The DWmegawad Club plays: Requiem

[Capellan]

Magnusblitz said:

Oh, I know exactly how detrimental it can be. That's why I use a mouse. :)

Yep. I always knew mouse was better but couldn't get comfortable with it. Fallout 3 convinced me to try again, and my play is much improved as a consequence.

[Cynical]

SteveD said:

Try Golachab or Impure Offering on UV.

These maps are spirit-crushing for players at my skill level. I playtest HNTR for Cynical. That's a good fit for me in his maps.

And yet . . . when Cynical playtests my sweet, innocent maps, he dies and dies and dies like a dog! ;D

But let it be known; Cynical is a way better player than I am.

Yeah, but I get my pelts with the monsters of civilized society -- Revenants, Mancubi, Arch-Viles, Arachnotrons, and maybe an occasional Cacodemon or Pain Elemental -- not with this low-class, dirty, distasteful Chaingunner business ;-)

[Steve D]

Capellan said:

Yep. I always knew mouse was better but couldn't get comfortable with it. Fallout 3 convinced me to try again, and my play is much improved as a consequence.

As I prepare to play Map06, and with luck, Map13, I figured I'd get a couple more comments in . . .

So, Adam, now that you've confessed to this vast improvement in your playing ability, it must mean you're ready to tackle Heat Miser on UV. Yes, it's time to move forward, to break out of your old ruts, and boldly greet the brave new world spreading out before you! We have a new Adam here, folks! A new Adam! :)

[Steve D]

Cynical said:

Yeah, but I get my pelts with the monsters of civilized society -- Revenants, Mancubi, Arch-Viles, Arachnotrons, and maybe an occasional Cacodemon or Pain Elemental -- not with this low-class, dirty, distasteful Chaingunner business ;-)

Ah, that was the "old me." But after all, I'm from Chicago, where guns are often the first resort for settling disagreements. It takes time to change, Cynical. ;D

[Capellan]

I said I was a much improved player, not that I suddenly became 1000 times more patient or that I developed a SteveD-like streak of masochism :-)

[Crusader No Regret]

Revisiting Requiem

map 10: cheater
Clearly this is a product of another era. In this day and age, no one throws in gratuitus invulnerabilities just because. Anyways, enjoy; there won't be any more until map 21. The first room has the most danger; everything after that poses little threat. Dueling the cyber is an exercise in patience, not skill. Moreso if plinking away between the bars. Some ammo tightness early on (especially if leaving the berserk for health, which I end up totally forgetting anyways) that go away. Cheating comes from IDDT since I was lazy about locating secrets. OK map I suppose even though I lost interest midway.

[Salt-Man Z]

Crusader No Regret said:

Dueling the cyber is an exercise in patience, not skill. Moreso if plinking away between the bars.

Ha! I almost did this, but by the time the thought occurred to me, I had already saved after opening said bars. What I did do was try to sit just the right distance from him so that his rockets angled into the top of his little stairway.

[scifista42]

Map14 - “The Portal” by Eric Sambach

I like the MIDI a lot, I remember it because I was going to use it in one of my maps (never finished, though).

This map looks thoroughly nice and plays okay, although it's very easy, only the hitscanners pose a danger. It's mostly linear, but at least some backtracking with new opposition is provided. On the other hand, particular fights are mostly as dull as enemies placed in a corridor in front of you, plus occasional slow-paced side / back ambush. Main mandatory path is often obscured a little, but after observing the automap, everything is clear. I didn't mind it.

What actually spoils this map for me is the ever-present orthogonality, corridor-heaviness (repetitive), and uniform floor / ceiling heights in most areas.

Again, visuals are nice, offering both variety and consistency, but level structure and gameplay could have been seriously better. 3/5

[vdgg]

Just some quick thoughts on some levels. My overall impression is similar to Memfis', I like the WAD a lot, maybe a little less than him, so adding my reviews seem unnecessary.

MAP03 appears on Afterglow's "best individual custom doom levels" page.
MAP04 is my favourite Matthias' level from the set and the only one which I like as much as his MM2 contributions. My favourite moment is that ledge raising from the lava and leading you to where you started. As Suitepee experienced, it is possible to get stuck by the SSG :( Wrong usage of a 1-time linedef (S1 door open stay), while you have more than one linedef which can close the bars... Surprisingly, it didn't happen to me before.
MAP05 I've always had a feeling that this one was too long for a MAP05 slot, to which SAV88 replied once that MM2 has also one long early level (MAP06). Well, this is an awesome map. Another great stuff from Bill McClendon is Strain MAP11.
MAP06 One of the best layouts I've seen. But also a buggy level. People were reporting having trouble with 100% kills. And it is definitely possible to get stuck.

scifista42 said:
Then there was a blue armor placed on DEIM-face on the floor, which trapped me inside with instant-raising pillars and imps teleported around to shoot me. I've killed the imps, but never found any normal way out of there. I've noticed an arrow on the floor nearby, but shooting in the direction had no effect, so that I eventually GLIDED out.

Capellan said:

It's supposed to lower the bars. Not sure what went wrong.

