The DWmegawad Club plays: Rylayeh & Crimson Canyon & Azagthoth

[Salt-Man Z]

Crimson Canyon MAP02: The Forum
Fun level, with a couple of nasty hitscanner traps (especially the one right at the start.) I admit to getting lost at the end: I didn't realize the final switch had lowered the southeastern section, and wandered around a bit trying to find where to go next. The teleporter that took you back to the beginning was kind of obnoxious; wish it was 2-way. The constantly-opening-and-closing doors drove me nuts, I kept thinking I was missing a secret somewhere. Finished with 100% everything.

Crimson Canyon MAP03: Acid Base
A longer map this time, with some tough encounters, but (as noted by others) plenty of ammo to see you through. For the final room, I didn't even use my (copious) rockets, as I started them infighting, and then finished them off with the SSG (knowing there were still a number of boxes shells still available to me.) 100% everything except for one demon who got stuck in a teleporter closet.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 03 -- Acid Base - 99% Kills / 100% Secrets
I thought this was a pretty good level, easily the best in the set so far. Psyren channels his inner Romero to cook up a dark, dingy subterranean radioactive waste treatment facility with a moderate degree of nonlinearity, lots of slime-skirting and catwalking action, and a hearty helping of barrels of volatile ooze to use to brutally eradicate the scores of zombies and other undesirables loafing about in every lab room, decon chamber, and service tunnel in the place. While the overall pitch and pace of the combat are quite comparable to that of the first two maps (and indeed, of the earlier parts of Rylayeh), e.g. bloody skirmishing against loads of zombies and other weak monsters punctuated by the occasional setpiece involving some heavier hitter, the orchestration of the action generally feels more refined here. In step with earlier maps, a lot of the zombies are still grouped into discrete platoons that it's easy (and fun) to decimate in an instant with well-aimed SSG shots or rockets, but the nonlinearity/interconnectivity of the layout allows not only for a few different versions of many of the incidental skirmishes (i.e. depending on which direction you enter a room from), but also for some of that lovely 'wandering monster' effect which adds a lot of substance to the combat (and the sense of cinema), most pronounced with the group of zombies that beam in to a distant part of the map around the time the player enters the western sump tank housing the blue keycard. Mixed in with the incidental stuff are some more calculated fights involving stronger enemies, giving the action a well-rounded aspect. These range from quite good, ala the cacodemon attack in the large confluence point, which requires some sure-footedness and deft rocketing to handle efficiently, to rather hamfisted and dull, ala the big, dysfunctional, and strangely ever-growing blob of angry HP behind the yellow security door--it's quickly liquefied if you happen to find the unmarked 'super-secret' BFG, otherwise it's a dull rocket-pounding/infighting affair. Fortunately, even the low points don't really spoil the map, brief as they are.

If you were to take a poll of those present, I imagine you'd get about as many 'yeas' as 'nays' on the matter, but I think the custom textures used here are more becoming of the map than the stock set used in the CC2 version. Essentially, the CC2 map is very brown, whereas this one is a stark, unfeeling black with bits of brown trim and odd red and grey highlights here and there--the impression isn't really Hellish, but the suggestive parallels are certainly interesting. The darker, dirtier color scheme adds to the feeling of dereliction that Psyren seems to aim for as an overarching aesthetic theme of the mapset (yeah, more of the later stuff is starting to come back to my memory now), and I guess I just like the black composite/green nukage contrast. If there's a downside it's that having such a saturate-black texture scheme does tend to undercut the simple mood lighting a bit (it's more noticeable in the CC2 version, perhaps more a function of the way the engine's simulated contrast works with those textures than anything), but seeing a tech(acid)base with an uncommon color scheme's worth the sacrifice, I reckon.

The demon Salt-Man mentions didn't show up for me, either, guess his closet's just plain broken.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 04 -- Colosseum - 99% Kills / 75% Secrets
This one's not much chop, unfortunately....kinda looks like it might've been built upon one of the earliest things Psyren ever made in an editor. While I can't simply make the claim that everything here is flat and simplistically shaped, a number of very bland, underdeveloped areas far beyond any of the sparsely-detailed utilitarian constructs found in earlier mapslots are in evidence, ala the square chambers comprising the early going, the blandly wrought lava/cage walkway room, or the strikingly bare/featureless demon room with the strange tear-shaped mud pits in the floor. There's a lot of lattice-work in the ceilings/skylights that adds some visual flair, but they don't really disguise the bareness of many of the main areas, a while there is a sense of height variation at work in both the aesthetics and the gameplay, it's mostly a flimsy veneer of depth, purely cosmetic, rather than any kind of substantive dynamic--the open, angled yards in the southern region have flights of stairs separating them, there's a strange open-topped path maze made out of hallways and stairways at one point, the large circular arena to the east (presumably the titular 'colosseum') is essentially bowl-shaped, and so on and so forth, but in very few cases do the Z-axis changes make any kind of relevant impact on the way the areas are fought in or traversed.

