The DWmegawad Club plays: ConC.E.R.Ned & Draft Excluder

[Salt-Man Z]

Switching to HMP to avoid burnout...

E3M1: Passover
100% everything. I like the start, in particular how the story continues from E2M8. Took me a few seconds to see what needed doing: run around in circles and hit switches until the portal opens. BAMF! SPLAT! Cool. Grab a shotgun, use up the shells. Use up my bullets. Punch a crapload of stuff. Oh good, more shotguns! Let's punch this caco to death, just to be safe. A fun level, just the right length for what it is. But I'm glad I'll be playing continuous all the same.

E3M2: Fire Temple
100% everything. Another good one. I immediately found the secret entrance to the yellow key hall, so I was confused by the necessity of the red key until I realized that the red key door is one-way only. Ah-ha! I had to clear out everything anyway, because, and I'm glad I did because of the backpack (hooray!) and plasma gun. Odd little straferun trick in the exit room to get a single rocket. Hunh.

[Demon of the Well]

E3M3 -- Infernal Catacombs - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA
Seems to be a definite theme as far as setting up the action goes in E3 so far--for the third map in a row, the gameplay is centered on accosting the player with monsters in relatively small spaces (lots of corridors ala E3M2, although like that map there's at least one larger open chamber), asking them to subdue the unruly beasts with mostly light/basic armament and/or fisticuffs. In this one you can find both a plasma gun and a rocket launcher (the former is in a secret, and I think the latter is technically hidden as well), but there's not much ammo for either (especially without the third secret)--e.g. you can have the RL for the last room or for the imp mosh near the blue skull, but not both. In fact, ammo and health are fairly rare in general, and again, I seem to recall that the only piece of armor is also in a secret.

All this means that, even moreso than E3M1 and E3M2, this is a map where most of the peril is attrition-based, not an approach Cannonball uses very often. Basically, the map tries to defeat you early, with all of its nastiest encounters occurring in the first 2-3 minutes--there's the potentially crippling shotgunner broadside trap right outside the first door, the deceptive slow-lift down into the depths (you probably expect to fistfight that first Baron, but the pack of pinkies attacking from all sides at the bottom can still surprise you), and then the pincer trap in the sinewy lava tunnel en route to the bloodspigot hub. While it's likely that none of these jabs is individually strong enough to kill you, it's equally likely that at least one of the latter two will manage to injure you, and given the relative scarcity of recovery items and other resources, it can take a while to recover, leaving you weakened and more vulnerable to the larger yet generally less dangerous traps that wait in the back half of the level. My play in the FDA was fairly weak--I did well against the very first ambush and versus Barons but made a ton of mistakes against everything else, seemed like--and so it was probably the various secrets that kept me alive. Without them, I reckon I'd have bitten the dust in the crumbling tunnel cacotrap before the red key (probably the best setup in the map, incidentally--the teleporting Baron-pincer a minute or two later is probably becoming predictable for most players at this point). But, if you manage to do fairly well on those early encounters, you're pretty much set, since the map only gets easier and easier as it goes on, largely a function of your ammo reserves eventually growing to outpace what is at root mostly pretty scant opposition. I can appreciate that the approach to danger taken is fairly effective (as my poor play made me aware), but I think the map's too frontloaded for its own good. Unfortunately, the last fight tends to devolve into a doorcamping exercise regardless of the individual player's style (the cacos probably should have been primed to appear only after the player was inside the room on one of the rock pillars), ending the level on a note of artificiality.

I'm still not really sold on the aesthetics either, once again largely a function of lighting, with too much flat brightness prevailing in too many areas. Some areas look okay, ala the collapsing tunnel mentioned above: the part of the field with the switch that collapses the walls has a lower light level, while the surrounding lavapool sectors and peripheral walls are brighter. This juxtaposition of brighter sectors with a dimmer central space for contrast looks a lot more believable and makes the lava "pop" more visually, especially in contrast to things like the awful-looking uniformly fullbright keyhub. Not a big fan of the final room, either, but in my case it's not so much flatness of the ceiling that bothers me as it is those Realistic (TM) shadow-spots on it above the various pillars--just looks like somebody spilled salad dressing on a red tablecloth or something to me.