The switch works once (G1 Floor Raise to Lowest Ceiling), and there are TWO walkover linedefs that trap you, so it is easy to predict what can happen... And it happened to me many times.
MAP08 belongs to my top 3 from the WAD. A masterpiece with an unnecessary bug which almost everyone pointed out.,
MAP09 has to get the lowest possible score for playtesting. In Troopers Playground version it was not possible to get 100% secrets and this was fixed. But, OTOH, a yellow key branch was added, resulting in even one more possibility to get trapped. Only one baron teleporting instead of two is another problem, but I don't know why, it happens less often than in TTP where it happens like 95% of the time. The red key chase is awesome as an idea, but too easy to skip. It must have been inspired by Obituary (ObTiC) MAP12.
MAP11 The best level in the mapset IMO. Very addictive and looks gorgeous.
MAP14 This map is great until the yellow door. I absolutely loathe these tile textures (IKMCHESS) which IMO ruin the immersion completely.

[Memfis]

Where was I...
09 - first of all, I love the midi used here so much. Very catchy and cute sounding. This is an impressive example of a map that seems like just a bunch of small rooms but is still very entertaining. I used to refer to it all the time when I was making my 90s tributes but I felt like I was always missing something...
10 - first level that doesn't really feel like a Requiem level to me. All previous levels have a unique somewhat unified mood and some cool new textures. And this is just a E4 styled map. Not a big fan, except it's tremendously fun in pacifist category (that start!).
11 - another beautiful song and a good level as well. For some reason I particularly like the only outdoor view, there's something magical about it, just like with Doom E1 outdoor views. Maybe a little too many texture themes for my taste...
12 - ... but here is another crazy mishmash of textures, and yet I don't want to complain about that here. Classic adventure level full of fresh ideas. Perhaps too many secrets though?
13 - well, what can I say, this one absolutely blew me away when I saw it for the first time. The atmosphere is excellent here, enhanced by one of my favorite midis of all time (that guitar solo part!), and then there are these bridges... It's also quite entertaining for coop uv-speed (kill your friend to break the second bridge and skip most of the level). Certainly one of the most artistic Requiem maps.

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP12: Militant Reprisal
This level is just an absolute mishmash: a little bit of everything, with a ton of secrets, that still manages to play fairly linearly. It's long and convoluted enough that I didn't feel like backtracking for secrets. And despite all of that, it's still a ton of fun. (Except for those "A chaingunner appears (behind you)!" traps; I kept getting killed by those.)

A piece of (perhaps uninteresting) trivia: this was the last level I played on my initial attempt at this WAD: Doomsday (back in the early oughts) would crash immediately upon attempting to load MAP13. I believe it crashed loading MAP12 as well, but I was able to open MAP12 in DoomBuilder, save it without making any alterations, and then load it in Doomsday. MAP13 never worked, though; I wonder if it was the 3D bridges that did it in? (Doomsday also choked on the bridges in MAP08, though it at least remained playable.)

[Khorus]

Map08

Fugly and not too enjoyable to play for the first third. The chainsaw room was a nice touch, though. The elevator room and beyond becomes a boring revenant, manc and chaingunner in close quarters repeat fest. It wasn't challenging either, just very predictable. Not even the SSG secret later on could make me enjoy this one. :/

Map09

Generally, a nice looking and playing level with some neat traps and stair building. Good fun.

Map10

Not a big fan of homage maps, but it looks and plays ok. Berserker made for a cool start, and finally getting my favourite weapon (plasma) was good, too. Didn't need that invulnerability, it makes the cyber a joke.

Map11

Awesome map. Claustrophobic but with plenty of space to move, this map has a great sense pace and looks good, too. Just lovely.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP13: Town of the Dead

Loved it. Great, atmospheric architecture and texturing, and it feeds monsters to you at a steady pace that stops you from getting bored, even if the layout is on the linear side; I'm not convinced a more free-roaming layout would have been able to incorporate some of the architectural 'tricks' here, which depend on the player moving along a fairly predictable path in order to work. I do wonder if it would have been possible to build the map with a smaller slime sea; as it is, you could probably fit the whole of the rest of the map into the sea twice over, and it does rather distort the apparent size of the level in the automap. Fortunately the layout isn't twisty enough to force automap reliance (this is Town of the Dead, not City of the Unavenged).

MAP14: The Portal

I think this one suffers by coming on the heels of Town of the Dead; trying to follow such an atmospheric and architecturally meticulous level only serves to put a magnifying glass to the relatively bland design of The Portal, and unfortunately it doesn't have blow-you-away gameplay to divert from that. I recall finding the placement of the radiation suit a bit weird; it's not made available until you start to head south towards an unexplored section of the map, which implied to me that the hazard it was supposed to counter lay in that direction, rather than it being intended for use in the area the player has already passed through. I liked the metal framework surrounding the walkway in that first outdoor area but it does also serve to highlight rather than detract from the rather plain layout there.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP12: Ugh, did not enjoy this one. Its size might convince you that it’s a large nonlinear romp but it’s largely devoid of health and options for how to tackle each encounter. You just hug corners and snipe sergeants from afar for fifteen minutes, inbetween getting lost and looking for where you’re supposed to go. Definitely the nadir for me so far.