In the Colosseum itself, for instance, the gradual height change from the center to the periphery is only a simple visual effect, as the room would be tackled in exactly the same way (that is, by running around the outer edge while the Barons and arachnatrons infight) if it were completely flat. Likewise, in the 3D 'maze' (again, it's really too simple to be much of a maze), there is a sense of enemies below you (you enter from the top and descend through it to the exit), and you use stairways to move through different levels of the setup, but for all practical intents and purposes it might as well be on just one plane, since the dividing walls are too tall and the stairways too steep to allow any entity on one level to fire up or down at something on another level--in the first few seconds you might get something firing at you from across the way (since the dividing walls are only waist-high on the upper levels), but monsters tend to path downwards, and so the action rapidly devolves into a one-dimensional corridor-shoot.

That being said, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with most of a map's Z-axis depth being stage-dressing rather than a crucial environmental factor in moment-to-moment gameplay, but for that to work the fights themselves usually need to be fast (as in the zombie massacres Psyren likes to use), frenetic, or involve multiple threats/angles of attack across the plane that's in use at any given time, and we don't really see any of that here. Most of the combat is very straightforward and rather tedious. A lot of the fight designs that players criticized from Rylayeh are in evidence here, simplified in setup and yet turned up in terms of monster/HP volume, e.g. more than one chainsaw vs. pinkies/specters fight in a hallway or threshold, some very kid-gloved arena action, and some really questionable (over)usage of hell nobles as walking doors in otherwise featureless hallways, most egregious in the open-top maze referred to above. I did kind of like the fight with cacodemons and the imps on top of the outer walls in the outdoor yard, but my impression of the area was later soured by the frustratingly slow, prolonged trickle of teleporting lost souls (and eventually one PE) out of a single arbitrary spot in the yard. The map even commits one of my personal pet peeves, that being making me tediously walk along and clean out little monster-cages in the walls on the way towards one of the switches. Shit, even the secrets in this map feel really tacked-on and pointless.

Our own Steve Duff (sadly absent for this playthrough) often likes to frame the issue of monster placement as something of a dichotomy between a Romeroan/McGee-esque style based on usage of a steady stream of lower-tier fodder monsters and what he calls the "meat game", which uses mid/upper tier demons as the bulk of the opposition. To the extent that this binary distinction applies, this map makes it pretty clear that Psyren's not very artful (or at least not reliably so) with the meat game, which he wields with all the finesse of a slab of frozen brisket used to swat a fly. He's much more skilled with his battalions of undead troopers and imps. I generally don't mind his pinky usage either (call me old-fashioned, but I'm still cool with that old chestnut where you pick up a chainsaw or berserk pack and then immediately are presented with a pack of demons to tear through with it), but man.....that connecting passage between the '777' throne room and the Colosseum itself is just dire, really sums up why the action in this map doesn't work.

[scifista42]

MAP04 - "Colosseum"

Good layout. Visual style haven't changed, but I'm okay with that - it's simple and nice. I liked the sparingly used flame textures. Gameplay was kind of undercooked again. Lots of minimum-threatening, while high-HP monsters, specially Lost Souls and Pinkies and some Barons, caused it to be more tedious than it could have. And again, quite too many resources given to the player. Author's style doesn't seem to ever change, indeed. Alright. It wasn't that bad experience, after all, I liked the adventure.

[Veinen]

Map02: The Forum

Kind of meh, if my memory serves me right. Played this a couple of days ago and there's not a whole lot I remember of it so that should tell something. The middle area with the pillars looks nice but otherwise it's a whole lotta brown and a whole lotta corridors. The worst offender must have been that one corner of the map with those little huts and a single enemy inside each one. The crusher secret was slightly bullshit but the the-glass-is-half-full -guy in me is glad it wasn't a slow instakill crusher instead heh. Forgettable map.