[TheOrganGrinder]

E3M4: Demonizer

I'll echo what's been said already in the thread about this feeling more like a "traditional" Doom map; so far, ConC.E.R.N.ed episode 3 hasn't established its own flavour as quickly or as strongly as the first couple of episodes did, which, considering we're now almost halfway through the episode, leaves me wondering what surprises the remaining levels will hold.

On the other hand, it's a fun, solid level that lacks the frustration factor of the preceding one. The mix of monsters is similar, but there were fewer situations where I felt the best/only way to get through a fight was to camp at the doorway. Use of 3D space was solid and the arrangement of the level around the central chamber gave a sense of logic to the player's progression; I could tell I was making headway in more ways than just the accumulation of keys and kills. I feel like my habit of playing on Hurt Me Plenty led me to miss a party when the Baphomet cube in the middle of that central chamber dropped to reveal a couple of Barons of Hell rather than a cyberdemon, but for some reason I'm not all that heartbroken. :P

The "meat" of the level seems to be in the eastern quadrant of the map, with its atmospheric dungeon passages and multiple switches to hunt; I particularly liked the two-level hallway with shotgun snipers on the upper platform. The final battle didn't do a lot for me, but the generous provisioning of health and armour in that area was appreciated.

[scifista42]

E3M4 - "Demonizer"

Better layout and gameplay than in the previous map, and I liked it. I was satisfied with both boss fights too. Nothing much else to say, the map didn't contain anything wordly amazing - but nevertheless, it's good.

[cannonball]

E3M4 - "Demonizer"
This is a rather linear map and not too hard to be honest. The cyber can be a hazard and so can the final room, other than that the map is straightforward. I think this map lacked a little imagination in the layout and design, though it isn't bad either. Some of the areas are too symmetrical as well.

E1M6 - Laboratory

I tried something a little different here, mainly pitching the map on one encounter which encircles the entire map. Things do get rather hectic for a time, though infighting and rockets/plasma will deal with this effectively. The map now can overwhelm you, but a little care will see you over the line quite nicely.

[Capellan]

e3m5
I liked this sprawling, inter-connected hellbase a lot. Plenty of variety of locations and battles, with a mix of tight confines and open spaces. Good fun to battle through.

Enjoyed how various areas hooked up in multiple ways, allowing you to engage encounters from multiple different angles and explore in all kinds of directions. This ties in to the return of the 'three key doors for the exit, but not anywhere else' motif, which gives the player the run of almost the whole map from the moment the level begins.

I do think having the teleporting cyber behind the last key door was a mistake – I just merrily ran to the open exit, laughing at his efforts to rocket me.

Visually I liked this a lot. The wide range of texture selection, including plenty of 'base' type ones, made it feel more like an e2 map, looks-wise, and I thought the 'lava river' looked really good.

Fun map.

[scifista42]

E3M5 - "Complex Trauma"

This map was cannonball's submission to Hellbent's unfinished Pandemonium project. The goal of that project was to make maps principially in the same spirit as "E3M3:Pandemonium", but cannonball ended up making a literal Pandemonium remaster, tributing every single area in that IWAD map, with design style of his own. Since then, cannonball revised the map several times to remove the homages, but as I see it, he wasn't successful - I can still recognize 99% of Pandemonium elements here.

Anyway, the map was good, fun, interesting to explore, and different-enough from the previous maps. I've enjoyed its nonlinearity and secrets (I've found 5/9). Baron spams were at least reasonably non-insane, on the other hand, they were still easily skippable.

[dobu gabu maru]

E3M4: Uhhh not really sure “Big Blue” really goes with Doom’s gameplay. Music choice aside, this map is… alright. The number of barons slows down the gameplay here and there (gee, ain't that the theme so far?), but it’s pretty fun to run by them and hope that doesn’t bite you in the ass. I liked most of the combat in the beginning but the cyber can be easily scooted by and the mastermind battle practically starts the infighting for you.