MAP13: Wow, was “Poison Processing” just a fluke? Here is yet another Keranen map filled to the brim with 3D bridges and clausterphobic encounters, teaching the player the art of punchy-fist. I enjoyed this more than the Reactor thanks to the SSG, though its gameplay was probably worse… I dunno what it is about fighting monsters in close-quarters, but I enjoy it a helluva lot more than doorway sniping hitscanners. There’s only a few spots where the map was fun so overall its only worth playing for the stunning trickery. I'm hoping Keranen's other maps are more open.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP14 The Portal

Eric Sambach is another mapper who I'm not too familiar with apart from his Requiem works and House of Thorn from Memento Mori (I don't believe he was involved in Memento Mori II). anyways, this map is very orthogonal in its hallways, but they do provide some good combat (hey look our hitscanners are back). this map is also the first in Requiem to give us arch-viles. one will probably wonder why they have not been introduced sooner. the titular portal being the exit portal is pretty quirky too. so overall, it's an orthogonal but alright map. I'm not gonna say it's a bad one though.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP13: Town of the Dead
100% kills, 1/1 secret

Wouldn't surprise me if this is the map that would take the greatest fall in reception had it been released today instead of 1997. I can see why it would've garnered so much attention - this is basically 3D Bridges: The Map, including one area with a double-bridge (ahmygawd). There's also some pretty cool custom textures here, I'm a big fan of the railings/metalwork used for the tan buildings.

That said - gameplay is a wreck. All those 3D bridges means the whole thing is basically one long corridor, wrapping around a few staircase buildings here and there. Even when the player isn't on a bridge, the level remains pretty close and narrow, which is really limiting. Almost every single monster is engaged one at a time, always in front of the player (or around a corner). And with a lot of the mid-tier monsters used, especially the barons and mancubuses, it can become a grind to just sit around the corner and SSG the bastard to death. There's even a full bullshit spots (the mancubus at the bottom of the lift in the blue key house, the baron across the bridge by the red door).

I'm honestly surprised this map has garnered positive reviews, I suppose most people are simply giving it its due for the impressiveness of the 3D bridges back in 1997. For me though, played today, it just feels like a boring grind through baron/mancubus meat down one long 64-wide corridor, albeit a prettier one.

[Sui Generis]

Map14 - “The Portal” by Eric Sambach
This small marble-ish level is one of the more mediocre, but still fun Requiem maps. Appearance and layout-wise this is in truth very crude - a big part of the level takes place in what are basically slightly dressed up corridors. There are some more open areas which are more fun though. The gameplay is short but sharp with all the revenants, chaingunners and knights in tight spaces. This is most noticeable right at the beginning where you will be presented with a knight armed only with a shotgun and 8 shells. A Berserk pack is available if you can dodge past it, but there are several hitscanners guarding this. Playing this continuous makes the map a great deal simpler, because all of the above concerns at the start vanish, asyou have the proper equipment.

Even though it's not the best map, I still appreciate the pressing gameplay and midi and while the looks are simple and often bland, I never found it offensive. There were a couple of demon swarms that degenerate into a queue to be chainsawed/berzerked which I think the map could've done without. The final area is enjoyable, but there's just a bit too much incentive hang back near the teleporter and camp to pick off the chaingunners and revenants.

[Capellan]

MAP14
Eric Sambach gives us Requiem's first trap heavy map. The nastiest are probably the revenant backstab in the nukage area, and the HK and hitscanner combo in the stone and wood tunnels, though the revenant that comes though an illusory wall is probably the most 'jag off' move, as SteveD might put it.

Another thing that Sambach gives us is a whole lotta pinkies. The berserk at the map start is a big hint of this. I can't help but think that a chainsaw would have been a better choice for co-op support, but since I had plenty of ammo I pretty much just SSG'd them all instead (a few got sawed, but not many).

This map also gives us our first archviles. Sambach politely cages the first one, but the second gets teleported into a position where it can be quite a problem. I got lucky on a pain chance, though, and rocketed it to pieces before it could roast me. Not that it would have mattered all that much if it had got the attack off, as I had enough health and armour to survive and there's that juicy megasphere right at the end of the map.

Sambach also likes the multi-stage secret. The plasma gun closet needs you to flick several switches and then go back to the level start, while the megasphere (soulsphere on UV, IIRC) secret at the end is activated in a distant room.

So what sort of map do these components add up to? A pretty good one on the whole. It's a bit orthogonal, I think: lots of ninety degree angles, with conventionally-shaped rooms and corridors. I'm reminded that Sambach's Memento Mori map was rather rectangular as well, though it had much tighter confines to work in. I appreciate the extra elbow room here, especially for the trap sequences. I also like that Sambach breaks out one of the more colourful new textures in the wad. Makes a nice change from us all going crazy with the dark metal ones.

This has enough action to be fun, and the architecture and looks are clean and competent, if not exactly memorable. A solid entry in the wad, but not one that's ever stuck in my memory before, and I don't think that is about to change.

[purist]

9

Switch hunty in a good way in that there's a lot of switches but not a lot of hunting. Hitting a switch activates something in eyeshot or at least something you can't really miss walking past. This gives an otherwise straight forward level a degree of complexity and a sense procedural accomplishment. Combat is another non-event but bigger bullet spongers were used sparingly and mostly in places where you can run around them if you wish. I jumped into the nukage in case there was a secret and instead found an uncharacteristically frantic featuring a PE and revs. Going the normal route puts you against the same setpiece from the safety of higher ground and behind impassable midtex bars, I thought this punishment for falling was a good idea even if in my case it was curiosity rather than clumsiness that put me there.

Two things I've noticed in the PWAD so far but keep forgetting to mention is a lack of rockets and an abundance of ineffectual demons. Not that one lends itself to the other of course.

10

A short, nice looking level. Yet another bezerk = demon moment, which was a common trait in 90's maps. The ledgewalking sections were the nicest in the sense of progression but this is still way easier even than Doom II - maybe I should have played in UV. Cyb makes the first appearance I remember in Requiem but it's a chore of a fight since there's nothing to help him keep you under pressure and he couldn't get up the steps which he only occasionally managed to fire a rocket clear of.