Map03: Acid Base

Now this I did like, just as I remember enjoying the CC2 version of the map as well. Not a hard map but very bloody and really satisfied my murderous cravings. A high percentage of the incidental combat is against decent sized groups of quickly killable hitscanners so there's really no feeling of grindyness here. The YK set piece is designed decently and while the pace in the journey to acquire the BK is a little slowish, I found the areas pretty interesting. Found the BFG "secret" so the lame horde of middleweights behind the yellow door was fortunately very quickly taken care of. I think I found all the regular secrets too but it's not surprising considering I've played and maxed the CC2 version a couple of times.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP04 Colosseum

open-size map with a bit more combat from the bigwigs. the arenas weren't hard to get through at all and the level felt alright at best. again, I must complain that the monster teleport closets aren't very well-constructed.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP03: Oh boy was this a bloody one. The hitscanners are especially annoying due to the width of these rooms, and having them constantly warp in as you go throughout the level doesn’t help things either. It’s pretty fun altogether, like the battle for the yellow key, but opening up the yellow door and being greeted with a wall of mancs was just… why? Fine otherwise.

MAP04: Not feeling this one. When you take away a lot of the hitscanners but keep the big open areas, a lot of fights wind up feeling like a grind, especially when you ambush the player with just lost souls. It was serviceable for the most part, but I felt like everything after the yellow key door was absolutely boring, unneeded, and dragged on too long; the map could’ve just went straight to the 1v1 baron fight at the end. At least the exit room was cool.

Also forgot to mention that the best part of playing continuous is you no longer have to chainsaw the goddamn pinkies anymore!

[mouldy]

MAP04 - "Colosseum"

Felt like a fast paced map, I guess the low difficulty and abundance of ammo made sure of that. There were some meaty monsters but always in situations where cover was ample, or in the case of the arena fight I just waltzed around them all while they killed each other. I like the dark textures, and it looks like hell is approaching by the end. Not much to say about the gameplay, I was running and gunning and switching and opening. There was the obligatory chainsaw + pinkie horde that we all know and love, and an annoying repetitive bit with demons in alcoves. It kept me entertained though.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP04: Colosseum
79% kills, 1/4 secrets

Yeah, this definitely feels like an early map, or perhaps a 'rough draft'... there's some interesting (decorative) architecture here and there, but also a lot of rooms that feel like failed experiments, or just bland. I think this map also demonstrates that the author's monster placement is, generally, not good - the swarms and teleport ambushes work better with hitscanner chaff, but with enemies like lost souls or barons it just feels like a grind. The titular colosseum room itself is pretty ignorable as the monsters slowly trickle in (and often infight). This map has too many barons, especially.

Also, I'm not sure at what point the teleporter near the start opens up (I returned to it after realizing I must've missed an easy RL) but I found out that the yellow door isn't tagged correctly and doesn't actually require the yellow key, so you can at least skip the yellow key room itself.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP05 Crimson Canyon

ah the titular canyon. lush with red all over. for a large map without any keys, it's pretty difficult when it comes to managing ammo, plus the hellknights, imps, and cacos could teleport anywhere and everywhere. unfortunately, it lacks any kind of real challenge with the open space and it's easy to get lost in it too. also, a lot of the secrets are close to each other (three right at the start in fact, plus a few more in some area to the right).

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP05: Ah, the titular map. I really like the new red textures here—very sanguine—but my god is this map boooooring. I think it could be exponentially improved if there were like 5x the amount of rockets and it was clear where you were supposed to go. Every time I’d hit a switch and hear a warp in I’d shudder, knowing I had to spend precious minutes looking for which bars lowered while SSGing dense HK clusters. I wound up getting so unbelievably lost that I actually found all of the secrets which is super rare for me. At first I thought this looked like the most interesting map of the set, but it wound up being one of the most drudging I played all year.

[scifista42]

MAP05 - "Crimson Canyon"

Wow, what a change in visuals! I just wanted to look at the map's start before going to sleep, but I was so *excited* that I've played through the whole map.

I liked exploring it. Quite a big, surreal place. Gameplay was nothing specially impressive, but sufficed to keep the map entertaining for me. I mean, I wouldn't want to always play maps like this, but I've found this one good. Really, I did. It's still the authors style, but this time my movement was suddenly much more free - and I appreciate this a lot.

I was only able to find 3 secrets out of the map's 11, I wonder what all I've missed.

