesting moment with an AV and 2 chaingunners, the rest is forgettable indeed.

MAP17. After the first teleport, I'm already full of hatred ("why I would want to play this?"). Ultra symmetry, four imps on the left, four imps on the right, switch on the left, switch on the right. The map gets a bit better towards the end with some mancubi, arachnotrons, etc. but overall I find it dull.

[Demon of the Well]

Oh, just noticed cannonball dropped out, now there's no one left on my side but me, heh. Oh, well, I would say that the second half of the WAD is better than the first half, so if you lot keep soldiering onwards perhaps you'll eventually find something that works for you.

Map 31 -- Rough Draft - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
As the title implies, this is just an early/unpolished version of map 02, 'Nuke Processing.' The 'rough draft' nomenclature isn't just a play on words, either, as this really is quite evidently a level in an alpha state, obvious visual/alignment errors and all. Apart from the addition of the early chaingun secret which makes a significant difference (from pistol-start) in how that first ambush is handled, overall mapflow is otherwise largely unchanged; seems like there's a lot more ammo than in the final version, but no more health or armor, and so the easy attrition-based play is still the rule of the day. The other notable thing here is the bizarre inclusion of the light-amp goggles in the outdoor area: not only are they one of the official secrets, they are also absolutely useless. Given that the security armor secret now requires some nukage-wading, it almost seems like the goggles were meant to be a radsuit instead, but Williams made a mistake and just never bothered to fix it because, hey, 'Rough Draft.' Overall it's hard to view this as anything but crass filler, and I would say the final version is certainly superior, although I do think the lower outdoor light level that this one has looks better, and the ambush behind the yellow door also looks better as a standard rising pit than as the instapop setup the final version uses. The super-secret exit is quite easy, and not even counted as an official secret.

Map 32 -- Spider Web - 100% Kills / No secrets
A concept map, the concept being that the only enemies present are of the cyber-arachnid persuasion.....almost a map from 1monster.wad long before 1monster.wad itself was ever conceived of, as vdgg says.

The intermission text describes the setting as a part of the base that is 'rotting', and that's carried off decently well here. At the core of matter is a derelict dark metal techbase undercut by a network of musty sodden tunnels; in the lower reaches of the base rivers and small subterrene lakes of putrid blood well up from the loam itself, suggesting an advance in the degree of sway that the demonic reality is beginning to exert over the earthly one. While there are a lot of tunnels and corridors and the like, there are a number of more open spaces as well (and one network of corridors that eventually collapses into an open space), so I'd say the layout works. Aesthetically the map does the job as well, things are mostly understated but there are a few nice effects, like traveling around under the floor of a large storage room that earlier hosted a massacre, or the blood-river diorama scene visible off of one of the sections, an unusual approach in Vile Flesh.

While the opening scramble is probably the most frantic portion of the action, I disagree with vdgg that the rest is boring. The underground blood-hive section is pretty dry, since it's essentially a straight room-clearing exercise with no twists, but there are a number of pretty effective setpieces that make pretty good use of the arachnatron demon, from a teleportation-flow endurance clusterfuck to clusters of suddenly collapsing-wall traps, so there's a pretty reasonable variety in the encounters for essentially only one kind of monster being used. Overall it is still quite an easy map, largely because it's easily one of if not the most ammo-rich maps in the WAD, with cells and rockets abound. There are no hidden weapons, either, so players that have been struggling as a result of not being able to find solid armament should have no problems here--even the BFG is freely available, though the basic binary non-linearity of the layout means that one might go for about half of the map without its assistance.

Entertaining little romp, I think, and as a bonus I feel it succeeds in that sort of ephemeral, difficult to pin down sense of 'feeling like a secret map.' Certainly a much more legit offering than 31 was, to say the least.

[Suitepee]

http://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee

Time for part 2 of my playthrough of Vile Flesh for the Club! I resume my adventures on map 13, and hope to get to around map 20-22 by the end (including both secret levels). Feel free to come and join in!

[Suitepee]

http://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/c/3258728 = part 2 of my playthrough of Vile Flesh.

Covered maps 13-19 (plus the secret levels) this time around.

The midgame of Vile Flesh doesn't really change my overall impression of the megawad; average. But it did throw some nice levels and technical trickery my way, which kept up my interest in playing it despite the challenge factor still remaining quite low and at a strolling pace.