11

This one I've heard something of and I've been looking forward to getting to it. By the time I got here my enthusiasm has been someone curbed by the style over substance maps thus far, however expectations aside this comfortably the best level in Requiem so far.

Aesthetically this map is ahead of it's time with textures used as materials and cool non-intrusive details like the jutting monitors and overhead piping. The layout snakes you around the impressive base giving you a good sense of place before challenging you to use this foreknowledge to your advantage when it repopulates several sections of the map at once. My only disappointment was this didn't go on longer and, from someone who describes anything much longer than the average scythe map a slog, this is high praise indeed.

12

Is this the longest level yet? It certainly seemed large and gave me the impression of non-linearity as there were several junctions where I could take multiple directions. I never felt fully confident that I was making progress in the level and had a constant nagging suspicion that I'd have to trail through large sections of the level again because I'd not achieved everything I needed to in one of the areas I'd gone through. As it turned out I need not have worried, the sole time I had to check the automap was having collected the blue key and I'm glad I did as I don't think I would have cottoned onto the exit door being blue marked if I hadn't.

There were a few hairy moments to be had but I'm not quite willing to credit the monster placement as I remember most of the pressure being attrition related. There was a lower amount of health than normal and I don't chaingunner damage on a few occasions. When on low health I did suffer a few frights due to monsters seeming to find an angle on me without me realising they could, a demon dashing through a passage I'd missed and a sergeant lowering a lift I didn't see were some cool pseudo advanced AI moments. The pop up baron at the end woke me up too!

13

Another Iikka Keränen map and it lives up to the authors reputation of form over function. 3D bridges link together the buildings up an ornate town, which looks nice but only hamstrings the evil denizens into being able to attack you mainly one at a time if they are able to traverse the sector hackery at all. Perplexingly Keränen uses higher tier monsters again so progress is stunted to a crawl. Perhaps the intention was to force you to look at his pretty structures and appreciate his technical ingenuity instead of running past it all and being distract by ...god forbid... fun!

I'm being a little unnecessarily harsh, I didn't have such a bad time and it's better than his mine level so I'll stop pissing on it now.

14

I thought this was going to fall into the trap of corridor shooting with the beginning of the map being set in nice looking but quite unimaginative gothic halls some of the traps were ruthless enough in their hitscanners to keep me watching my step but the level never really came into it's own until that awesome mini set piece fight at the end, which killed me more consistently than anything else in the set has got even close to and I had a lot of fun doing it, ore of these well thought out choreographed fights please, incidental combat is OK for so long but this was a welcome change.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP14: The Portal
99% kills, 3/5 secrets

Now, I much prefer a map like this (unimaginative style, but good gameplay) to one like MAP13 (good style but boring, one-note gameplay). The start to this one seemed perfectly balanced from a pistol start, requiring the player to take some risks and move ahead to find weapons or ammo to take out the baddies. The ammo balance actually proves to be perfectly tuned for pistol starting - I finished the map with one shell and only a few bullets left. Some decent ambushes here and some traps as the player goes back through the level, though none of them are difficult by today's standards. The last area is a nice fight though once it's been repopulated by the revs and Arch-Vile (though it'd probably be better if the AV could step off the middle platform). Yeah, it's blocky as all get-out, and that might bother me a bit less than most since I tend to be an orthogonal mapper myself, but I found this one fun to play.

[Steve D]

Magnusblitz said:

I finished the map with one shell and only a few bullets left.

Uh-oh. :0

[Demon of the Well]

Map 13 -- Town of the Dead - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Right, this is Keränen's most well-known and lauded map in Requiem, and perhaps the most well-known/lauded map in Requiem as a whole (although map 23 could probably stake some kind of claim in that running, as well)--it is certainly an aptly fitting posterchild. I said earlier that 'The Reactor' was Iikka's Doom mapping career in a nutshell, but that was perhaps a bit uncharitable--it's really this map that epitomizes his style, both the strengths (which are a little stronger here) and the weaknesses (which are more or less just as weak).

When it was contemporary, the level of structural sophistication on offer here was quite the phenom. Well, I say 'structure', but it's more in the linking and partitioning of areas via 3D bridges (including the famous over/under loop) and fences and lifts. The actual playspace is small, but Iikka wrings a lot of mileage out of it by using a large number of tiny discrete rooms and having the player traverse through the layout vertically nearly as often as laterally--you go what feels like a long way through the map before finally circumventing the fence keeping you out of the tan brick building housing the teleporter to the cemetery (and the exit) which you see very early on. It's well-made, too--as finicky as this stuff can be in the Doom engine I've never had it break on me in any of my playthroughs of the WAD (bet you can break the shit out of it in co-op, though).