E3M5: Ooh I like this one. It’s a complex crawl with dozens of twisting paths to choose from, allowing the player to weave in and out of areas. It works well coming off of a more linear affair, as the overwhelming number of options is a very welcome sight. Unfortunately the gameplay can be extremely easy if you play very cautiously and snipe enemies one by one, but thankfully it also allows you to be gung-ho and just storm through the place, fists flying & chaingun blazing. A fun little amusement park of wooden corridors and death.

[mouldy]

E3M5 - "Complex Trauma"
http://www.mediafire.com/download/bhxlj28x7zfw8x3/concern-e3m5-mouldy.lmp

Interesting map, reminiscent of episode 2 with the non-linear network of rooms and corridors. For some reason I had some trouble getting into this map, the monsters didn't like me. Or maybe it was because the start is a bit of a berserk punching ammo scrounge, and I find sometimes those kind of starts are a bit of a gamble. After getting my shit together I started having more fun. What I like about maps like this is how easy it is to run from fights, and yet the monsters will eventually find you, so depending on how fast and loose you play it you will get pretty random encounters.

[Magnusblitz]

E3M5: Complex Trauma
100% kills, 6/9 secrets

Definitely feels like a Tom Hall map with all the interconnected hallways and rooms, apparently this is because it was originally based off Pandemonium. I have to disagree with scifista though regarding removing the elements - aside from the general feel of the layout, and perhaps the northern room, I really don't see any Pandemonium elements here. Would probably work well as a DTWID map.

As dobu said, one can approach this with guns blazing, and that was pretty much the approach I took - wish I had found the RL earlier, but managed to survive without it for the most part. Good surprise cyberdemon at the end too. Alas, after missing one secret last map I missed a ton this time - looks like my run of secret-gathering is over. But good map, fun to blast through.

[TheOrganGrinder]

E3M5: Complex Trauma

I can definitely see where the comparisons to Pandemonium come from, and that is absolutely not a complaint. This is, to my eyes, the strongest level in ConC.E.R.N.ed's episode 3 so far.

It's a sprawling, labyrinthine key hunt in which the monsters are given enormous freedom to roam once awakened; at times their limited pathfinding rules will keep them penned up even as you navigate other parts of the level, but it's very possible for monsters to come boiling out of side passages or through areas you'd thought were secure, which adds a lovely, dynamic sense of danger and makes even the less fearsome entries in the bestiary feel threatening. There are no enormous vertical spaces but there are plenty of ledge/platform snipers (some of which ledges and platforms you can access, some you can't) and modest drop-downs, so I'd say the map suceeds in using the vertical to create interesting combat situations. I felt like the Barons of Hell were used less intrusively/obnoxiously this time around; I tended to encounter them first in areas that didn't make fighting them immediately an enticing prospect, so there were at least two or three of them that milled around in the middle of the map for a while, slinging the occasional green plasma ball at me every time I passed by a particular doorway or opening.

In terms of atmosphere, it's rather gloomier than the earlier levels of episode 3, with a heavier intermingling of Hellish and technological textures. There are a lot of areas with cubbies, uneven walls, and blocky doorframes that create potential blind spots, further amplifying the sense of threat, and after the brash and in-your-face music of E3M4, we're now treated to something darker and creepier. The combination is a good one.

The automap secret was the second-to-last one I found, and I was going to complain that the switch to open it was unmarked - but looking at the map in DoomBuilder after the fact, I see an arrow pointing at it. So, good job, cannonball, for playing fair with your secrets; I am indeed finding most of them.

tl;dr version: I really liked this map and would play some more like it.

[cannonball]

E3M5 - "Complex Trauma"
I think the history of this map has been covered, so no need to repeat myself, that said I did build this map from scratch, I just used my effort from the pandemonium project as a guide, so there are differences.
I tried to make this harder than the sandy maps, and I think this is achieved somewhat, that said starting the map is the hardest part, once weapons and power ups are found then the going gets much easier.

[Magnusblitz]

E3M6: Devil's Crucible
100% kills, 2/2 secrets

Big monsters! Tiny spaces!

That's basically the map, set up around a few small setpieces that involve large boss monsters (barons, cybers and masterminds) in some small arenas. In pretty much every case, infighting is the way to go, though there's also some heavy weaponry provided as well. This is especially true in the eastern section - it's easy to hide behind the door (monsters can't open the 'fast' doors, can they?)

