The DWmegawad Club plays: Doom 2 Reloaded

[yakfak]

a clumsy demonstration of the d2reload MAP09 route

DSDA has a better one but I just wanted to show that mortals could beat the level properly lol

[cannonball]

Suitepee said:

I might have missed the crusher (until the end), but I was playing from pistol starts (as was recommended in the text file) and I only had rockets to deal with the narrow corridor of 5 Archviles + company after the lift. Unless there was a BFG secret I missed, I'd still be curious as to how an UV-Max IL speedrunner (of which PAR times for said UV-Maxes are mentioned in the text file) would handle the situation I described.

I wasn't referring to the crusher on one side of the bridge DotW, I was referring to the narrow corridor on the other side where you go up a lift and there's a Pain Elemental in your face, followed by 5 Archviles and company past it. Unless there's a gimmick or other process that doesn't have the 5 Archviles up there, I'm not sure I missed anything there. That encounter just plain sucked.

Anyways, I hope to be livestreaming the second part of my playthrough soon enough.

Here is a video demo of the map

You need to redirect the teleport trap to where the crusher is, this prevents monsters teleporting elsewhere, then you use the crusher to kill everything that warps in.

[Suitepee]

Ok well I just played through map09 again after watching the video cannonball linked, and there wasn't 5 Archviles up in the corridor when I raced through the map.

I'm still a little confused as to what triggers the teleport trap though; is it that room behind the blue door in the crusher room I can see a liftwall gradually lowering when I view that part, or what? Was I meant to speed towards the switch facing the bridge from above to 'subvert' the teleport?

Either way, now I feel somewhat bad for not being aware of a race to redirect the teleport trap despite it being shown at the start. Map 08 was still bad though.

/facepalm

[Pirx]

cannonball said:

Here is a video demo of the map

did qaatar post anything new? i found his map16 demo of d2r amazing, much in the style of TAS where the player brushes monsters away with contempt.

[Havoc Crow]

MAP18: Warehouse Siege

I did not enjoy this. Sorry.

I appreciate the novelty of the "stealth" idea, where the player must be clever and nimble to succeed, and each enemy becomes a genuine threat as opposed to a brief roadblock. However... while outwitting the monsters once can be satisfying, doing it over and over and over again is not fun. This is the first (and hopefully the only) map where I actually gave up and saved mid-level several times because I really didn't feel like herding Demons into their pen five times in a row.

That, and some puzzles were a bit broken. The tunnel with the Revenants and Arch-viles on lifts near the beginning can be passed simply by running down it at full tilt and never looking back, instead of playing careful peek-a-boo. The Arch-vile guarding the yellow key is apparently meant to be trapped by the switch-activated pitfall, but the switch is so small and hard to hit and the vile is so fast that, ultimately, a much better way is simply to outmaneouver him and run for the key. (Unless the author intended there to be multiple solutions.) And I have no idea how to get past that Mancubus blocking the bridge. Ultimately it boiled down to pure chance; twice the bridge rose without the mancubus on it, once I managed to get it killed by revenants. (Now that I read mouldy's comments, maybe it was just my bad luck and it wasn't actually supposed to be on the bridge.)

From the very beginning you suspect there will be a big payoff where you'll finally be allowed to go to town on the enemies. Even with the weaponry you're given, however, killing them all can be surprisingly hard. I didn't really want to spend more time in this map than necessary so I made a beeline for the red door. I was a bit disappointed that the exit beyond the red door was so unspectacular, you walk up to a gray lift and that's it, level exit.

This was, ultimately, one level I definitely wouldn't want to play again.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP18: Warehouse Siege

This level... didn't really do a lot for me. I appreciate the novelty in concept more than in execution, particularly since there seem to be moments where the mechanics of the level don't quite work as intended. I might have approached this level differently had it been released on its own rather than surrounded by far more 'typical' levels in this WAD.

[Capellan]

map19
It’s another base level masquerading as a city level by having vistas of other buildings (and one exterior walkway). But honestly, when the base levels look like this, I’m not going to complain too much. Progression is back to being a bit linear, but the environments are sufficiently varied and have enough alternate routes through them that it doesn’t feel too much like a railroad.