Of course, boorish though it may be to point it out, none of this stuff is nearly as impressive for its own sake in this day and age, and so I suspect Magnus is right in saying that if this map had appeared today it probably would have garnered an uneven reception, at best. However, while its structural tricks may no longer seem as jawdropping, and its action is probably liable to be viewed as 'questionable' (to put it lightly), the map's atmosphere does still hold up rather well. The scenery is served well by the custom assets--railings for the many stairways and walkways, classy-looking tresses and struts supporting bridges, ornate croppings on windows for a couple of the buildings, and more of the articulate manlifts first seen in map 08. The buildings themselves tend to be unassuming in appearance on the exterior, and the interior throughways are so squidgy and congested that it's difficult to take much of an impression away from them other than vague memories of bits of furniture here and there (bookshelves, etc.), but taken as a whole, the setting comes together nicely--it's not so much the individual buildings and rooms you notice as you walk about, but again, the intricate way in which everything is arranged and connected. On a purely aesthetic level, I'm still not a fan of Iikka's use of ashwall as the primary (read: only) topographic/geolithic texture (really more of a 90s thing, that), but other than that there's really not much I take issue with. The dusky lighting combines very nicely with Requiem's very distinctive E2 sky (this is the first time we get a really good look at it), and the music track is superbly fitting--if I had remembered that this track was in the set I'd have included it in my earlier list of favorites for sure.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that gameplay is still extremely flat and unimaginative--by the standards of its own or any day. Basically, you fight mid/high-HP enemies literally one at a time with the SSG or berserk fist; because the actual playspace is so severely restricted in both shape and expanse for the sake of the aesthetic, there is essentially nothing to do but slide around corners and plink from thresholds at whatever obstacle is in your path at a given moment. In contrast to map 08, the 'traps', such as they are, are perhaps a bit better--the graveyard 'statuary' creates at least a momentary pressuring crossfire, and there are a couple of instances of closeted revenants that become active once you've passed them and thus might surprise you from behind (most notably the fellow near the yellow key observatory)--but the crampedness and absurdly inappropriate placement of large monsters in tiny spaces is perhaps even more pronounced; this is the kind of map where you've really got to be mindful of the possibility of mancubus fireballs clipping through solid walls to hit you. A very genial thing balance alleviates any real pressure, and so the encounters in the map don't feel so much like combat as they do like doing yardwork--not a good thing. Again, given the practical needs of the layout there was no way this map was ever going to be able to support any kind of nuanced choreography or ambushes, and so I say again that Keränen's best bet probably would have been to just populate it with imps and zombies instead of gob after gob of surly HP--about the same practical level of danger, much smoother pace through his scenery.

It's a genuinely pleasant place to stroll through and look around in. Iikka was good at that. As soon as it has to try to function like a practical Doom level, it falls flat on its face. Iikka tended to have a lot of trouble with that.

Map 14 -- The Portal - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Interestingly, right after Keränen's magnum opus comes an unassuming and seldom talked about map that is almost its polar opposite in terms of strengths and weaknesses: 'The Portal' is not particularly interesting to look at or evocative of any particular place, but it has some tautly-balanced gameplay that will at least require you to wake up and pay attention a little. Both elements are easy to sum up: right-angled corridors and boxes, usually with a uniformly low ceiling height (one even gets this impression under the open sky on the outdoor nukage-crossing, thanks to the low height and lack of any detail on the bounding walls), and little in the way of light variation--just a basic downstep in the level in the chiseled 'mine' corridors versus everywhere else. Texture selection is also abstract and communicates little running theme beyond a general prevalence of stonework. While some basic superficial detail work, so redolent of the hot topics of the time (read: Quake!!!), is present in the form of wooden supports in the tunnels and metal 'support' posts along the bridge and the like, the structure itself is too simple to communicate any real sense of place, with the titular freestanding portal at the end being the most elaborate feature.

With a layout made almost entirely out of smallish hallways, you might be surprised to hear it plays fairly well--indeed, wasn't being nothing but a string of hallways (albeit heavily disguised/dressed hallways) at the heart of the previous map's problems? The difference is that Sambach's layout is purely pragmatic in nature, so he can easily do whatever he needs to with it to put you under pressure, ala the seriously nasty chaingunner/Baron 'fuck you' in the mine tunnels--place is full of surprisingly brutal closet traps, and the arch-vile that camps out by the Portal when you go to leave can be quite the dick as well, forcing you to move from your coverless position into the fields of fire of his revenant stooges in order to avoid being roasted. On that point, while bigger demons are still definitely a significant factor, there are quite a few of the imp/pinky/zombie dregs on hand as well, who serve as your main targets on your initial passes through most corridors, giving you something to shoot at without slowing you down enough to allow the very simplistic surroundings to wear on you too much. Generally speaking, where the map most succeeds is in simple thing placement; again, there's not really a whole lot that can be done in terms of variety with such a simplistic layout, but Sambach makes the best of it via effective monster-placement (including the all too rare 'Good Baron Placement'), a relatively low healing supply that makes being wounded a serious matter (especially considering that 95% of the map's duration is armor-free from a pistol-start), and some genuinely rewarding secrets that take much of the sting out of the later encounters.

It's not the kind of thing that goes down in the history books, and deservedly so, to be frank....but it is solid oldschool PWAD action that, for all of its visual/aesthetic quaintness, has aged better than many other, more famous maps in the set.

[Crusader No Regret]

Revisiting Requiem
map 11: Exited on 2nd attempt, 5/6 secrets, cheats used
Health is tight; I need to play better to clear this legit. Sometime after picking up the red key, I got knocked down to 6% health. Threw on IDBEHOLDV so I wouldn't need to restart and finished at 41%

map 12: Exited on 3rd attempt, 18/23 secrets, cheats used to reach 20/23
Well, this is one of the maps that overflowed doom2.exe's savegame buffer. I feel it hasn't aged well and it's kind of derivative to begin with, only bigger. Secrets are thrown around like confetti. Most have some sort of hint though there are some arbitrary ones around such as the green armor inside the "Refueling Base" shotgun homage at the start. Shoot/punch an arbitrary wall to open it. Who would find that without an editor or memorization?
Combat has that early '90s quality where having stuff to shoot for the heck of it was acceptable. The dark room early on is threatening enough and there are other instances of surprise hitscanners at close range. Otherwise, there's no danger except when careless, reckless, or greedy (died in the same spot twice because of greed). Granted, this is neither good nor bad on its own. However, I didn't feel any immersion in the map; feels like someone opened an editor and threw stuff together haphazardly until calling it done.