One might argue that it's pretty symmetrical, but the map is short enough it doesn't matter (and the main encounters are different). Pretty short and sweet, though the one-way ending of the secret exit is a bit lame if you're trying to 100% it.

[scifista42]

E3M6 - "Devil’s Crucible"

Short and simple slaughtermap. Consisted of generic rooms + corridors with a fair amount of symmetry, not so great. I've found the secret key and got to the secret exit.

[Capellan]

e3m6
This feels like a curiously desultory map. It's basically just three arena areas, with only the first area (which gets multiple melees) really provoking much actual effort from a continuous player.

After an opening battle which neatly combines sergeants, imps and spectres, we get a cyber reveal. On continuous, he is very easy to circle strafe. On pistol, you probably need to ignore him for now, lower the teleporters, and bolt.

I went west first, which is the spider mastermind zone. Again, on continuous, this is really really easy. The spider somehow got involved in-fighting barons, and I merrily rocketed it to death before it could turn its attention to me. The I mopped up the barons, flicked the switches (but missed the secret), finally grabbed the BFG, and left. This meant I only faced a couple of barons in the central room, which was no trouble.

The east wing is perhaps even more trivial than the west. I just ran clockwise around it – flicking the switch as I went - until the bars lowered, then sprinted upstairs. Spotted the copyrighted cannonball candle-concealed door, grabbed the red key and invuln, and teleported back to the centre.

Where I was very glad of the invuln, I have to admit. Made it trivially easy to BFG the horde that was waiting for me.

Headed out through the secret exit. Guess that you're supposed to telefrag the first cyber on pistol start, given that this route sends you there first.

Visuals are fine, albeit fairly standard: red stone centre, green stone wings.

[mouldy]

E3M6 - "Devil’s Crucible"
http://www.mediafire.com/download/f7oy17d733opkiy/concern-e3m6-mouldy.lmp

Heh, very cool map, a simple hub I guess, but its short enough to play quickly and sharp enough to kill you just as fast if you slip up. I don't know what that midi is called (i'm sure someone will tell me now) but it always reminds me of the batman tv show, and I will probably mention that every time I hear it. Anyway, yes. Fun map, not a lot more to say about it. I think the first room killed me the most, although one of my deaths involved trying to hump a cyberdemon's leg for some unknown reason. I found that eventually the best solution to every scenario was to run deeper into it, the mastermind room in particular looks pretty easy to get them killing each other. Yet again I found the secret exit, I'm usually terrible at finding secrets so I appreciate being thrown some easy ones.

[Demon of the Well]

E3M4 -- Demonizer - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA
This somewhat directionless level does seem to be something of a departure from the construction style that has characterized E3 up to this point, being comprised mainly of somewhat generously scaled hallways and airy boxes with various thingamajigs in their centers, much more like the maps in E1 or E2 in floorplan and general aspect than the somewhat claustrophobic fistfight maps that immediately preceded it. As in those earlier maps, the vast majority of the shapes are essentially orthogonal, although being heavily fixated on centerstage setpieces it doesn't really suffer much on that account per se, although there's a certain lack of cohesion which elides from the 1:1 thematic shifts between areas and the extremely linear nature of the progression. Lighting is something of an interesting proposition in this map.....I still don't really like the looks of it (still think everything is waaaaaaaayyy too bright and cheery-looking), but I can't fairly say it looks to have been ignored in this case. On the contrary, there are lots of little pools of sector-light and other details that appear quite delicately wrought in their way--it's just that rather than contrasting dim with brighter Cannonball essentially contrasted bright with even brighter, a persistently strange effect most notable in the upstairs wooden hallways in the western annex. I also couldn't stand the music selection for this level, must've lasted all of 47 seconds before IDMUSing to something else (first time I've done that in ConCERNed, at least).

