The DWmegawad Club plays: Scythe 2

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP10: Pharaos Tomb

('Cuz if a Triple Crown winner doesn't have to spell "Pharaoh" right, why should a Doom level?)

And so the Egyptian episode concludes with this devious little number. The layout isn't what I would consider convoluted, with switches and a single key gradually opening up the different areas of the tomb in sequence. Overall not very difficult but it had its share of tricky moments; the vast swarms of imps and demons at the bottom of the lift feel like a callback to the signature gameplay of the previous level, and this time you aren't given a vast outdoor space in which to outmanoeuvre them. :)

Oddly enough, one of the most unsettling things about the level (aside from the creepy music track - excellent pick) was its scale and proportions - not large enough to be called 'cavernous,' but at the same time, little of it is truly claustrophobic, either. Instead, you've got high ceilings, wide hallways, large rooms, all of which contributes a sense that something big might come into play here at any moment. Between that and the audible early activation of the cyberdemon, this is a map that plays a lot with a sense of lurking dread.

[cannonball]

Map10 - “Pharaos Tomb”
Died a few times here, certainly felt a little frustration at times. We are back to a small compact layout, but with quite a high monster density. There are quite a few nasty traps, especially towards the end. Overall I liked its simplicity and the fact it does have a real bite. Also a thumbs up for some devious cyber usage.

[joe-ilya]

MAP10
I liked the layout but the monsters towards the end were too harsh for such a cramped little area. I didn't finish the map, I almost reached the end when suddenly: cyber.
And with that were done with this dully textured episode.

[illuknisaa]

I took couple of pics



I don't know what is behind this door but...

[Beed28]

Argh, I'm really falling behind now. :(

MAP06: Temple Entryway - ITYTD difficulty
With the start of a new episode comes a forced pistol start (unless the MAP05 death exit failed to kill you as pointed out earlier in the thread). The Egyptian theme is a fresh change after the gothic castles of the first episode.

Dropping down, we can pick up a Beserk and some Green Armour straight away, which we can use to punch those Imps and Demons to death, before going up some stairs which leads up to the top of the upper walls where you can drop down to the Red Keycard. It's a fairly straightforward breather level, aside from the Hell Knight and surprise Revenant at the exit. My only gripe was that the Red Door was unmarked with needing a key. Killed all monsters and got everything, including all three secrets.


MAP07: Temple of Isis - ITYTD difficulty
The map opens up with us being gunned down by an offscreen Heavy Weapons Dude. The cheater! Thankfully, I was using a port that allowed jumping, which allowed me to finish the map in record time. :)

...

Alright, alright alright. This is your standard Mancabus and Arachnotron happy fun time map just so the megawad uses the special MAP07 tags. Although I find it odd that you have to run into the courtyard to nab the Blue Skull in the centre, head back to the start to open the Blue Door, grab the items and Super Shotgun inside, and then return to the courtyard for the main event. Why couldn't you have made it so that grabbing the Blue Skull have triggered the main fight, and then have it so that the Blue Door would have opened access to the exit?

Neat to hear Hexen II's Egyptian take on Heretic's E1M1 music here.


MAP08: Graverobbers - ITYTD difficulty
Now this is a music track that definitely fits in with the Egyptian theme. This map is larger than most others so far. One area puts you up against an Arch-Vile, and after that, you are put up against a large swarm of Demons, Imps, and a Revenant.

The Red Skull is part of a secret, and I actually got to it when I played this map about a week ago, but I don't know what triggers the hatch leading to it to open, and I couldn't get it today. :\

I heard a Spider Mastermind shortly after beginning, but I never ran into her.

[scifista42]

Map11 - “UAC Base X”

I remember this map, as one of few ones from Scythe 2 (not that I forgot the rest, I mostly didn't play it at all). It's mostly very easy, very nicely clean looking, straightforward while interweaving itself, elegant, fun. I've died near the end and cheated to resurrect myself, because I didn't save at all as the map was easy. The archvile encounter was not bad at all anyway.

[joe-ilya]

MAP11 already?

[dobu gabu maru]

joe-ilya said:

MAP11 already?