Exit room fight was a tad inconvenient - always hard to target monsters below you in Doom, and it becomes especially challenging when the monsters in question are revenants and arachnotrons.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP19 Void Complex

just another run-of-the-mill designed techbase map that plays pretty decently. there's a bit of symmetry going on in a few areas a la Whispers of Satan. I remember there being a big bad spiderdemon at the outdoor portion, and the ending area is actually a lot more annoying than it's worth. the rocket launcher has a fun use where you can find it. there's one interesting secret, where if you press a switch you find before it, you will miss out on it entirely. it's a clever one.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 17 -- Downtown - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
I find the gameplay in this map pretty enjoyable, it's a bit more lively and loose than in many previous maps, which tended to place more of an emphasis on more deliberate positioning/target prioritization game by dint of the very calculating monster placement, whereas in this map it's much easier (and probably much more likely) to run around willy-nilly stirring up the locals without necessarily dealing with them then and there. I reckon the looser feel to the combat is largely a function of the playspaces being quite a bit larger in scale than one sees in the majority of the WAD (which of course also compels the author to use more monsters who are more likely to be active simultaneously), although the sandboxy progression that the classic downtown/city streets setting tends to betoken no doubt contributes as well.

Interestingly enough, though, while the Downtown segment proper is preceded by a segment in another techbase which does evince a fair few of Andy's characteristic techbase tropes, even that segment plays in a more open-ended way than in most of the previous maps. I quite like the pistol-start in this map, it's the first time in the WAD where having to run into hostile territory in search of better weapons and the ammo you need in order to start securing the facility becomes a pronounced gameplay/progression mechanic--you just keep running into walls of monsters (mostly weak ones, granted, but in numbers great enough to make fighting them with your pistol, handful of bullets, and maybe a shotgun/odd shell from sergeant corpses untenable) whichever way you turn, so eventually you've got to nut up and improvise. Having some familiarity with the WAD, I remembered that the parking garage (which is a striking early example of the more clear/open playspaces this level offers, incidentally) is a pretty good place to start, you can get an SSG, RL, backpack, and healthy starting stock of ammo in there if you're resourceful enough to wrangle its inhabitants. There are other viable options, though, with other solid starting points including a shotgun + shells stock which lets you tackle the early areas at a more deliberate pace IF you're brave enough to dash into the office under the noses of its chaingunner guardians, and an early SSG secret that turns you into a powerhouse in short order if you get it promptly (I forgot it until a few minutes in, but frankly I'd probably have gone to the garage first anyway, it's most fun IMO).

The downtown area is a lot of what you'd expect--a polyglot medley of monsters emerging from alleys or occasionally floating into the combat space from on high (I'm not sure where the cacos/PEs who appear actually come from, although I suspect it might be from within the yard outside of the exit building) while the player is given license to run around and poke his/her head into the various buildings at will, with many different possible scenarios emerging (do the cyber-twins get turned loose early, or are they found late? etc. etc.). It's a simple formula, but an effective one, and is a much welcome change of pace for the mapset. As far as nitpickery goes, there is actually surprisingly very little in the way of vertical traversal/exploration or visual interconnection in the downtown area (just some tall lifts in some of the self-contained building interior bits) other than a short hop at the very end, which does feel like a bit of missed potential, but all in all the looser outdoors action goes down well, particularly as a more catch-as-catch can partner to the more cerebral, high-concept nature of the next map.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 18 -- Warehouse Siege - 101% Kills / 100% Secrets
Ah yes, the other extremely high-concept map in the WAD. Well, Hell has at least one as well, I guess (I can't actually remember every Hell map clearly at the moment), although the map I'm thinking of is high-concept in a more traditionally Doomy (or at least FPS-y) way than this, 09, or 32 are. Anyway, of all the maps in the WAD, I had guessed that this one would likely receive the most mixed reaction of all, and that does seem to have been the case to some degree.

There is very little to say about the general concept itself that hasn't already been said, but I would like to point out that the map does have highly reliable 'designed' solutions to all of its monster/navigation puzzles during the stealth portion of the map, and the great majority of these are signposted or otherwise hinted at in some way:

Spoiler

* In the general warehouse/crate-maze sections, you can avoid encountering essentially every lurking imp and revenant by finding the correct route through the stacks. The wrong route is usually marked by marine corpses, which are placed to be visible on the path ahead a few steps before you would enter the monsters' line of sight.
* In the corridor with the perpetually cycling gates, you avoid detection by the arch-viles/revenants by simply moving past their alcoves while the respective gate is closed. Turning the corners is naturally the trickiest part, and it's tough not to be spotted by the very last revenant, but that's why you're able to slam/lock the door shut in his face if you dash past him.
* Probably the most meta-gamey of all the solutions, but the unavoidable mancubus who gave several clubbers trouble during the later bridge segment can be easily manipulated into infighting with the crate-bound Baron pair in his area by standing directly behind him before he sees you, which will nearly always result in his death.
* The demons/specters that guard the blue keycard can be circumvented and then kited (in complete safety) to an 'airlock' sort of chamber at the north end where they can be indefinitely sealed in at the press of a switch. It's also pretty easy to kite them out of the blue key room and then just leap down and past them to grab the blue key and then exit without bothering to actually lock them up.
* As most have intuited, the arch-vile who was apparently the undoing of the people who left Doomguy the initial message (maybe one of them farted too loud or something?) can be indefinitely trapped in a pit by quickly hitting a switch to lower the cargo-lift while he stands on it.
* The phasing demon rush that chases you en route to the security room can be stopped by simply lowering the first bridge (with the wall-set switch) immediately after crossing it.

In other words, while it's possible to run through the map in a panic ala mouldy (that is what the occasional sealing doors are for, after all, to make it so that mistakes in a particular area won't necessarily ruin the whole map as long as you don't break silence), it's also possible to stealth your way through it in a very controlled way, provided you're observant/intuitive enough to pick up on some visual/scenario cues. I think it's quite fair to say that at least a few of the staged encounters are more likely than not to be failed the first time one sees them (especially the arch-vile/lift setup near the yellow key, the margin for error is extremely small there), and I imagine some will be tempted to trot out the old snot/tearstained 'bad design' card as a result, but I think a bit of trial-and-error gameplay is quite reasonable given the map's gimmick, and actually executing the proper strategies is extremely easy once you've puzzled them out, very little luck or extranormal athletic skill involved. By contrast, should you choose to go back and clean out the map after activating the security field, you have a lot of license to approach it in a very improvisational/knockabout way (especially since the map opens up a bit at that point), although adept secret-hunters will be treated to a much more smooth/efficient way of killing off the cyberdemon and other assholes up on top of the tallest crate-stacks than others will.

Speaking for myself, and to be frank, this is not the kind of thing I generally play Doom for (although I count myself as a fan of stealth-based games outside of Doom), and so I'm not heartbroken that 'stealth' maps are as rare as eight-limbed arachnatrons, but it is an extremely interesting concept piece that I'm glad to have had the opportunity to experience, and it's impressive just how reliably/predictably eschdoom was able to make everything play out given that Doom's monster AI and other functionalities are absolutely not intended for this kind of gameplay.

Map 19 -- Void Complex - 103% Kills / 50% Secrets
Intriguing name for a somewhat nondescript map. This is another base-crawler, without much in the way of a pronounced distinguishing characteristic relative to many other maps in the set--it's certainly not a gimmick/high-concept map, not a stylistic/pacing shakeup like several of the E2 maps, not as strongly themed in terms of textures or setting as many of the earlier E1 base maps ('Lockdown', 'Comms Station', etc.), and so on--it's a more or less straightforward techbase in Eschdoom's characteristic style and with many of his favorite tropes, including duct-crawls, operable computer terminals, zombies that try to jump you from around blind corners, and so on. As aforesaid, in purely aesthetic terms it lacks as strong an identity as many of the other maps, which is in some ways a blessing and a curse in others--its texture use is fairly varied, in line with the E2 look of map 16 (E2 in a D2Reload context, I mean), and so it's not as stultifyingly and unswervingly neutral/grey in theme as some of the really understated E1 maps. On the other hand, because it's not as slanted as much towards atmosphere and exploration as map 16 (indeed, it seems more like a straightforward combat-oriented map), its somewhat catchall look does mean it ended up feeling to me a little more like a simple unobtrusive backdrop than like a realized setting in comparison to some of the other maps. Incidentally, while it has some of the realistic sector-details that characterize this WAD (computer terminals and the like), in terms of architecture/layout and presentation it's more in a generalized Doom-abstract techbase vein than many of the other maps, which does distinguish it at least a little from the sundry E1 bases and such, although I still maintain that Andy's favored construction style (low ceilings, small rooms, fairly narrow corridors, etc.) doesn't work as well in this vein as it does for the pseudorealistic approach he more often favors.