[mouldy]

MAP05 - "Crimson Canyon"

Hmm.. Well this map had its moments, but I spent an awful lot of time wondering around tryng to find whatever new place had opened up half way across the map after every switch. And it didn't help that the whole place looked so uniformly similar and indistinct, I'd often wander into completely new places without even realising it. There were a few good battles further in, generally involving cacos. Not a great space to have a trio of pain elementals appear though. I can't be totally sure, but it did seem like I was being made to traipse back and forth across the whole map on the switch hunt. I guess its not a very big map, but its not the most thrilling of journeys.

[scifista42]

MAP06 - "Cylinder of Sin"

As I've expected, texture scheme from the previous level persisted, and probably became a new standard for the rest of maps. Not that I have anything against it.

This map's got more indoor areas, but a few "canyons" has appeared as well. Gameplay was utterly SSG heavy, and got same-y. The environment was same-y too, but not exactly - there were enough differences in architecture that kept the exploration bearable for me. I've been running out of ammo this time, though. I haven't ever found the rocket launcher or higher weapon, which made me handicapped quite a bit. I've died a couple times, but well.

Not a bad adventure, overally. I only had to accustomize to the slow-paced same-y style, which didn't really give me trouble, as I've already experienced it with Rylayeh + the previous maps.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP06 Cylinder of Sin

alright, alright, more of the same. it seems imps and hellknights are taking over as dominant monsters. the big open area had plenty of cacos too. there's one nasty secret trap involving demons. the circular staircase area had to be my favorite here.

one bug and one weird thing though:

some of the monsters didn't teleport. most were lost souls I believe. and I found a place where it's possible to get stuck on the map from monster behavior. that big open canyon area with the cacos, if monsters from the door to the right hear you and open the door (they can open the door), then it will close again. I somehow managed to hit the switch that opens the door permanently (it's an S1 Door Open Stay) but I hit it while the door was apparently open due to monsters opening it trying to attack me. that meant the door closed, and I could not go back up to hit the switch again. luckily in my run, a stray imp opened the door from the other side so I could get through.

on the other hand, if I did get completely stuck there, I could go to the secret where the barons were, and jump to the higher ledge leading to the circular middle area, this meant skipping a lot of stuff.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP06: I remember when I complained about the southern portion of Rylayeh’s MAP09 being too sloggy for its own good. I stand corrected, as former humans are much, much better to plow through than HKs and cacos. This map continues Graham’s cruel trend of starving the player of rockets in favor of forcing them to use the SSG more, and not one instance of it is better for doing so. The map can be kinda fun if you’re just trying to skip as many enemies as you can, but otherwise it feels more like a chore than a fun activity. Please come back hitscanners, I miss you so :(

[Steve D]

dobu gabu maru said:

Please come back hitscanners, I miss you so :(

Damn, I never thought I'd hear a slaughtermapper say that. ;D

[Salt-Man Z]

Crimson Canyon MAP04: Colosseum
I found the first half to be interesting: open-ish arenas crowded with columns. Duck into a side room, hit the switch, come back out to a new wave of baddies. Predictable, but kind of fun, though the encounters often felt like they lacked that little extra "oomph" to make them memorable. The second half of the map was pretty blah, though. The titular arena had too many baddies that were too easy to avoid (just run to the right, hit the switches in order, and leave) and only were an issue when I tried to go back to search for secrets, at which point all those barons plugged up the doorway. I wasted a lot of rockets cleaning that room out. I found 3 of the 4 secrets, and they were all lame, including a whopping 2 cells, when there were a whole mess of them just sitting out in the open. There was a monster that got stuck in a closet, too. So, kinda disappointing in the end, but the architecture was pretty cool.

[scifista42]

MAP07 - "Shrine of Quorthon"

More of the same (mostly), but anyway, the author has managed to smuggle a few new ideas in there. His design style hasn't changed, that's for sure. Imps and HKs are still predominating cannon-fodder enemies, and the odd angles for corridors/rooms/towers/ledges are still there. While the visuals stay simple, some of the areas looked rather impressive (in their simplicity), probably due to many curves and the odd angles.

I liked how this map used spectres, they were truly invisible in that environment, which made them actually threatening. On the other hand, most of the map's demons were just tedious to kill. The one bridge over the lava was a good place to camp and just stay there, luring pinkies to run right into my chainsaw. I also liked the "omnidirectional" HK pit trap, I'm sure you know what I mean.