[Steve D]

Map06 – nataS ot etubirT by Thomas Möller – Kills – 100, Items – 93, Secret – 100. End Health – 100, Armor 109. Death Count – Zero

Not a bad map here. When I first saw a monster count of 256, much higher than any map so far, I had nightmare visions of singly-shotty shenanigans against battalions of Hell Knights, of course with the requisite ammo starvation so far typical of this mapset. But no! I was practically drowning in ammo once I got past the start, and the shockingly early acquisition of the SSG – aka “Hell Knight Slayer” – almost had me dancing a jig in sheer ecstasy.

The start of the map was one of the toughest battles, as you are smacked around hither and yon by enemies who seem to be everywhere, leading to a somewhat nerve-wracking encounter with elevated hitscanners and your first HK. After that, the first battle that almost killed me was the insta-popping Chaingunners, followed by a sequence of Chaingunner closets. The sound of massed Chaingunner fire is, IMO, one of the most terrifying, yet oddly stimulating, sounds in Doom. Once you hear it begin, you know you have little more than a second or two to break contact or die, so I put on my running shoes and hauled ass like crazy.

After this, most of the combat was basically okey-doke until the blue key battle, which at first seemed like a calm exercise in noble-slaughtering until all hell broke loose with Cacos, Lost Souls and what seemed like a metal island loaded with Sergeants that simply materialized out of nowhere. I was getting blasted so fast that I fled in blind panic. Luckily, I found a side corridor leading to a monster-free zone where I could collect my wits. This was an act of mercy by the mapper, for sure. This gave me a chance to kill the dangerous hitscanners and Lost Souls, though I managed to take enough bites, not to mention at least one gob of Caco spit, to reduce me to 10%. The sweat was flowing, I must say, but I managed to survive, and emerged from my hideout to resume the casual noble-slaughter so rudely interrupted by actually dangerous monsters.

This was the last battle of note, but there were other positive aspects of the map, chief among them, a Zerk! And not one, but two! It's amusing to think that until I joined the DWMC, I had never engaged in much Doom pugilism. At most, I'd occasionally punch a Pinky, but on my very first DWMC playthrough of 2002:ADO, I ran into that pcorf Tyson map and felt like a kindergarten kid being coached by the big kids on how to do it. Nowadays, I feel aggrieved when I have no choice in a map but to blast away at demons with the SSG, or worse, the single-shotty. Of course, as mentioned before, doing just that is symptomatic of so many '90s maps, and presumably early-'oughts maps as well, because so few of use were Doom pugilists back then. So in this map, I made the most of the opportunity, especially at the second Zerk, where I carefully stepped behind it and put my back to the wall, laying-out the charging Demons like some movie actor who backs into a corner and KOs one extra after another. Glorious! And not one bite-through, either. ;D

Alas, the map offered plenty of plink-the-demons opportunities, for example all the Spectres pointlessly patrolling the toxic muck – yet another '90sism I've been guilty of as well -- or from that overlook on the Blue Armor. Speaking of which, I really enjoyed the rising-gate Blue Armor trap, though the use of Imps there was ridiculously forgiving. I keep thinking of the variation-on-a-theme from Epic 2, where you're trapped in a smaller area and surrounded by Hell Knights, or the one cannonball did in Thy Flesh Turned Into a Draft-Excluder, where he employed Barons. That's the way to do it if you really want to get at the player.

I can't help wondering if this map is the first example of such a trap. Keep in mind that, despite being an Ancient Doomer, I mostly played single-map PWADs back then, stuff like The Waterfront and Castle of The Renegades, both by Scott F. Crank, and the former of which made deliberate and dickish use of The Archvile Bug, so that I was helplessly slain again and again by ghost Spectres until I found out how to kill them. And if not single maps, I'd play episode-length PWADs. As a result, I missed a lot of innovations that megawad teams brought to the party.

Anyway, unlike DotW, I never felt I was accomplishing anything in this map other than going from place to place and killing vermin, which is all I really ask for in a Doom map. Anything more is an extra and is what separates the really great maps from those that are good or merely adequate. To me, this map did not look like anything other than a Doom game environment. I did appreciate seeing into areas I'd soon visit, but this failed to hide the linearity of the map or the reality that a smaller, more flowy layout would provide better action, but that's okay, because half the fun of playing a map like this is being dragged through new and different-looking areas.

As DotW noted, this map has several “secrets” that aren't marked secret, and I was annoyed when I didn't get secret credit for finding the Computer Map, for crying out loud. ;D

At the end, I was 1 monster short of 100% kills, so I ended-up clipping to the teleport closet where 1 Imp had failed to join the party at the Blue Armor trap.

All in all, a fun adventure, and one of the best maps thus far.

[Steve D]

Map13 – Town of The Dead by Iikka Keränen – Kills – 100, Items – 96, Secret – 100. End Health – 114, Armor 66. Death Count – Zero

I've played this map before, or one very like it, because I remember the bridges. This was amazing stuff back then, and for my money, it still holds up reasonably well in terms of looks, and even the gameplay was more enjoyable than I expected.