Its most notable feature is probably the partially interlocking two-level network of lifts and curving corridors comprising the starting area, although less in the way of substantive gameplay elides from this setup than one might initially surmise--the lift-segments never collapse from under you, there's never anything on the other side of one worse than a shotgunner, etc. I had the most fun with the early push into the network of chambers around the blue keycard's terminal, it was somewhat like the early parts of map 17 in that I had little weaponry and ammo and yet was up against a considerable clot of monsters, with a particularly worrying pair of PEs (I was really hurting for a chaingun there for a few minutes), that required a fair bit of improvisation and maybe just a hint of panic. I imagine there's probably a more elegant way to handle this situation than the one I used, but I apparently don't know this map all that well (only 50% secrets), and so if there was a hidden weapon cache to use in this case I wasn't sharp enough to locate it. The rooftop spiderdemon encounter presents itself as the other notable encounter, but I think it misses the mark a bit by dint of scale--the spider is too far away to be very effective in actually injuring/pressuring you (esp. with the buttresses connected to the main building partially blocking his view, to say nothing of the cacos who also tend to block bullets for you) and so is trivial to ignore or dispatch, although if you're unlucky/imprudent he might hit one of the small clusters of explosive barrels on your rooftop and troll you that way.

Not a terrible map or anything, but unlikely to stand out in one's mind alongside many of its setmates.

[cannonball]

Map18 - “Warehouse Siege”
Not a bad concept map, but mopping up can be a chore with the large crate maze to deal with. I found this pretty simple after grabbing the blue key as there was enough room to dodge monsters. The cyber which teleports in is in a nasty place and killed me a few times.
Overall a decent map.
Heh I didn't even lower the lift for the archvile, I was just quick and alert enough to escape his attacks, complete the objectives and move on.
Map19 - “Void Complex”
Back to linear techbases again now with a few city elements placed here and there. For the most part this was okay, ammo was very tight until around the yellow key and there were a few nice traps (the berserk one I did not expect). The Mastermind felt a little pointless as you could just skip these monsters altogether.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP18: Warehouse Siege
70% kills, 0/4 secrets

Interesting concept, and I was tempted to say "could've been done better" - I liked the puzzle aspects later in the map, but not the warehouse maze itself - though Demon points out that apparently even that has a solution, with the dead marines as clues, so that's my fault for being too impatient, I suppose. The second part I just blazed straight through, closing doors behind me, so I kinda missed the point of that one. Did figure out the demon/spectre 'airlock' and the AV elevator, though, so I liked those sections. Once I had my weaponry I just blasted through the cyber/AVs and went to the end, too lazy to clear out the rest of the warehouse and look for secrets. As I said elsewhere, I do think that the concept here is handled better than MAP09, as it's quite immediately clear when the player has screwed up in breaking stealth, so it has that going for it.

Oh, and the MIDI here in D2RMUS is a rendition of (I assume the Johnny Cash version of) "Hurt", and it's good at the start but turns into an ear-splitting long whine at the end, major minus there.

[Havoc Crow]

MAP19: Void Complex

I don't know how would I fare on this map from pistol start, but - playing on continuous - this map initially felt like a serious drop in difficulty. The challenge progresses throughout the map, though, and by the end I was fighting battles which were intense but fun.

The beginning of the map felt a little confusing. I was tripping switches without really knowing what they do, until the blue key revealed itself somehow. Descending into the tunnels below the starting area was a clever bit of level design.

The standout encounter, and the only one which gave me a bit of pause, would be the fight against the monsters down in the pit at the end. Visually, the moment you leave outdoors feels refreshing and grand, pity it's over so quick.

I liked this map, but felt it was too easy (on continuous at least).

[scifista42]

Map17 - “Downtown”

Another awesome fun map in the same new-old-school style of the previous MAP16. Nice semi-elaborate visuals + new plausible locations to explore + new monsters to casually mow down (with some challenge involved) + being in a mood for long maps = maximum satisfaction. This is the pinnacle of the genre I enjoy (in a casual megawad playthrough).

The first part of the map kept the spirit of MAP16, which I liked. The underground parking place was nice, a little too dark for my tastes, but thankfully I've found Light Goggles in a secret, which I've appreciated for once. The latter part of the map was spiced up with Doom-style city-esque architecture of both outdoors and indoors, the areas were fun to explore too. I didn't like the exit are, not only it seemed inescapable (impossible to backtrack), but before entering it, it was possible to get stuck behind the building, by leaping over the highest wall when jumping out of the window. That's my main big gripe. Other than that, very good!