I've found the first rocket launcher in the lava, its placement actually seemed intuitive to me. But other than that, I've found no secrets! Well, I no longer take pride at being able to find them, not at all.

Dragging, sometimes unnecessarily too much, but still not too bad experience - at least the maps are coherently slow-paced.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP07 Shrine of Quarthon

sorry dobu, you're still dealing with mostly hellknights and the like here. anyways, this one is an open, spacious affair. let's just say a lot of rockets were flewn in this one.

other stuff:

-I finally meet my first archvile on HMP near the exit of the map.
-the blue key was well-guarded I'll admit.
-if you don't get the armor at the beginning, you'll end up missing a ton of imps.
-that one room with the crushers could probably have been better too.
-why are the key doors marked if you actually DON'T need a key?

[dobu gabu maru]

SteveD said:

Damn, I never thought I'd hear a slaughtermapper say that. ;D

Every man has his limits

MAP07: Another sloggy map, but not nearly as bad as the last two—I have to admit, the HK circular cavern trap got me good. The same complaints from the last two apply here, but at least a large amount of the enemies were pinkies, which the SSG takes care of (though it was still too many pinkies)

[Demon of the Well]

Map 05 -- Crimson Canyon - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
I didn't think this was half bad, myself. Of course, it's very true that the combat poses almost no real danger....of the 200% health / 200% armor you can get right at the start of the map, I had something like 130% or so left from that same initial fill-up when I exited the map, and that was including a couple of unnecessary lava burns. There are no hitscanners to be found, no arch-viles, only a few revenants in one area, and most of the map is very spacious, which all adds up to combat scenarios where all you really have to do to avoid damage is avoid standing in one spot for minutes at a stretch. More concerning is some of the monster usage....the groups of teleporting hell knights have already been mentioned, but they didn't actually offend me much, due to the way I played--I spent a lot of the map just evading monsters rather than fighting, so over time they tended to path around and gradually wear themselves down through incidental infighting (they can actually travel all around the map, given enough time), periodically grouping up and allowing me to efficiently kill off the remnants with optimal rocket-splash and tactics of that nature. What I missed was a more persistent presence of flying monsters....this is a great environment for them, and the few times they did show up they were an entertaining encounter (esp. the mixed caco/PE group), so it's a shame that 95% of the opposition is bipedal. On that note, I can excuse the knight-spam, but the groups of pinkies down in the lava pits make no sense from a gameplay perspective (there's no reason to ever go in the lava in this map)....I guess they're there just to help set the scene?

Nonthreatening combat aside, though, I think the map's still a fairly enjoyable experience. The titular canyon sure is crimson, and its tall faces and long vistas make quite an impression under the sunset-painted sky. The music is really excellent as well, fits both the look and the leisurely pace of the map, as well. "Leisurely", that's a good word to describe how it felt....I didn't find the map difficult to navigate (granted, I've played it before, even if it was a long time ago, and so probably retained some kind of subconscious memories of its route), it felt to me like there was a simplistic pattern at work: while it's hard to tell from looking at the automap, there are essentially two diverging paths (up through the cliffs, mostly), and reaching a switch on one path usually opens up the next leg on the other path. Along the way, you mainly concern yourself with taking in the sights and the atmosphere while occasionally squishing a bug that gets in your way....it does occur to me that the voyage might seem more strenuous if you're constantly scrambling around for ammo to clear stuff out of your path (since even if you have no ammo the monsters still aren't actually much of a bodily threat), which can happen if you don't find the secrets right by the start point (well, mainly the two shell cases, the other two probably don't make as much of an impact).....maybe it's not ideal in this case for an early secret to be so powerful/gamechanging?

So, nothing to write home about as far as action goes, certainly. It's okay, though, I think this map is successful enough as a setting and an adventure (sort of like a weird infernal nature-hike, really) to still be an enjoyable undertaking. For one reason or another, though, I remember the next map not being very good somehow. Guess I'll soon see....

[Magnusblitz]

MAP05: Crimson Canyon
62% kills, 3/11 secrets

Boy, that's a lot of secrets at the start... teleport into the titular canyon at 200/200, but it makes up for the lack of armor in the rest of the level (don't think I found any aside from a few helmets), providing a large well to be slowly chipped away at. And that's what'll happen, since the level is basically just one giant canyon, with lots of wandering from staircase to staircase in a switch hunt, trying to figure out which switch unlocks which set of bars. As far as I can tell, they do so without any rhyme or reason. Each switch also starts teleporting in a bunch of hellspawn, but with the open layout and slow trickle of large monsters (so many hell knights) or annoying monsters (oh joy, pain elementals in huge open areas!) I quickly felt the desire to just start running through the rest of the level.