Anyway, I said above that the level has a 'directionless' feel to it. What I mean by that is that it seems more like small segments of different levels stuck together with scads of scotch tape to form a single normal-sized map than it does like a set of areas that were born/designed together. I suspect this is largely a function of the near total linearity ('near' because you get to pick which upstairs wooden hallway in the western area you explore first, I'm pretty sure) and the utter lack of interconnection between areas--the initial 2-3 room blue key complex is its own discrete one/done area that you never think about again as soon as you're into the cyberdemon/wooden hallways area, and once you're out of there and into the last spiderdemon setpiece the divorce is similarly total. I guess a lot of maps are that way, in fairness, but it really struck me here for one reason or another, perhaps because visual interconnection/foreshadowing/callback between areas is essentially nil. Hell, not even just between areas, but within them as well--I recall that the cyberdemon in the middle of the level is positioned so that he can throw rockets through a couple of little windows in the upstairs hallway annex, but other than that pretty much everything is discretely sectioned off from everything else via doors or lifts. Something subtly artificial about that.

Maybe it wouldn't be an issue if the gameplay were more striking, but for the most part the action is pretty unremarkable. The final spiderdemon setpiece is clearly the conceptual high point, and while it's a good idea with plenty of potential (far from the first time I've seen it, mind), the execution is somewhat lacking, for reasons that other posters have already mentioned. I also remember amusing myself by crusher-pecking one of the early Barons to death (I'm easily amused), but other than that nothing really stood out in a positive way....simple hallway janitoring and room-clearing for the most part, with a slightly padded aspect to it (e.g. since nothing happens when you hit the switch to remove the bars initially blocking off the wooden hallways, it seems like they probably didn't need to be blocked off in the first place). I didn't see a lot of point in the cyberdemon, either, he wasn't really positioned to be much of a threat, and there was no way to eliminate him efficiently or stylishly, so I just hosed him down with the plasma rifle through one of the upstairs windows. Pretty bland.

Certainly agree at this point with those who have observed that E3 just simply doesn't seem to be as good as E2 (or even parts of E1), unfortunately.

[Pirx]

e3m1 -

mr. cyberdemon, here we see again. i lost my weapons but you got stuck on a teleporter, now let's see what sucks more. that was pretty much the most memorable part of the map. the rest consisted mostly in using a berserk pack on a few monsters.


e3m2 -

yes, that secret room is somehow easily found. large, with right angles, abit plain. i jumped a lot on the single pillar with a green torch on it, while all others were red, but didn't find anything. went out of the way of the beginning baron spam. tbh, the combination of souls and shotgunners down in the marble cellar with a lava ceiling (?) was more dangerous.


e3m3 -

another berserk map, who would have guessed that. luckily i heard the secret door to the blue armor. pressed the switch right in front of the dumbfounded baron, proceeded to bash a mass of imps and demons that warped in, and the said baron right in his guardhouse. again, i found cannonball's secrets intuitive, like the one with the plasma gun. the last big room with the pillars was not that suspenseful however, especially as i was using gzdoom with mouselook enabled. a bit of door camping and sniping and you're done.


e3m4 -

interesting style, a mix of marble, hellish red and organic stuff, with a music that doesn't fit at all. i went out of the way of the barons in the beginning since, again, i was given only a zerk and some shells. the cyber on the island in the lava pool can be killed easily by shooting it with the plasma rifle from the yellow key room, but it's not necessary. i kept my cells for the big final room with the spider, where i thought i could steal the red key from under it - no way, i couldn't grab it because of the spider on top of it, and died laughably. so the next time i circled the tower until the spider died from infighting, and that was it.


e3m5 -

a bigger, meaner version of pandemonium, with a nice theme of old wood, skin & flesh, and lava, and a gloomy music. very interconnected from the start, i ran circles here until i had all keys. the sergeants lurking everywhere required a more tactical play (probably i'm just too aggro with punching everything). the pillar with the bfg lowered as im was looking at it, thinking how to get the gun - apprently just a crossed line? whatever, really fun and well designed map.

[cannonball]

E1M8 - "Particle Accelerator"

Well this is a simple attempt at making a better final map, that along with some better visuals. I think it works a little better with the barons applying some decent pressure as well as the mastermind which can tear you apart if you are too distracted by the barons. That said in the video the run did go rather smoothly.

E1M7 will take a while to revamp, so I thought I would do the quick boss map first.