The Megawad Club is friendly to folks of all different time zones.

MAP10: A great closer to the set that’s more my style. Sparse ammo (if you don’t use the berserk), tight spaces, and a decent balance of nasties to thwart your path. The maniacal post-elevator encounter is my favorite in Scythe 2 so far, and having to duel with two cybers on a bridge is a great, nasty nightcap to this fabulous map. No exploration this time but plenty of good combat.

[Inkie]

MAP08

Probably the biggest map so far. A lot of wandering about to do, and a good bit of shooting. Saw a red key and heard a mastermind, but never got to either. Oh well.

MAP09

I kinda forgot about this map after a while. Highlights include rocketing two mobs of imps and pinks, mopping up with some berserk punch, and a skeleton being spooky behind a waterfall. Because in video games, there is always stuff behind waterfalls.

MAP10

Better concluding map than the last one. Now inside a tomb, we must fight yet another cyberdemon. At least you have to fight him this time, even if that just means shoving a BFG into his robo-crotch.

We commit suicide a second time to visit some tech bases.

[Magnusblitz]

TheOrganGrinder said:

('Cuz if a Triple Crown winner doesn't have to spell "Pharaoh" right, why should a Doom level?)

Man, you have no idea how much that bugs me...

MAP10: Pharaos Tomb
100% kills, 0/1 secret

This one actually follows directly from the last map (entering the tomb) rather than a portal exit, which is nice. Ammo starvation is the name of the game here, as none of the fights are difficult but I constantly found myself in the red on ammo count, sometimes needing to move ahead to pop a few sergeants to grab their 4 shells instead of dealing with non-ammo dropping monsters first. I suppose it's my own fault for missing the super-obvious berserk secret at the start, though.

Of course, what will probably stand out from this short level is the cyberdemon duo at the end. Can't say it's surprising (hmm, a BFG, a megasphere and three large cells, what could this possibly portend??) but I did get myself splattered a dozen times, due to the cramped confines of the room and just plain sucking (I swear I used to be able to easily 2-shot cybers, I swear!). It overshadows the elevator fight, which is also good, though - first time I tried to just hole up and that went poorly, gotta think quick and blast a way out to the plasma gun. Good episode ender all in all, but really said to see the Egyptian theme go - over before we knew it!

[mouldy]

Map10 - “Pharaos Tomb”

Nice music, give a real atmosphere of dread, even though the start is relatively easy. The action really starts at the lift, I forgot about that bit. There really is no choice but to carve your way out of there through a wall of monsters. Then comes the double cyber surprise, I forgot about that too, ate a couple of rockets and died pitifully from my wounds as I crawled over some damaging floor. And so the egyptian episode ends with a bang, and a scream. I find these maps more memorable than the first episode, mainly because of the pleasant scenery I think.

[TheOrganGrinder]

One of the nice things about the death exits and how they interact with the boss fights is that you don't have to worry about beating the boss "cleanly;" you've just got to win, and if you do, it makes no difference whether you leap through the exit at 200% health or crawl through it at 12%. There's less pressure to beat the boss perfectly, and nothing to be gained by reserving supplies to patch yourself up after a sloppy kill.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP10 Pharaos Tomb

now this is a pretty tough episode ender, there's enough room to dodge enemies but my suspenseful nerves got the better of me at points. also I used the berserk for much of the first half of the map. the ending can be pretty rough even though the BFG was just acquired by then.

MAP11 UAC Base X

well that was pretty basic and easy. not that interesting of a map though.

[Beed28]

I'm thinking of dropping this playthrough for the meantime. It feels like I've just done something terribly, horribly wrong on this forum and I want to spend a few days away from it. Or not. I dunno. I feel really bad about it.

Sorry about the mess. :(

[Linguica]

Beed28 said:

I'm thinking of dropping this playthrough for the meantime. It feels like I've just done something terribly, horribly wrong on this forum and I want to spend a few days away from it. Or not. I dunno. I feel really bad about it.

Sorry about the mess. :(

I hope you don't mean in re: the thread you posted, I helled it because I removed the embed so it no longer served any purpose.