Not that pretty to look at, either... just seems to be a bunch of random red textures (red rock, red bricks, a recolored Wolfenstein brick texture) slapped randomly around the level.

[b]MAP06: Cylinders of Sin
76% kills, 4/6 secrets

Cylinders of Sin? Really? And I thought "Octagony" was bad...

In any event, this largely feels like a smaller, more linear continuation of last map - more staircases around the edges of wide-open canyons. While the linearity removes the confusing switch hunt, its also somewhat boring, and the staircases here (especially at the start of the outside area) are painfully thin, often with walls of hell knights on them that make it impossible to run past. It's also possible to make the map impossible to finish, as the skull switch at the top of the outdoor area that opens the door at the bottom is a one-time only switch, but the inside of the door is a regular door, which means monsters can close it and leave the player stuck on the outside with no way to re-open it. Fun! The rest of the map seems a bit underdetailed, devolving into some orthogonal hallways before a circular blue key room that's easily the most interesting part of the map.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 06 -- Cylinder of Sin - 99% Kills / 83% Secrets
Yeah, not so good. A lot of the environment is still fairly interesting, with a pronounced vertical element (e.g. the outer perimeter of the titular Cylinder, or the multi-level hallway on the south end), but there's also a fair portion of it that is orthogonal, featureless, undetailed hallways. The music's cool again, at least, but all in all the map isn't really playing to the WAD's aesthetic strong points. It strikes me that this is really a lot like map 02, in more ways than one--a very solid, uniform color scheme, a prominent central architectural feature (the Cylinder in this case, analogous to the reflecting pool in the earlier map), and a lot of really 'utilitarian' (to put it euphemistically) interstitial connective stuff bearing a lot of the actual progression load around it.

While not a standout, I didn't find 'The Forum' to be particularly offensive despite being a bit of a grey (or 'brown', rather) cloud because its action was well-suited to its early mapslot. That is, it was full mainly of fodder monsters that could be mown down quickly and easily, allowing for a relatively succinct trip through the map, which aided its most striking features in taking pride of place in my impression of the overall experience. 'Cylinder of Sin', by contrast, is stuffed full of Hell-meat (again, no hitscanners in sight, if memory serves we may still have another 1-2 maps to go before we start seeing them again) in its corridors and pathways, and so takes a fair bit longer to get through, despite not actually being a particularly lengthy or involved map. Hell nobles abound, and demons/specters and lost souls make major contributions to the cloggage in the corridors, as well. Once again, there was a lot of potential for flying monsters to be the stars of the show, but once again their appearances were few and far between. There are a number of cacodemons unleashed from a distant part of the map early on, but they're turned loose a bit too soon, so I ended up fighting them like a bunch of tomato-shaped imps in the earliest set of corridors, since they followed me in there before I could make my way back out. My experience went downhill as the map progressed....there are a lot of rockets around, but the rocket launcher itself is a secret-within-a-secret (unmarked, or it may be that the one secret I missed actually was the RL, but its sector was too thin to reliably trigger) that is located based purely on blind backtracking....so, basically, I did the meat of the map without that weapon, which further exacerbated its slow/ponderous pace. Having secret weapons that make a big impact on the flavor and even the difficulty of a level is a mapping choice that I have no qualms with, but ideally a map does need to be tuned so that it can still be fun (if more stressful) without secrets, and that's not really the case here.

Map 05 had a compelling setting and more or less irrelevant combat, most of which could be easily ignored if the player so wished. This map has a somewhat less compelling setting (though it still has some good aspects), and very dull gameplay which is shoved down your throat. The one-body-wide corridor behind a little wooden door stuffed full of a conga-line of pinkies with a necessary switch at the end of it, and nothing else, says it all in this case....I can overlook bits of janitorial work like this in a map that also has interesting encounters and other virtues, but I can't overlook it when the entire map plays like this.