As DotW noted, we see a lot of Ashwall, which sort of screams E2 Sandymap, maybe Map12 of Doom 2, I reckon, but without the dangerous gameplay. It works for mood, though, because of the way it blends with the excellent sky texture. I especially like the way Imps looked on the high Ashwall platforms as they moved in silhouette against the heavens. Really cool, and oddly, the very simplest thing about this map. I enjoyed the vast nukage lake as well, and as others have noted, the attractive midtextures in the windows, which gave off a Moorish flair. All in all, I thought it looked very much like an actually attractive IWAD map, and because my prehistoric memories of Doom 2 are primarily of pain and agony, I felt a real sense of menace as I wandered about.

Of course, the feeling of menace is pretty much all I got, which is not to say that Close Encounters of The Mancubus Kind was necessarily boring. Although the vast majority of the gameplay was trivial speed-bump encounters in uber-tight spaces, often presenting first a Hell Knight and then a deaf Revvie around the corner behind it, these battles, at least for a keyboarder, required a bit of care. I'm not a master of corner-abuse by any means, and one of the reasons I Rambo so much is that I really have hardly any other option. Fortunately, Iikka made it relatively easy in most cases to simply stand in one spot and blast away with the SSG, but a few battles – especially that nasty Baron on the bridge – put you in a position where making a mistake would cost you 40% or more, giving the encounters a measure of suspense. As it happened, I took very few hits during the corridor crawl, and that Baron scored most of the damage. It was only when the areas opened up a bit and had Revvies that any real danger was present, and the battle just before the exit lift was one I had to replay several times. First, I tried drawing-out the Revvies in hopes of starting infights with the Manc. Earlier in the map, I had managed to start infighting between Cacos and Imp snipers, a rare thing in this mapset given that monster density is so low in most areas. I never managed to accomplish that here, so I ended-up going Rambo and taking-out all but 1 Revvie with only 3 rockets because they were in a tight cluster at the doorway. That put a smile on my face. ;)

The graveyard battle was trivial, too, though I liked the look of the place. The monster statues looked nice, though I'd say that Leo Martin Lim did a better job of that artistically in the iconic uac_dead. The final battles against Imps and a Manc were a major anticlimax.

In the end, this is a moody, nice-looking map with cool bridges, substandard yet interesting – for a keyboarder – gameplay, and a really sweet music track. It definitely feels greater than the sum of its parts, so, in a bit of a surprise, I give this map a thumbs-up.

[Capellan]

Ready for a wall of text? :)

MAP15
Matthias Worch marks his last appearance in the wad with a nasty opening. A more than warm welcome, to say the least. It's a fair indication of what you're going to get in the level, though, as it features two common elements of the map: gun switches, and being trapped in tight confines for monster ambushes.

Let's start with the gun switches. These caused me a considerable delay in the map, as it took me quite a while to think of looking for the skull pillars that open the platform up to the yellow key area. It would have been a good idea to set indented switches into the walls instead: those leap out a lot more, at least for me. I had no issues spotting the gun switches in the yellow key area itself, for instance.

As far as the close quarter ambushes go, Worch favours the use of barons and HKs – a common thing in Requiem – and a couple of pinkie swarms. The demon onslaught at the yellow key is the nastiest I think – even if you know it is coming, you could well lose a big chunk of health. The mob of demons he unleashes when you unlock access to the megasphere, however, is a perplexing choice. Block monster lines mean they're just a boring wall of flesh that you have to punch or chainsaw to death, without any risk to yourself.

Getting the megasphere of course also takes you to the secret exit. Which is great, unless you're me and reflexively kill the AV before thinking "oh, maybe you're supposed to Archvile jump to the door". Oops. Since I'd already saved (damn you, instinctive F5!), I idclipped to the other side, after sitting in the lava long enough to simulate an AV blast. What can I say? I've never played "Doorway to Quake" and I want to give it a go.

Despite the issues I had with the map (some of my own devising), I think this is a solid send-off for Worch. It's a level of decent size and challenge, with several interesting fights and plenty of variety in its looks and tactical challenges. There's some nice if simple engine trickery in the combined gstone/marble walls of the courtyards, and I really enjoyed the yellow key wing. If I was to make one complaint, it would be that the level has two nice, large, open courtyards and Worch never gives us a real fight in either of them. They're the perfect venue for a battle with a big mob or swarm of low to mid tier monsters, but we never get that 'signature encounter'.


MAP31
Well, if you were going to ask someone to try and spoof Quake's more advanced engine in vanilla Doom 2, then Iikka was the guy you'd pick. His preference for using higher tier enemies also synergises well with Quake's lower monster counts.

Engine trickery is obviously the theme of this map, and pretty much the main focus. The layout is apparently based on an actual Quake map (I've finished Quake, but don't really remember any of it). The combat felt a little incidental on the whole. It's clear that gameplay is really not the point here, though I expect Iikka followed the original map's encounters to some extent. It certainly feels Quake-like: lots of monster closetry and with a focus on structured, set-piece encounters rather than the more free-flowing nature of Doom. I'm not generally a fan of this approach, myself. Which leads into why we were wrong in thinking Requiem was "the end" for Doom and a new era was dawning. We figured that Quake had true 3D and slopes and swimming and jumping and how could Doom compare? What we didn't take into account was how different the gameplay of Doom and Quake were, and how unusual Doom's frenetic, movement-based, lots of monsters arcade-style approach to FPS would prove to be. That uniqueness is why I am still playing Doom 20 years after it came out.