[cannonball]

Map11 - “UAC Base X”
Good layout, solid visuals and easy gameplay. Not much else to say, on to some tougher and more memorable maps. The archvile was nicely placed though.

[Demon of the Well]

Behiiiiiinnnd

Map 08 -- Graverobbers - 103% Kills / 100% Secrets
I have been heard to remark "Scythe 2 is the best Scythe!" on more than one occasion. The reason for this (well, one of big reasons, anyway) is that it contains quite a few more robust adventures like this one (which is my preference) relative to its seminal predecessor, which much more consistently sticks with very concise, focused one-offs and only rarely ventures into more longwinded realms (although it fares well when it does). Incidentally, 'Graverobbers' strikes me as being something like an ancient Egyptian analog to '3000 AD' (or map 19) from the original Scythe, featuring a bloody romp in around several large buildings in a stylized cityscape, even concluding with a similar faceoff against a solo cyberdemon at its conclusion.

In terms of real estate, the map's really not all that large--I'd say it fits squarely into the 'medium-sized' category, myself--but Alm wrings quite a lot of gameplay out of what's here, courtesy of a crisscrossing and looping route that takes full advantage of height variation and a very pronounced sense of 'side-quest' in the form of the map's many tricky secrets. IIRC, this is the most secret-laden map in the WAD, including an optional/secret key and a number of additional discoveries which it facilitates. Making the effort to unravel as many of the tomb-city's mysteries as you can can make quite a difference in your overall experience of the map, far beyond relatively minor wrinkles like whether or not you'll have a BFG when you face the cyberdemon administrator of this necrotic Nome. Of these, the BFG secret (which also introduces a multi-legged interloper to the central yard) is perhaps the most subtle of all; there is a definite tell for it, but if you don't think outside the box just a little bit it's liable to be no more than a red herring for you even if you should spot it (and for that reason, I didn't find the secret until....several....repeat playthroughs of the WAD).

Combat itself is for the most part undemanding but entertaining enough, featuring about an even blend of incidental skirmishing with a few small-scale traps and snares (mostly involving monsters appearing suddenly right next to you via some means); if you stay on your toes you should be just fine (especially if you're finding at least some of the secrets), although as you'd expect from a Scythe map you'll be dead quick if you take things too lightly. The bodycount is higher than in any previous map, and while at this point that's mainly a natural side-effect of the map's longer runtime, it is here that we start to see the first hints of the hefty monster-density and sizable attack forces that characterize several of the later maps. In this case, both of the pronounced instances of this style of deployment are blocks of monsters primed to make an ill-fated charge towards you and your rocket launcher over open ground; makes no difference whether it's the tightly-packed phalanx of zombies that (potentially) attempts to stop you when you head for the easternmost yellow door or the more prolonged stream of hellspawn pouring out of the gate of the northern temple, they die in droves either way. It's pretty easy stuff now, but remember this experience in the later maps--if you can find the courage, you'll be surprised how well this 'stonewall' strategy that's spoonfed to you here can work in some later encounters.

By way of criticism, I suppose it has always seemed to me that, for its relative size and the number of times the player traverses it, the sandy central yard itself is an oddly noneventful playspace where (hapless secret spiderdemon and only marginally less hapless secret arch-vile aside) only a little very halfhearted pressure issues from a few distant snipers; seems like a good place to set up some busier crossfire or maybe use a fleet of flyers or the like. Nevertheless, a very satisfying map.