[cannonball]

E3M6 - "Devil’s Crucible"
The encounters are too symmetrical and are simply connected by corridors of shotgunners, not much else to say really. It plays okay enough but I have to admit it doesn't sell the wad overall very well. Hey ho.

[dobu gabu maru]

E3M6: This one was over quick. It’s a bloody romp through three separate boss arenas, and while I like the dual cyber stuff at the end, the other fights weren’t nearly as impressive. Plus the battles are only really threatening if you stick around to clean up the monsters—otherwise you can skedaddle outta there and leave the monsters to bicker amongst themselves. I think Powell is in his element not in crafting arena encounters, but creating level layouts that allow enemies to pursue the player and granting hitscanners multiple angles of attack. That’s not to say that he can’t make good encounters, but I just find his greatest strength being his level layout.

[TheOrganGrinder]

E3M6: Devil's Crucible

...And episode 3 was doing so well.

This really isn't a style of map I enjoy. More than anything it reminds me that episodes 1 and 2 both had fairly sedate boss maps compared to the body of the episode, and so I wonder what this WAD is going to throw at me in E3M8 that can top this - if indeed it can.

Found both secrets, made my way to the secret level, killed the cyberdemon before saving; I'll get to E3M9 tomorrow.

[Capellan]

e3m7
This is another "three episodes in one level" map, like e2m5. There's an e2/3 opening, then a mostly e1 base until we hit the blue door, when we switch strongly to e2/3 again. But once that wing is done and we have the red key it's "hello startan!" once more until the hell-tainted exit area.

Despite the strong thematic shifts, the level holds together pretty well. It's got plenty to explore, and a couple of alternative routes for getting around, making it fun to poke in the corners and see what you find. It also has a strong 'bridge' motif, with several occasions where you navigate walkways over fluids, or must first raise then walkways and then navigate them. Don't fall off, though – most of them appear inescapable. Though to be honest, you'd have to be pretty careless to fall off, in most cases.

I generally enjoyed the first half of this map better than the second half, but it was all quite solid. The climactic melee at the exit seems to be best dealt with by initially running away and then sneaking back later to yoink the invulnerability and tidy up the cybers and whatever else is left. That was certainly what worked for me, anyway. Running away is a perfectly valid tactic in my Doom playbook :-)

[mouldy]

E3M9 - "Cyberslayer"
http://www.mediafire.com/download/xhpvg49igli9uu6/concern-e3m9-mouldy.lmp

For most of this map I was killed more by the shotgun guys than the cybers, but I think in the final room the cybers evened the score. Fun little cyber-killing puzzle map. Its a shame I didn't have the ammo to finish them all off, I'm not that economical with my bfg. Entertaining stuff.

E3M7 - "Back to System Control"
http://www.mediafire.com/download/fhqnpmbvos3xuze/concern-e3m7-mouldy.lmp

This map is a blast. Its a fairly straightforward adventure, going from A to B to A to C etc, but it has plenty of fun along the way. Including a cyberdemon who teleported out of nowhere right in front of me and fired a rocket in my face which I somehow survived. I also survived the finale which surprised me, I could see something big was coming, but I wasn't expecting a semi slaughter encounter with a whole troup of cybers. In fact I survived the whole thing without any deaths, which is maybe a bit weird this late in the wad, most of the encounters are shooting whatever is blocking your path, but it feels fun, and the music is jolly, so I can't take it too seriously. Thematically is feels like a bit of a return to episode 1, I haven't been following the story so I'm guessing there is some kind of plot driving the scenery. I like this map, despite its linear corridor-shooting nature.

[Capellan]

Forgot my secret map thoughts :)

e3m9
So this is the level where you telefrag a lot of cyber demons. You do occasionally have to kill them other ways (if you kill them at all), but telefragging can account for something like 2/3 of them, maybe 3/4.

Like the previous level, this is mostly arena-based, with five main locations. Each features one or more cyberdemons. I was going to say "is dominated by" at first, but honestly they don't do a lot of domination. Most of the areas allow you to fairly easily evade them. The final area, with no less than eight of them (or 10 in UV) is a prime case of this. Despite all these massive goat-legged dudes tromping around, I sailed through that zone quite easily, hammering all the switches I needed and escaping through the teleporter.