[yakfak]

I'm way behind on my MIDI replacements but here's the eighth tune. My play is bad but then again, having played ahead, Map 8 seems to be the hardest map in the first two episodes to get to grips with!

[mouldy]

Map19 - “Void Complex”

Generally more of the established techbase style corridors and rooms, though there is a nice fresh-air balcony interlude with a mastermind (i'm not entirely sure you need to kill it, but I may as well while I'm here). This map asks quite an entrance fee from pistol starters, at least it did for me as I pressed both of the computer switches at once and had 2 cacos and 2 PEs to deal with, and getting anything larger than a shotgun involved running past them into unknown hostile territory. I was quite pleased with surviving that, unfortunately a later trap involved a load of chaingunners teleporting behind you which was the height of certain-death bullshit. That meant unecessary saving throughout the rest of the map, which kind of took the edge off the experience. Nothing after that was all that difficult, so I dunno what the idea behind that trap was. Nobody else has even mentioned it so maybe its just me playing it wrong.

[scifista42]

Map18 - “Warehouse Siege”

Like MAP32, this was another map with great cool concept and visibly flawed execution, IMO. Let's start with the positives: Unlike MAP09, the gameplay direction was communicated clearly: "Do not attack! Sound will alert the sentinels." If someone is still in doubts, he can easily violate the direction and immediately see what would happen. This made me look forward to a new kind of challenge, possibly interesting and thrilling. It actually was kind of like that, but also unfair and annoying at times, for several reasons. Save/load abuse or foreknowledge seemed to be the intended strategies - when exploring the rooms, player could easily get cornered by monsters in a dead-end corridor and defenselessly die. That's what I considered unfair and unfun. The monster placement was sort of random and not much efficient to chase down the player, also the level design appeared to be inefficient for this sort of challenge. There were many safe sections mixed with complete luck-based sections. I would prefer if the environment was thoroughly accustomized to open a dynamic game of "hide and seek", best within varied and appealing locales, intuitive to navigate and take advantage of while avoiding monsters shooting at you. Instead, this map was a slog, repetitive, non-engaging, luck/knowledge-based and sometimes unfair. That's why I didn't like the execution that much. But I'd like to see the concept remade properly and efficiently.

[Capellan]

map20
This is another solid base/city level though I think the city-based areas have a much better sense of place than the tech base element (especially the post-blue door stuff which feels like a game level, at odds with the wad’s usual strong sense of representationalism). The gameplay’s mostly fun though so this is not a big issue. My favourite moment was when you unleash the flood of monsters in the south east. The furore of infighting you can unleash is great fun.

I did dislike that there’s a point where progress relies on using the one support2 wall that’s actually got a trigger on it, out of the dozen or so in the map. Would it have hurt to whack a switch textured linedef down there somewhere?

I also like that we break with the “end of mapX is the start of map X+1” thing here, which underlines that we’re transitioning from Earth to Hell.

Overall, a solid end to the episode.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP20 Revelations

wow, such grandscale, such large areas...

too large for its own good unfortunately. this makes it easy to miss a kill, especially in some of the side areas. three distinct zones, the starting zone, the blue key zone, and the final zone with the big headquarters-like buildiing. gotta say, the roads leading to the sections look badass, too bad it's more or less a long walk with little challenge because of all the space to move around in. the headquarters-type building was pretty notable. opening the way to it gives us a really nasty ambush from the front as well as a few troublemakers from the back, but those guys also have a nifty invulnerability handy. inside, we have some extreme height variation with those bastard lifts, plus a rather peculiar place to put a red key (literally right next to the red door). the final part was easy enough, kill just a few monsters and then a cyber with a BFG, and on lower difficulties an invulnerability makes it a breeze. I never liked this map, but it's grandscale more or less makes it complementary.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP19: Void Complex
99% kills, 1/4 secrets

I agree with Demon's initial take - interesting name for a non-descript map. I like the texture usage here much better than all of the shiny grey/white of the early techbase maps, but there's still nothing that really stands out here, lots of subdued greys and browns with nothing to stand out from them. What does stick out in my mind is the rough pistol start, I found dealing with two PEs with only a normal shotgun undesirable, so ended up savescumming my way until I could get the chaingun from the other (cacodemon) path. There's some cool design with the interlocking corridors, I suppose, but ultimately it's a pretty forgettable level. It's also not helped by the lack of buildup or climax - it would seem like the outdoor area with the caco/spiderman ambush would be it, but it's really easy to just run away from, and there's a decent mix of enemies at the end but they're easy to RL from safety, then the level just sorta ends at another random lift.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP20: Revelations
99% kills, 3/4 secrets

With the revelations being... the UAC was behind the white tiles all along! Well, and the monsters, I guess.