Map 09 -- Valley of the Queen - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Right, moreso than the occasional monster-platoon that Scytheguy contemptuously splatters in the previous map, 'Valley of the Queen' marks the debut of proper horde-based or 'slaughter'-type gameplay (though I use the term very loosely here) in Scythe II, essentially playing out as a more protracted version of the aforementioned rocket-pounding sessions from 'Graverobbers.' After some light preamble and a bit of bracing physical exercise in the cool night air, Scytheguy trips a capstone switch in a small guardhouse on a sandy rise and lowers a pair of stone barriers that allow a small army of assorted hellspawn (mostly imps and nobles, with some other riffraff milling about at the back) to spill into the river-valley surrounding the forbidden tomb on the nearby hill. To say that this encounter is 'softballed' is certainly accurate, and perhaps it could even be fairly called a mite 'toothless', although I suspect the idea was to ease the player into this type of gameplay by posing a scenario that can be effectively handled in any number of ways, including that somewhat hesitant/cautious/conservative playstyle that often works so well in IWAD stuff and classically-styled PWADs, but not so much in more, shall we say, 'vigorous' outings like this WAD (or like this WAD eventually becomes, at any rate). In other words, you can drop down use the handy stock of rockets provided to chokepoint off half of the army in your defile of choice, which is presumably the 'intended' course of action, but you can also snipe away at them from atop the central rise or hop down into the pool at the southwest corner and gradually wear them down from a position of relative safety if that's your preference.

Again, by way of criticism, it seems like maybe the topography of the area is not quite ideal for the encounter; it seems designed as a two-pronged assault, but even if you play it the 'stonewall' way the mouths of the twin defiles are too narrow (or perhaps the unplayable/unreachable part of the central rise is too large) for the two halves of the army to actually path through them very reliably, meaning that even if you take quite a while obliterating one prong the other one tends not to circle around and pressure you in a very pronounced way, if at all. This means that there often ends up being a palpable sense of 'cleanup duty' when you go to deal with the other prong, not really ideal. At least the bit with the arch-vile and his hell knight meatshields at the entrance to the great tomb makes for a decent stinger, it can be tricky to get away from his spells if his pathing/timing don't work out in your favor.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP11: UAC Base X

11 levels into the WAD and only now do we come to the classic Doom theme of monster-infested techbases. This one's a bit more claustrophobic than most IWAD maps, with even the larger rooms and outdoor spaces feeling functional in their scale, constrained in a way that keeps the pressure on. It's not long before the ammo is relatively free-flowing (and the presence of plenty of shotgun guys no doubt helps with that) but weapons are in short supply and the standard shotgun will be your bread and butter here. I feel the map wrings a lot of gameplay out of its real estate without ever feeling like it's trying to cram in as many monsters per square foot as it can. I liked the setup with the yellow and red keys, that to get back to prevoiusly-explored 'safe space' you had to first move forward into unknown territory.

[illuknisaa]

I played through the whole thing and the maps 21-end are just full degenerate mode.

No pacing, no challenge, no fun. Author just dumps a shit ton of enemies and steals away your ssg and replaces it with bfg. Repetition is also turned to the max. Each room is filled with enemies and there some random button you need to press in order progress (and in a tasteful fashion, it is not easily seen, it is somewhat hidden and you don't know what it does).

Maps 1-20
romero/10
Maps 21-end
call of duty/10

[joe-ilya]

MAP11

Yay! My favotrite episode, so colorful and compact, a must.

Green tech bases with brown tech bases inside, heck yeah! Smart encounters and mechanics, my favorite map so far, the AV is impressive. One thing is weird is how there are no radiation suits in this nukage infested map, I also guess the black void starts are gone, looked through the maps and looked back, MAP19 is the next map to have that, wowwhy?
This map was fairly challanging, I died once in the revenants-PE trap, but that's OK I can replay the map again because it's that amazing. The barrel usage is pretty cool, you'll usually swing those at the enemies using the chain tree trick, looking forward for the rest of the episode, it's a great opener. I like the MAP16-19 theme too, the rest are just going to be slaughterfest maps. I could play two megawads of techbases made by Alm.

[AD_79]

illuknisaa said:

I played through the whole thing and the maps 21-end are just full degenerate mode.

No pacing, no challenge, no fun. Author just dumps a shit ton of enemies and steals away your ssg and replaces it with bfg. Repetition is also turned to the max. Each room is filled with enemies and there some random button you need to press in order progress (and in a tasteful fashion, it is not easily seen, it is somewhat hidden and you don't know what it does).

Maps 1-20
romero/10
Maps 21-end
call of duty/10

I'm not a big slaughter person but I enjoyed the last 10 maps of Scythe 2.