The secret trigger in sector 172 is either not y-aligned correctly, or is ridiculously subtle.

I liked that this level tried a little variation of the original "Warrens" idea, and I thought each of the individual areas looked nice, but it's not something I'd be in a hurry to play again – it's fairly gimmick-based gameplay where once you have the steps worked out, there's not much to stop you executing them.

[Demon of the Well]

E3M5 -- Complex Trauma - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA
Yes, this is a bit out of left field, Cannonball covers Sandy Petersen remixing Tom Hall. The "Pandemonium" references are generally handled ala Wonderful Doom or the like, where the concept and general shape are instantly recognizable but with enough differences in the details and arrangements to elevate the experience a bit above the level of a pure 'cover'--we have the northern exit junction (complete with secret closet stuffed with monsters), a tasty powerup in a small well at the bottom of a winding staircase, a burning cellar, several rooms bisected by channels of pernicious liquids, etc. Many other, vaguer references are present as well (wooden pillar chambers with upstairs flesh corridors, etc.), and of course there are a few areas that have no obvious parallel in the original map, ala the redstone BFG courtyard. Kind of surprised it didn't use "Deep Into the Code" for its BGM, honestly...instead we get another neat track from Vile Flesh. I'm certainly not complaining.

Anyway, other than the cyberdemon surprise at the exit, the action's generally very direct, casually-pitched and methodical, not unlike something from the original game, I suppose. While the general level of opposition is significantly higher than it is in something like the original "Pandemonium", the overall pacing is arguably a little more sedate. The original E3M3 tries to get you running deep into occupied territory from the moment the map loads, whereas "Complex Trauma" allows you to collect your bearings and make a more deliberate decision as to how you'd like to proceed in the level, e.g. by offering you three discrete paths at the start and then periodically tempting you with opportunities to transition over into the middle of another path as you move along. Exploration, sightseeing, and secret-hunting are thus the chief draws of the map. Combat is almost entirely incidental and prosecuted primarily via preplaced monsters that remain dormant until you enter their area; what few traps there are are generally very small in scale (again, excepting the bit at the exit), and the nature of the map connections means that most distant monsters other than souls and cacos tend not to be able to hunt you very well if they should become active--dropoffs or other obstacles get in the way, particularly the central junction the player sees at the start of the map (Barons in particular are too tall to navigate through most of this area). The early areas at least are thing-balanced tightly enough that you can get into trouble if you don't take them seriously (I engaged in yet more substandard Tyson-play in the early going and so spent a good 2-3 minutes walking around on 10% health without really realizing it), but generally speaking it's a leisurely engagement where the monsters come off more like safari targets than serious threats.

For this reason, the majority of the combat is not very memorable, and in true Pandemonium style the setting itself is such a zany patchwork of polyglot themes and constructions that it's equally as hard to really digest/parse it all in hindsight after just one play. Still, though, despite how my comments may sound I think that this level makes a positive contribution to the episode--E3 really needed to change up its game after opening with three very similar maps, and E3M4, as a weaker version of a model that Cannonball followed a lot in E1 and E2, didn't really satisfactorily fill that role. This map, by contrast, is conceptually different from anything that came before, and so its appearance is most timely. While the whole "remix" genre of mapping is not something I'm particularly fond of as a general rule, I did definitely appreciate the change of pace in this case.

[Magnusblitz]

E3M9: Cyberslayer
100% kills, 3/3 secrets

Little homage to Warrens at the start, then turns into "Cannonball makes a Cyberdreams map." It's... okay. The puzzles aren't terribly inventive - either run around to hit a switch that activates a crusher, or telefrag them. My favorite part is probably the area where one cyber teleports behind you, and the player needs to get the monsters to walk onto the teleport pad where he can then telefrag them - even telefragged the barons and a caco using it.

Overall though, feels like the level needed a few more passes. The outdoor area feels a bit strange with its very large but neatly-hewed rocks, too many perfect rounded-corner square/rectangles. This is actually something that's been noticeable throughout the E3 maps - despite being in what are supposed to be natural, rocky caverns, oftentimes the angles are still nice, neat 45 degree angles. I think that, compared with the blah overly-bright lighting, contributes to some of the underwhelming design of the E3 levels.