Another map that suffers from lack of pacing because the strongest point is in the middle. The roads do seem a bit large (what to the UAC drive to their HQ, tanks?) but the large-scale double-spear assault with the monsters coming out of the UAC HQ and the arachnatrons from behind (and another Cyber from the side, if you left him alive) was really fun to play through and get everyone fighting each other. Unfortunately, the inside of the UAC building isn't nearly as fun, as it's lots of riding lifts and cramped corridors, though there is a decent fight for the red key. The lone cyberdemon guarding the exit portal is pretty woeful.

[scifista42]

Map19 - “Void Complex”

One of the greatest maps in the megawad, I think. The design and art style is more fancy and refined than ever before. There's increased non-linearity, non-orthogonality, bold stylistic unification, the environments still feel fresh to me, and monster placement is well done for the kind of casual/challenging/familiar/varied gameplay that I enjoy. All good qualities of the previous levels apply here too. I only didn't like the linearity of the final section of the map, which made backtracking overly long. Got 2/4 secrets. Very enjoyable map.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP19: Void Complex

I'm a day late in posting this, but the parts of this level that stand out most strongly in my mind are the elevated crawl around the corner of a building's exterior towards the end, and the knot of orthogonal and diagonal passages radiating from the horseshoe corridor in different directions right at the start. The former is an example of where the WAD's technique of distant, inaccessible city vistas really works; I'm playing through on ZDoom with mouselook active, but I suspect in classic Doom 2 the player would be creeping around those ledges with no idea how far below the ground was a sense that they were maybe dozens of storeys up. Yes, you can't actually fall of; yes, even if you did, you'd be fine as there's no falling damage in Doom. Still, I found the sense of vertigo in that scene to be deliciously palpable.

Back towards the start... it's not even engine trickery, it's a very nice little bit of design/layout using different elevations, textures, and angles to disorient the player and give a much-exaggerated sense of how complex that 3D space really is. I know I'm pretty constantly making comparisons between this level set in particular and other FPS games, but the early parts of this level remind me of nothing so much as the strongest of Doom 3's twisty technological maze areas, with the player constantly clambering between different heights and being assailed from unexpected directions.

Overall I found a lot to like about this level, even if the name 'Void Complex' carries a promise of something mysterious and sinister that wasn't really delivered upon.

MAP20: Revelations

And here we are, at the 'last hurrah' of the WAD'a city levels - and probably the one that, along with maybe MAP17, most whole-heartedly embraces the city theme. The map consists of three 'nodes' of interior detail connected by roads, a tunnel, and a bridge over a massive slime canal; it doesn't have the all-too-familiar feel of creeping towards a climactic encounter even though a player familiar with Doom 2's level progression/arrangement knows that the end of the episode is here. The vast majority of the map by area can be explored freely from the start, though the third and final 'node' of the map is sealed away behind the blue door which has to be retrieved from elsewhere. Still, the player can freely explore the southern branch of the map, wake up the cyberdemon, and with a little bit of deft weaving around the plasma streams of arachnotrons, go to explore the northern branch and retrieve the blue key while the monsters merrily infight.

I found the early areas of the map to be the most enjoyable; once past the blue door, I felt that things really got bogged down in the innards of a techbase that seems designed to enforce slow going despite the presence of some well-crafted anti-frustration features. The final battle against the cyberdemon on the threshold of the signposted 'Inter-Dimensional Transport' feels like a step down from the earlier pitched battle against another cyberdemon plus attendants, and I found myself missing the kind of decorative touches that Doom typically uses to indicate "here's the very mouth of Hell, the whole through which the invasion has come." Which isn't to say this is a bad level, but I feel it lacked a certain steadily-building level of danger and sense of menace that would have been so very fitting given its placement within the WAD and overall theme.

[Havoc Crow]

MAP20: Revelations

A large and expansive city map, though, due to its emptiness, it feels like all the buildings are too huge and the streets are too wide. The visuals are pretty sparse; the building textured with the "red stripe" texture near the beginning looks particularly awful. The scene near the bridge looks better, with a huge skyscraper visible in the sky.