[scifista42]

Map12 - “Battlegrounds”

Wow, Cyberdemon. Even earlier than in the middle of the map. Again, interweaved layout + straightforward progression, but more apparently, this was another very fancy looking and fun map. Now I have all weapons except rapid fire ones, Chaingun and Plasmagun. I wonder if next maps will deliberately put me to situations where these rapid fire weapons would be optimal choices, but not provide them. But knowing the generosity and gameplay simplicity of previous maps, I wouldn't bet on it.

[illuknisaa]

AD_79 said:

I'm not a big slaughter person but I enjoyed the last 10 maps of Scythe 2.

Did you play the secret level?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZgqjaIMQUs

[Magnusblitz]

MAP11: UAC Base X
100% kills, 2/2 secrets

Into what could be called the tech base episode, I suppose, though the grimy Doom 2 brick textures used here means its definitely not classic Phobos techbase, a bit more sewers-y than that. Very compact indoor areas with a few larger outside areas. It's an episode starter, which I suppose could excuse some of the easy gameplay, but even then it's pretty mindless and dull for the most part. Only the two revenants in close quarters and maybe the AV at the end pose any threat - besides that its just a lot of zombies/imps and the odd caco, existing only to be blasted away with the single shotgun.

[mouldy]

Map11 - “UAC Base X”

Fast paced techbase with mostly shotgun action and an interesting circuitous layout. The fighting is pretty easy for the most part, there is a weird bit with 2 revenants in a hole, I strafed over the top of it to get the secret rocket launcher and then had to jump down onto their heads, which nearly resulted in being punched to death. The archvile could have been nasty as well with only shotgun, but there is plenty of opportunity to escape and find some cover. Good start to the episode.

[Pirx]

11 - uac base x

has a map01 flair: short, pretty easy, perhaps except the revenant + PE trap, which i chainsawed because that's what i had ready at the moment. there are some cramped corridors where running forward, cutting the light opposition to pieces was a viable option, so i used the saw on most inhabitants of that rotten base. didn't find anything better than a shotgun, so i played it more to my taste. there's an archie at the end that one must shoot while making use of the little cover that corridor provides. a good starter map with a grimy, decayed look.



12 - battlegrounds

when i hear music from hell revealed i'm prepared for some evil map. this one isn't difficult, i got through without trouble, but there's markedly more action than in the previous map, including a cyber somewhere in the middle in a small courtyard, and several mancubi. the bfg makes short work of them though, and i didn't need more weapons for this one, as there weren't teleporting reinforcements or other traps.

[cannonball]

Map12 - “Battlegrounds”
Quite a few tricky fights mixed in here, but also a BFG with quite a lot of ammo. This one was very fun to blast through at high speed.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 10 -- Pharaos Tomb - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
I'm quite fond of this map, which perhaps will come as no surprise to those who recall my fawning over 'Mummy Tomb' from Epic II, which is something of a spiritual successor (same creepy BGM, even) to this map. It's certainly not the most blood-drenched level in the set or even in the episode, but sometimes it's the little things that matter: monster/thing placement is well-judged to establish a brisk pace with varied combat that, despite presenting you ample opportunity to feel powerful and effortlessly wipe out scads of weak enemies (lots of opportunities to tear through imps/zombies/pinkies with the early berserk pack secret, to devastate tightly-bunched groups of the same enemies with well-placed rockets or SSG blasts. etc.), will deftly punish you for getting too big for your britches with subtle traps and snares; it's a minor thing, but the former human commando just waiting for the perfect moment to gank you from your blindside if you too impetuously barge into the yellow key's room epitomizes the intelligent monster placement for me. Another good example is the arch-vile in the large antechamber to the final descent to the tomb's serdab; there are large chunks of cover available, but given the scale of the room they are also rather far apart, and dancing between them and the miscellaneous mid-tier monsters running interference while the vile bustles about unpredictably can make for a surprisingly tense/concentration-intensive undertaking, not unlike trying to avoid one's ex in the crowd at a party.