Anyways, off track. But yes, a few more passes - the shotgunners in the outside area do more damage than the cyberdemons, kinda upstaging them a bit. The demon horde in that area feels a bit pointless too, and the last battle isn't really fun because of the lack of ammo. I hit the switch and high-tailed it out of there with six cyberdemons left behind, and then returned to 100% it and had to slowly whittle them down with the chaingun and shotgun. Yeah, I wasn't really using the BFG efficiently, but more ammo probably would've made the final fight more fun.

[TheOrganGrinder]

E3M9: Cyberslayer

Mostly this is another case of not being a style of level I enjoy, though the cyberdemon arenas themselves are more varied than in E3M6, and are connected in more interesting ways, letting the player battle their across what's probably the biggest ourdoor area we've seen in the WAD so far. The callbacks to E3M1 (and thus to Warrens, also) are nicely done; you think you know what you're into when you find yourself replaying the episode's opening moments, but you really don't. I'll be glad to get away from these very orchestrated combat setups and back to more organic dungeon-crawling, though.

Missed a secret, but I'm okay with that, exiting the level on almost full health anyway.

E3M7: Back to System Control

...433 monsters on Hurt Me Plenty? That's a lot of meat to kill. I did take the time to kill all of them in the end, though I was left wondering if perhaps I should have ignored the last two cyberdemons and saved my cells for whatever challenges E3M8 might hold, but... eh.

This is another big, sprawling map, but I felt it didn't quite have the charm of E3M5. I think I share Capellan's sentiment that the first half of the map is more appealing than the second; once you're past the red key door, gameplay becomes mostly a series of set piece battles against ever-heavier opposition. The final courtyard provides some entertaining slaughter if you've acquired the invulnerability sphere, though it won't last the duration. Overall I was left with a bit of a sense that this began its life as a late-E1 or mid-E2 map and was rebuilt into a Hell-themed E3 map quite late in its development; several of the infernal areas feel like they started out as something else.

This is another one that doesn't quite knock it out of the park.

[scifista42]

E3M9: Cyberslayer

TheOrganGrinder said:

Mostly this is another case of not being a style of level I enjoy

Same here. I didn't like the map, probably because it was centered around "evasion-style" setups / running past powerful monsters. That's it - sorry.

[NuclearPotato]

Mid-terms kicked my butt, so I haven't been able to catch up with the Club until now. So, without further adieu...

E2M1-Collider Anomaly: Liked this map, but I can't remember too much about it other then the starting hub.

E2M2-Logistics: Love the non-linearity on this one. The crate maze has some creative encounters, and I like that you could potentially dash past the enemies guarding the red key before they can blast you. The big problem here is that some of the ambushes trigger in way too confined spaces. The most notable one is the teleporting enemies after you pick up the blue key. With no room to move, I ended up sending the lift up and down for 5 minutes, just plinking away at any enemy catching a ride on the lift.

E2M3-Hydrophonic Facility: The layout was pretty neat, and we got an early Mastermind fight that went by pretty painlessly. I think I'd have to play this one again to get a concrete opinion, though.

E2M4-Infirmary: Really liked the corpses on the stretchers, especially when they're used as spawning points for the Lost Souls at one point. It was a nice breather after the last level, especially considering what's to come. I did notice how little ammo there was here, though I'm playing continuous, so it didn't matter much at the time

E2M5-Tactical Command: I really loved how open-ended this map was. Really challenging fights throughout, especially in the red key areas and the final Cyberdemon fight. But unlocking the secret exit drove me to madness. I had to open the map up in SLADE to figure out what was going on there (the switch I was missing was the one in the red door area, where you go through the wall to the other side of the switch, incidentally).

E2M9-Blackout: Fuck this map with the hatred of 1000 damned Doomguys. I understand the gimmick, but bumbling around in the dark, randomly bumping into specters that are hard to see under normal circumstances is not my idea of fun. The standout encounter here was the teleporter traps going off after teleporting back to the beginning, which ate up just about all of my rockets and cells.

I'll be back either tonight or tomorrow with the rest of E2 (I hope).