At first, the major danger is posed by hitscanners, who are really annoying and deadly in such huge open areas. The standout encounter of the map is the tangle near the bridge, which first appears to be a simple skirmish with a trapped cyberdemon and the infighting baron gang, but if you step onto the bridge you'll let loose a bunch of surprise attackers (including yet another cyberdemon; I have no idea where it came from.) The entire fight can be cheesed easily, though, by hiding behind crates and letting infighting do the job. The invulnerability powerup was therefore useless unless you're aiming for speed.

The progression is a little weird. You finish the grand battle at the bridge and go across to enter the final building in glory... only to discover that it's locked with a tiny little BIGDOOR to the side, and what's more, you need to backtrack across the entire town and fight imps and zombies in a random building to get the blue key for it. The red key building contains a nasty surprise in the form of an entirely unexpected revenant gang behind a door. The other grand fight in the red key building was a nasty one and I'm not sure how well would I fare without my BFG. After you get the red key, getting back out is an annoying chore involving going up several lifts in a row (especially if, like me, you tacked that section first and killed all the zombies before getting the key.)

Nice touches include: the chaingunners who go down the elevator after you get the blue key, the three chaingunners huddled around a burning barrel in the tunnel (chaingun hobos?), and the horizontal yellow light texture on the final elevator which makes it look very nice when rising. One confusing thing was a building behind a fence which opens about the time you get the blue key; it contains nothing but a corridor with four doors, and I couldn't help but think there was more to that building.

Overall the map is rather forgettable. I do agree with TheOrganGrinder that for a map named "Revelations" it sure lacks any sort of dramatic or atmospheric "oomph".

[SyntherAugustus]

After a 37 minute video recording I have my MAP32! As a reward I'm going to use the bonus ammo for MAP 16.

It's a video edition of our favorite level. Anyway I followed Magnusblitz's guide. I was confused about the part after the ledge AV jump (which somehow was hard in this recording) so I wasted a few mins there. Oh well.

It is a long level though!

[Capellan]

map21
The author certainly has a good grasp of the hellish aesthetic, but in gameplay terms this felt a bit static and corridor-y, to me. That’s probably at least partly due to the prevalence of 128-wide hallways in the design. The section leading to the blue key is particularly obvious in this regard.

The “mass of revenants on a raised platform” at the end of the spiral staircase was a bit pointless, I felt, though I guess there is something cathartic in rocketing a pack of helpless skellies to powder.

[scifista42]

Map20 - “Revelations”

In my mind, this would qualify as a concept map of the less radical kind, the concept being oversized streets. Long running distances and long waiting for tall lifts were underwhelming design choices. Thankfully, Eschdoom did a competent job at monster placement, so that the map was enjoyable to play as much as it could with the given layout. The level structure made sense as a city level, without prejudices/expectations about Doom's city-style levels. Some scenes and/or details were impressive, and I didn't find it hard to forgive ugly texturing elsewhere. I've still considered this map slightly above-average, both within this megawad and generally among maps I know.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP21: Limbo
100% kills, 2/4 secrets

Definitely in Hell, now, which is something I appreciate - I always much preferred Doom 1's thematic differences between episodes, as opposed to Doom 2's more "meh throw the maps wherever" approach. I wonder how being in Hell will mesh with the author's love of psuedo-realistic spots.

This is basically a hub map of the 'each spoke has a key, gather all three' variety, though there was enough switch hittery and ambushes in the middle section to originally make me think otherwise. The actual 'wings' are a bit underwhelming, even with stealing some of E2M2's design quirks (the 'bridge rises out of the lava' trope, and the 'hit three switches, unleash monsters' section by the yellow key). I do like some of the architectural bits, though, such as the spiral staircase by the red key and the green marble 'basement' in the middle - not exactly pushing the boundaries of faux 3D, but at first glance it's a cool bit of multi-floored area.