The archviles were curiously easy to deal with in this map, I found – they tended to appear near the corpses of imps and waste time rezzing the little suckers while I fried them with the plasma gun. The nastiest moment of the map was actually the room where you drop through the (faked) floor into a chaingunner crossfire (assuming your port of choice works properly in that room – mine did but Suitepee's did not).

The secret exit was disappointingly basic in terms of how it was hidden. On the other hand, that made it easy enough to find. I wonder if map32 will be any good? :-)


MAP32
(Note: Any discrepancy between what I say in this thread and what kmx wrote in his Requiem review is my fault. He wrote what I told him at the time, but I've thought about it a bit more since then and dredged up a few new details from the memory banks.)

Something I don't think was considered, when Requiem began, was what impact the apparent demise of Doom would have on the mappers. For myself, as I saw friends and Doom community figures leave the scene, my motivation foundered. What was the point of spending hours of effort to make a map no-one would play? Fortunately, this didn't happen to me until after I'd submitted my two planned Requiem maps, but it did mean that I dropped out of making a second map for STRAIN (which worked out okay when Bill McClendon's map11 got so big that they had to split it to make save games work, and he swallowed my map12 slot). It also meant that Demonfear stalled with two maps left undone. While I can't comment on how others were feeling at the time, the gradual disappearance of many of our number suggests I was not alone.

So one day, Chris Thornton, the project moderator for Requiem, sent an email which essentially said "We're four maps short of being done. No-one's sent through a new map or even a message to the mailing list in ages, and I've had no replies to some personal emails I've sent you guys, so unless I get a constructive response to this message, I'm going to –"

Exactly what Chris said he would do, I don't remember. I think it was probably "release the wad as is, with four maps missing", but he may also have said "cancel the project and return the maps to you guys to release them or not as you please".

Whatever it was, it sounded like an awful outcome to me. Fortunately enough, I had three unreleased maps on my hard drive; you can probably guess what they were from my comments above, even if you haven't read kmx's review of Requiem. This meant that if I whipped up a fourth map we'd have something for every slot. "Well, it's only map32." I figured. "Smallest map in the IWAD." And thus I spent a few hours – lightning fast for me, especially using DETH – churning out Bitter Herb, which draws its name from an article by comics writer and novelist Peter David.

My objective was to maximize gameplay while minimizing my level authoring effort, so I slapped down a pretty simple courtyard and kicked things off with a welcoming cacoswarm. Who doesn't love cacoswarms? Though let's be honest, it's only a half-hearted one compared to MM2 map15. I figured one fight wasn't enough, so I threw in a pincer movement of archviles (with demon meatshields) and some imps as an encore. It was 1997, and I figured a couple of 'viles in an open space would get players' hearts going. When I played it this time, though, the imps were the only thing in the whole map to actually damage me :-)

Other than that there's just a baron to help block the exit and a surprise chaingunner as a final 'gotcha', but the real resistance is over. For completeness' sake I squeezed two secrets in, as well, though they're not exactly difficult to find.

A very simple little map, but better than Grosse popping up in that slot, or no Requiem at all, I figure.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP15 Last Resort

Cut my life into pieces...

okay I couldn't resist, but anyways, we have Matthias Worch's last level in this pack. it's quite a fun one too and architecturally superb in many ways. the two main courtyards aren't too big on combat, and it helps in a way because I ended up doing a lot of running around in both of these two yards. and combat could get quite tricky in places, even right from the start with the ambush while you're in a cage. the whole yellow key area was a standout in my opinion, as I was finding different types of ambushes. the most notable two were the baron (hell knight in my case) ambush to the north, as well as the demon ambush after picking up the key. this one can be averted if you have a chainsaw from a previous level, or even the berserk from this one. quite a good tactic to use, block one ambush point and kill the demons from the other one while blocking it. When opening the gate to the secret exit, the demons appear in a flashy display to deter you from reaching it. and of course, there's the arch-vile jump for the secret exit. playing on HNTR had me seeing something I didn't notice before, and that was the invulnerability right before the teleporter to the secret exit. this made it so the jump was painless. how charmingly nice for the easiest skill levels.

MAP31 Doorway to Quake

if there's any map of Iikka's that can rival Town of the Dead or The Reactor in terms of clever vanilla tricks, it's this one. although essentially a remake of a Quake level, Iikka puts in a couple of nifty things into it. the apparent sector-over-sector effect and the one sliding door. the former looks very weird visually though, especially when dropping down. the combat is much more servicable and less claustrophobic. very good design and gameplay but it's real short.

MAP32 Bitter Herb

Windsor delivers a very small gameplay-oriented map, smaller than the previous one. the cacodemon encounter is pretty darn cool, and I remember the demon-archvile room rather well too.

[scifista42]

Please tell me, what exactly do I need to do to open the bars on the right side in the northern area? (behind blue door, presumably leading to yellow key) I've pressed all switches I've found, including the one on the 32-tall skull pedestal, and the secret switch right next to the green armor secret. I've played the map already twice and I always get stuck here.

[Capellan]

That's where I got stuck for a while (and complained about above).

Spoiler

There are gun switches on the two revenant towers in the chamber behind the yellow door. You can shoot them from the little rooms that overlook that chamber. Look for the skulls with glowing eyes.

[scifista42]

The map isn't entirely bad, some parts are well designed (like the start cage), but I already hate the whole level for lack of intuitiveness. Now I cannot find any way to open the bars around the red key, not even after pressing the marble switch next to it.