[Veinen]

Map04: Colosseum

A pretty average map. Looks ok and the architecture is nice enough for the most part. The colosseum itself is a very poor mans version though and the "maze" that comes afterwards is, well, rather terrible. That thin ledge area with lava below was also pointless, to put it nicely. Combat is okay I suppose, way too fucking many Lost Souls invade the courtyard at one point which was kind of annoying and the "colosseum" fight is a laughable circle-strafing exercise. Fortunately rockets are plentiful here so all those mid-tier monsters aren't that much of a chore to kill. So yeah, average and forgettable but that's actually good compared to some of the next maps.

Map05: Crimson Canyon

My goodness this was boring. It's a switch hunt in a huge ass homogeneously textured RED canyon filled with thoroughly non-threatening projectile vomiting enemies. And when a switch is pressed, even more projectile slingers warp into some distant corner of the map. The canyon looks okay and interesting at first but after you realize that you're just going back and forth the same goddamn canyon for the n:th time it gets really tiresome. Not a fan of this map to say the least.

Map06: Cylinder of Sin

Pretty horrible to be honest. Grindy, so grindy. And you know what the worst thing is? The RL is in a somewhat elaborate secret area so worst case scenario is that you'll grind your way through the mountains of HP with nothing but the SSG. Even with the RL and the PG the pace is oh so slow and I can just about imagine what it would be like without those. Visuals are very much in the vein of map05 with slightly more variety. The penultimate area looked pretty good even. Nevertheless, the combat drags this map so far down that there is no salvaging it by impressive visual bits or by anything else really.

[scifista42]

MAP08 - "Roscinante"

Hey, another change of theme! I liked this one, as silver/white techbases are my thing. Coincidentally, I've played Ultimate Simplicity just today, and Psyren's attempt at a clean design in this map reminded me of that mapset.

Except for the crate area, not much height variation was involved. Gameplay was about cramped corridors and SG-ing / SSG-ing lots of hitscanners and imps. I didn't really mind it in this map, because I have to admit that killing packs of monsters was satisfying, specially as a change from the previous map's standard. In contrast, tougher monsters dragged this action a bit, though (the contrast was noticeably bigger than before, when maps were overally slow-paced).

Nothing wordly special, but a satisfying-enough experience. However, if this theme is going to stay for next maps, I better hope that there would be at least some new ideas and variations put into it.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 07 -- Shrine of Quorthon - 99% Kills / 75% Secrets
An improvement over map 06, the Shrine is a spacious, shadowy edifice nestled high in some rocky hills near the mouth of the molten river that we've been seeing a lot of in the recent handful of maps. Despite the largely indoor setting, the tangles of narrow, orthogonal passages that characterized the previous map are largely absent here, giving way to much grander, curving greathalls and huge open vaults, with more of the towering crimson canyon scenery from which the mapset takes its name at the tail end. Aside from the few cyclopean chambers, progression through the environment is really not too dissimilar from what it was in maps 05 and 06; that is, it's a more or less linear jaunt through a somewhat convoluted series of corridors. The upswing in scale makes all the difference, though--outside of a couple of brief segments (most notably the hell knight boobytrap in the optional area on the way to the red door), these corridors are broad enough to march a small army through, meaning that the roadblock-heavy gameplay of the previous map is thankfully rarer.

The action is still a bit iffy, though. Psyren has compensated for the greater amount of space he's given the player by stuffing the areas with the largest groups of monsters we've encountered to this point in Crimson Canyon. While there's certainly something to be said for the spectacle and for the upping of the ante from a thematic/narrative standpoint, in actual combat terms these scads of demons are not entirely effective, and in a few instances may even be arguably excessive. Hell knights and imps continue to make a strong showing, but the real feature enemy seems to be pinkies/specters (the latter of which is often genuinely difficult to clearly spot in this environment, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned), which appear in droves in several places, requiring a not inconsiderable expenditure of ammo and time to exterminate, generally without being particularly threatening, given that ammo is far from scarce here (there's an early plasma rifle secret, but missing it probably doesn't impact the way the map plays nearly as much as missing the secret RL in 'Cylinder of Sin' does). Of course, the spacious nature of the surroundings means that for the most part the projectile-slinging enemies are not particularly dangerous either. The most complicated scenario one will face comes early on, in the vaulted chamber behind the huge iron 'teeth' gate. Presumably the Shrine proper, this area hosts by far the greatest concentration of enemies to this point in the mapset (and possibly at any single point in the mapset). Most of these enemies are just demon/imp fodder, but a brood of arachnatrons on high with some goatlegged high-priests provide a blanket of artillery that makes mitigating the ground-bound meatwall not entirely trivial. Later marquee encounters also throw a lot of mid-tier monsters at the player, but the degree of crossfire never reaches the same pitch, and given the space and some other situational advantages (e.g. the patently unnecessary V-sphere near the last key late in the map) these fights are easily mitigated and soon forgotten.