Gameplay is alright... the start can be a bit tense with the amount of chaingunners and revenants with not much weaponry (if you miss the early SSG secret), but once the player has armed up, it's pretty easy going. There're two (!) invulnerability spheres on UV, neither of which are remotely necessary.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 20 -- Revelations - 101% Kills / 100% Secrets
Well, the wide open scale of the street/bridge areas immediately makes an impression here, especially considering how measured the architecture of the many techbases comprising the majority of the game has been. The look of the city areas and tunnels is very clean, almost unnaturally so--one gets the impression that D2Reload's version of Earth in the Doom universe is some kind of stark authoritarian dystopia--with miles and miles of tower blocks made from cold grey concrete and dour black industrial composite. In some senses the scenery does look a mite empty in places, but if you stop and really look at things, more attention to detail in the setting has been paid than you might realize from a quick look. Seen from outside on the street below, for instance, the anonymous industrial building (some disguised operations going on?) that housed the 'Void Complex' maintains its prominent architectural features as seen in that level (the big bank of plate-glass windows overlooking the final area, the dark metal buttresses along its southwestern corner, etc.). Further along, the UAC corporate skyscraper where the level concludes in a gate directly to Hell, is seen from afar, sequestered on what appears to be an artificial island on the other side of the canal by a heavy concrete bridge. Apart from being one of the WAD's more striking examples of visual foreshadowing, another interesting detail here is that great slow river flowing under the bridge is not one of water but of toxic slime, which makes sense if you remember shutting down that pumping station way back in map 13.

Bit of a different tack for the mapset layout-wise, the path is essentially a binary fork after clearing the starting area. You can go to either fork first, but if you move towards the HQ you'll find yourself eventually running up against a locked door, the key for which is in the other fork. The interior of the HQ building features a similar sort of quasi-nonlinearity, with a variety of paths available which all wrap around a central space (and a lone offshoot containing the exit), one of which plays drastically differently depending on which direction it's approached from. The 'pointless' red keycard someone mentioned earlier is anything but, where it's placed it functions mainly as a narrative device since it's viewable before it can be reached (e.g. "the key is on the other side of the door locked with it, guess I need to look for another way in"); on a more practical level, it's also necessary for the switch overriding the bars sealing off the upper floor of the tower, where the final gate is located. This sort of softballed exploration element and the contrast between the huge outdoor spaces and the much more characteristically modest indoor ones distinguish the level from nearly all of its peers in the earthly part of the game, with only map 17's sandbox approach having any real similarity. This impression of feeling distinctly different is a subtle but crucial element in a successful episode climax (even in a Doom II WAD with its less explicitly episodic structure), especially considering that in terms of themes/aesthetics there's not really much here we've not seen many times before in the WAD.

Most of the best action features in the outdoor areas. While the huge scale of the playspace out here that means that the more incidental combat tends to feel quite trivial (although you could very well opt to just ignore most things if you really wanted to, I suppose), Eschdoom does a good job of periodically injecting more flavor into the combat with a handful of loose setpieces--the cacos and others that swarm in from several directions when the player goes for the ammo cache in the empty parking lot to the northwest, the mob of interlopers that dogpiles on in the back lot deadend where the blue keycard is found in a nukage-flooded stormdrain, and of course the big pincer assault on the bridge outside of the HQ, which seems to have been custom-made to whip into a roiling infighting bonanza, a tactic which does not tend to feature prominently in much of this particular WAD. The red key ambush (or rather ambush near the switch that makes the red key accessible, in a roundabout way) is simple but works fairly well, as it's easy to become trapped up on the platform by the hordes of evil pouring into the room through the access hatches, and simply outlasting them may be problematic from a health standpoint, if not from an ammo one (or...maybe I just shouldn't have taken that blursphere before going into the room with all those mancubi on the walkway). Generally entertaining stuff, but I must agree that the final cyberdemon guarding the gate seems somewhat lacking, if for no other reason than that the monster appears elsewhere in a more pitched scenario earlier in the same level, and that the level freely hands you a BFG and buttload of cells to vaporize him with.

[mouldy]

Map20 - “Revelations”

Massive chunky scenery going on here, so much space i couldn't help but run past everything until i bumped into a cyberdemon and his friends. I decided to go the other way on my second attempt. Its good to stretch my legs with all this wide open space, but it looks pretty blank and empty, not sure it needed such a grand scale. I'm assuming if this is a vanilla wad you can't really get a hellbound level of detail on the outdoor sections, but considering how little the space is used for either fighting in or looking pretty it seems a bit excessive maybe. There is a great infighting battle to watch from behind a fence, as 2 cybers take on a bunch of arachnotrons and whatever else. Then we enter the UAC headquarters, and some faffing about with very tall lifts. Another great bit of infighting at the invisibilty sphere, and then finally we get to the grand teleporter which I'm guessing will take us to some hellish dimension. Fun map, a little over the top in scale, but feels kind of fast paced with all the running you have to do to get anywhere.