Of course, sometimes it's the big things that matter as well, and Alm saves the real fireworks for the end of the map. After an ominously quiet ride down a large elevator in the tomb's deeper reaches the player is suddenly beset by quite the mob of slavering miscreants; continuous players can use the plasma rifle from map 08 to mow them down with the bulk charge handily provided beforehand, while pistol-starters will have to call upon their reserves of composure and intuition to cut through the crowd (close-range rocket-pounding is a thrilling high-risk/high-reward gambit in this case, and my preferred approach) to make it to the plasma rifle outside of the shaft. The clever thing here is that if you panic and let the crowd pressure you into leaping down off of the platform before you've taken care of business, you'll find that you can't get back up and are left to face the tense dead-end fight against the final pair of cyberdemons with the added complication of additional fire from the uncleared landing.

Pointing out the quality of the lighting and other aesthetic niceties would be a bit redundant at this point--as far as concourse issues like that go, this is actually arguably the WAD's strongest episode--but I would like to mention that I very much agree with TheOrganGrinder's observation that the level does an excellent job of communicating a sense of sinister portent; between the moody BGM and the ominously scaled architecture you keep waiting for the other shoe to finally drop, and it does so at just the right time with the high-octane action just before the exit, a fine sendoff to this Djoserian nightmare, before our fated grave-womb spits us out into the next adventure.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP12: Battlegrounds

Another distinctively grungy techbase, this time built around a theme of looping or repeating; progression is linear (explicitly so, with doors being closed behind you to funnel you in a single direction), but brings you several times back to the central chamber where a fresh batch of monsters await your arrival. I think I found the Egyptian episode more refreshing in its aesthetics but there's no denying the sense of style in these grimy industrial spaces, either. As part of the looping/repeating layout, there's a recurring motif of allowing the player to see into areas they can't yet reach, only to have those areas fill with monsters by the time the player arrives there. This creates a strong and affirming sense of progression; you get to build a mental picture of the level and you know where to go next, but what it doesn't do is allow you to clear out/secure those areas ahead of time, undercutting that familiarity nicely and maintaining the sense of threat.

The secret area here feels pretty 'token' and I think there's been maybe one level so far in the WAD with a significant number of secrets? Which is fine by me, with its short episodes and periodic resets of player equipment this is already a WAD that's established its own rules, so if the author has decided that, for the most part, secrets aren't going to be A Big Deal, that's his design choice to make. Just thought it was an interest contrast to Reloaded a couple months back where numerous and game-changing secrets were the order of the day.

[Budoka]

Scythe II is my favourite megawad... to watch demos of. But since I've been toying with the cream of the crop of the archive lately, especially Vanguard (which is amazing, you guys should consider that one some day. Perhaps some kind of Skillsaw orgy as his non-Valiant solo work happens to total 32 maps ?) and Hell Ground, this seems like as good a pretext as any to give it a serious try. Let's see how far I make it! Though seeing as I finally beat Ep.1, I guess I can fare pretty well when playing seriously.

As always, Ultra-Violence with strict vanilla rules. Since I'm using PrBoom+, I will enforce my usual "pistol start upon death" rule by only saving while currently dead. That will teach me to play fair. I'm also going to follow some other people's example and go episode by episode, doing one map a day is awkward and leads to burnout for me.

So, the Gothic section. It seems a lot of people are unimpressed by the visuals in this first chapter, but I loved them from the first time I played this, and I still love them now. Also, the music is great and fits perfectly. Time for a little rundown:

MAP01 - Castle Entryway: A nice intro level with neat setpieces to mark the action. Not much else to say.

MAP02 - Rooftop Warzone: same style as the first, and a very good map. The rooftop, though easy, is my standout moment.

MAP03 - Castle Gardens II: Things start to get truly challenging here. I love the secrets.

MAP04 - Cursed Cellars: this is the first time I ever beat this one on UV, having realized the infinite amount of methods you can use to tackle the various encounters thanks to a relatively open-ended layout. Quite enjoyable.

MAP05 - Halls of Anguish: As many people have lamented already, the first room and the side wing with the PE and Archvile are far more exciting than the actual boss encounter. I also wish this map had a little more content to it.

Overall, a highly enjoyable episode which I will probably be running through several times over in the future. Next: some ancient Egyptian ruins.