While the action is unremarkable (as opposed to the drudgery of the previous map's combat), as with map 05 before it I found playing through this more enjoyable than not, even if it was more as a sightseeing tour than a tour of duty. The general spaciousness of environment appeals to me on some fundamental level, and there are a number of interesting/aesthetically pleasing architectural features to take in, ala the chaos-latticed windows that look out over the lava flow as a sort of preamble to the Shrine's sanctum-gate, or the complex series of stairs and daises in the Shrine proper, a progenitor of the strangely angled, semi-fractal architecture that came to the fore and added so much flavor to Rylayeh.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP08 Roscinante

a back-to-base type map featuring everyone's (not) favorite hitscanners again. it's more compact terror in a congested area. there's one particularly nasty place with blinking light sectors where they can hit from just about anywhere. after opening the blue door, the more conventional demons rear their ugly heads in, before going to another hallway and taking the teleport to the cargo bay. Lo and behold, there's a spiderdemon in the mix, but from the crate I was hiding behind he was at a disadvantage. the hellknight/baron ambush that came after the red key was much more dangerous. there's also supposed to be a hitscanner ambush back before the teleporter to the cargo bay, but when I played they were all holed up in the starting areas. I guess it is alright for a map if a bit congested. that one room of STARTAN2 sticks out like a sore thumb though.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 08 -- Roscinante - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Spelling tweak aside, I'm going to interpret this map (or its title, at least) as a Steinbeck reference. Because the notion of a Steinbeck reference in a DooM PWAD is proving terribly amusing to me at the moment, for whatever reason.

Anyway, it's ye olde representationalist space-ship interior map (take one); its crew is more than a bit 'ripe', to say the least, but still surprisingly lively. There's something very old-fashioned about this (it made me think of Icarus, amongst other things); whether it seems charming or not has a lot to do with one's predilections, I suppose. By dint of the theme, the layout is comprised of a pile of tight, squidgy little box-rooms and corridors bunched around a couple of larger centerpieces in the form of the servo room and the cargo hold. These two larger areas represent the nadir and the apex of the map's gameplay, respectively: the servo room is initially lousy with hell knights and arachnatrons, which are liable to take some time to grind through, as the rocket launcher is only a viable option if you have it equipped before you even approach the door (thus being able to beat back the horde before collateral splash damage becomes too much of a risk); otherwise you end up SSGing the knights one by one as they funnel into the narrow corridor outside the room, and then you fight the arachnatrons from the threshold. Not very thrilling.

By contrast, I liked the cargo hold--it has a good mixture of weak and powerful monsters (from zombieman to spider mastermind), and its two-level dynamic allows for a number of different ways to handle the situation. I spent a few moments entertaining myself by blowing imps off of the upper walkway with buckshot as they tried to approach me, and then climbed around on the crates to reach a secret maintenance duct (no infinitely-tall worries in Eternity for this leisure playthrough), which ultimately rewarded me with a blur sphere, allowing me to hose down the mastermind with plasma with impunity. Leaping down and quickly climbing back up to get the red keycard, I was then able to efficiently devastate the cadre of nobles that warps in as well as all of the initial fodder from the ground level with the pile of rockets I'd had little use for up to that point...pretty cool little sequence.

When none of that's going on, though, the action is almost entirely of the room-clearing variety, which isn't exactly top-shelf stuff, but doesn't seem too hard to stomach after grinding through map 06 and its ilk; opening a door and pulling the trigger on the SSG to kill a half-dozen zombies at once feels far less arduous than gun-drilling through wall after wall of the upper crust of infernal society. Again, this map sort of underscores the point that Psyren's style is much more suited to scads of low-tier monsters than it is to the brawnier end of the enemy spectrum.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP08: Never have I been happier to see hitscanners. This map is pretty dumb mechanically (its single gimmick is “open doors, shoot whatever is inside”), but in a way it felt like a test of your twitch skills, forcing you to kill or be killed as soon as the metal barrier goes up. I had fun with it, but it’s largely in relation to how plodding the last few maps have been.