The Pits was kind of interesting light and dark wise. Spider Web was a fun super secret level, especially since I finally procured the BFG! Cathedral was also kind of nice with the Cyberdemon hunt. A stank of brown textured levels began to creep on from Village (which was good by itself) onwards.
I godsphere'd the ending of Cathedral, only to find out this prevented me from having to do a "death exit" and start from a pistol on the next level. Kind of a nice quirk!

Hoping Vile Flesh spikes things up a bit for its third act.

[plums]

Demon of the Well said:

Oh, just noticed cannonball dropped out, now there's no one left on my side but me, heh. Oh, well, I would say that the second half of the WAD is better than the first half, so if you lot keep soldiering onwards perhaps you'll eventually find something that works for you.

I took a bit of a break but I'm playing it again, and I have been enjoying most of VF despite it's faults & quirks.

[Cynical]

Map 16:
Yep, this is just as bad as everyone has said so far.

Did not finish; I got infinitely-talled by a group of Lost Souls which trapped me for three Manc fireballs. Wasn't willing to play it again.

[Veinen]

Map31: Rough Draft

Filler map barely worth even playing.

Map32: Spider Web

Now this was alright. Essentially an Arach 1 monster map with a few Masterminds sprinkled on top but the Arachs were used in pretty nicely varied situations so it didn't get too tedious. Masterminds were pretty much BFG-fodder after the initial escape from the nest. Plasma and BFG got the most of the action so progress was pretty speedy throughout. Not super hard when you get the hang of it but I still managed to die a few times. One particularly huge mistake was to start running around in the tech maze part pushing all the swithes as soon as possible. Resulted in too many spiders to handle, even with the BFG.

But wait! There's more:

Map16: Cathedral

So bad. The already simplistic visuals are taken to the next level and to further enhance the experience they are coupled with huge, empty hallways and the token switch hunting to drive you insane. Combat is a cake, except for the surprisingly vicious Archie ambush in the tiny elevator, and mostly just SSG:ing this in a hallway and SSG:ing that in another hallway. Three Cybedemons in the end, whoopee. I killed two and ran out of every visible ammo box in the map and then just left. Not before wandering around the map for about ten minutes trying to find some way to reach the exit though! So much fun. I regret spending 30 mins with this map.

[Rook]

MAP17: Guard Towers (UV, NecroDoom)

This map is absolutely defined by the guard towers of the title – they loom over the start of the map, and then almost all the action takes place inside them. In a lot of ways this feels similar to the previous map due to the sense of scale for the sake of it, resulting in a large but empty, under-detailed map. The circular shape of the towers prompts Williams to create some samey, oddly-shaped rooms which doesn't help.

MAP18: Boneyard

In fairness, there are actually some elements of the aesthetic which work for me in this map, which is almost a first. I like the use of skull floor texture, which makes a change and fits in with the map title. There are also one or two mildly challenging traps – this makes quite a contrast with the usual Vile Flesh style, which derives almost all of its challenge from the fact that the weapons are almost always hidden (which again is a particular problem after the death exit at the end of MAP16). The ending falls flat for me because the enemies that spawn aren't in the way of the exit. With ammo often so scarce – at least for the weapons I have – there's no way I'll hang around wasting it when I can just walk out of the level.

[vdgg]

MAP18. I played this two days ago and I don't remember much. I didn't like the textures used throughout, except for bricks.

MAP19. Gwyn Williams: However, map 19 was one of my favorite maps. It has a good 'rhythm' to it, I think. First decent map after a while. Nothing spectacular, starts with symmetric monster placement again, but the looks are nice. The level is very bright. I liked how you fight against hell knights, shoot some switches and then you have to go back by jumping on a ledge - I found this pretty creative. The secrets - 7 of them - are unfindable for me (I watched a Max demo by Daiyu Xiaoxiang after my playthrough and had the "what the hell" face expression whenever a secret was revealed).

[dobu gabu maru]

I've been mainly watching Suitepee's playthrough but today I did run through E2 with -nomonsters and found it... interesting. The maps truly open up in space and the amount of switch hunts become super apparent when that's all you're really doing. That and lifts... so many lifts.