The DWmegawad Club plays: Revolution!

[gaspe]

MAP22 - Beyond the Oracle

Kills: 100% | Items: 100% | Secrets: 100%

Suddenly Egypt! For the pyramid at least, most of the level is green bricks and marble. The structures vaguely seems like some temples that fit well to be near the pyramid. Aside for the firs mancubi, the encounters weren't so much interesting.

[joe-ilya]

22 4/5
Interesting map but some weak gameplay flaws are there, it's a smart and intuitive map, not much to say, it's short.

[Naan]

MAP21 - "Hausterium" - UVMax on first try

Gimmicky inside-the-beast but rather short map, featuring a strange HoM at the beginning. Nothing to write home about, but the "maw" crusher was well thought and executed in my opinion. No secrets or arachnotrons here.


MAP22 - "Beyond the Oracle" - UVMax on second try

Egypt uh? Well, that was unexpected, hitting the X must have trigerred some sort of temporal loophole to the past or something. These howling doomguy icons looks kinda out of place though. The mancubi start fight got me good once but past that nothing was really threatening outside of a relative shortage of shells. Still no secrets and arachnotrons but a rather clean map.

[gaspe]

MAP23 - Pyramide of Pain

Kills: 100% | Items: 100% | Secrets: 50%

Not so painful. Imo the author here missed many opportunities to make something more interesting. I liked the crusher-trap, it fits well in theme. Kinda strange the areas near the exit with a horde of imps that teleport like in Trick and Traps, a mastermind fight and a blur sphere that it's pickable when everything is over.

[antares031]

MAP23 - Pyramide of Pain
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 100/100/100

Providing megasphere and SSG at the very beginning? This must be the hardcore one. And yes, this level killed me with a crusher trap. Other than that, this level is easy. As long as you find the BFG at the secret, you won't have much trouble while dealing with the spider demon. Some monster placements are disappointing, such as demons as bullet sponges after I pressed the button for the red key room; you just stay above and shoot SSG, that's all. But the others are just fine.

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP10: Lab of the Lost
13:33 | 100% everything

An interesting little crawler. Kinda dumb how hitting the switches covers up the keen/prisoners so you can't get 100% kills. (I may have noclipped my way in to the 2 I made the mistake with.) Also not a fan of all the backtracking you have to do here, especially in the ventilation ducts. Still, not a bad level. But not too noteworthy, either.

MAP11: The Transporter
11:05 | 100% everything

The conceit here is a little goofy: OMG a teleporter! I'm sure it has something to do with the story, but I don't pay any attention to any of that that's not in-game. Anyway, this one's kind of neat in how it's a one-way linear path that leads you right back to the beginning (or at least to the other side of the blue door.) The final secret (with the caco and "megasphere") was nicely done, with the candles marking both the trigger line and the secret entrance; that took me a little bit to figure out. And I really liked the architecture in that main building, too; very cool.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP23: Pyramide of Pain

By the WAD's standards this is a big, sprawling level, and the architecture is, within the limits of the Egyptian theme, pleasantly varied, though tending towards roomy hallways with ample space to dodge around incoming fire. The crusher trap will get maybe one kill out of you from sheer panic before the solution presents itself. The revenants popping out of their cubicles like mummies emerging from their sarcophagi thick with the dust of ages were a nice touch. :)

[Magnusblitz]

MAP23: Pyramide of Pain
100% kills, 2/2 secrets

Surprisingly more fun than I had feared. There's actually some decent fights here... I liked being able to unleash all the sarcophagus revenants and blast away with the rocket launcher, there's a bit with imps surrounding the player in a darkened tunnel, a surprise demon ambush and the final bit with the teleporting imps (even if it is copied from Tricks and Traps). It's a bit sparse looking for an egyptian temple (especially compared to something like Epic 2) but not bad looking, just plain. Certainly better than the last few maps.

[joe-ilya]

23 3/5
The megasphere at the start was way too much health, I would understand if there weren't any health packs, but there are aplenty of those. So I don't see the point, it makes the map unchallenging (which is how every map in this wad suffers).
Aside from the health problem, this map is bigger than the usual maps here and contains some classic traps;

the hallway demons are inspired by the traps in the starting zone at MAP05 of Doom II,
the final imp encounter is inspired by the one in MAP08 of Doom II,
the orderly revenant trap is from the first red building in MAP12 of Doom II.

The map also suffers from some boring traps/encounters such as the spider mastermind and the switch above the demon trap, lengthy boring traps.

Why are there random doomguy ouch faces on the walls? Is that doomguy's temple and he's killing the intruders (demons)?

[Magnusblitz]

MAP24: The Sect
100% kills, 3/3 secrets

The start of this map might well be a difficulty spike for people who have found Revolution's (lack of) difficulty to their liking, as this map is basically a large, open ring ala Circle of Death with lots of hitscanner snipers, a couple revenants, and an Arch-Vile all ready to blast the player. There's plenty of cover, granted, but the player does need to be careful moving around. Unfortunately, after clearing out the main initial 'ring' there's not much more to the map, just picking up keys and clearing out the last few scattered monsters placed here and there in the way. Still, decent open setup.

[antares031]

MAP24 - The Sect
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 100/100/100

Now this one is much better than previous levels after MAP20. Hitscanners all over the place could be annoying, but I can say it was challenging since the previous levels rarely provided this condition. One exception was an arch-vile at the beginning, though. I did like the layout of level. It wasn't too complex, but you need to explore the whole area in order to beat this one. A secret with plasma gun was a little bit cryptic, but it didn't matter to me anyway since I found a computer map at another secret area.

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP12: Utopia
15:10 | 100% Kills | 100% Items | 66% Secrets

Fairly nondescript level. The most noteworthy parts were the close-quarters cybie battle, and the 4 archies at the exit (they gave me a bit of trouble.) One secret I couldn't find; didn't even know where to begin to look.

MAP13: Amok
14:03 | 100% everything

This was a fun map with an interesting layout. Those big rectangular pipes were pretty striking. Good stuff.

MAP14: Dead End
10:07 | 100% Kills | 40% Items | 50% Secrets

So when I first started this, I thought you had stay on the central platform. Killed off most the baddies from there (yay continuous play) but then realized there was nothing else to do. The damaging floor kinda made secret-hunting a pain, so I just gave up and exited when I could.

MAP15: Battleground
17:10 | 100% everything

Another decent map with a fun twisty layout. The big highlight here, of course, is the sector tank, which I thought looked cool from a distance, but ended up even better up close. I could see the exit area from the map, but didn't know how to open it, so I eventually gave up and noclipped through--and immediately realized it was just a secret wall. Hunh.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP24: The Sect

Circle of Death meets The Inmmost Dens, I guess? The action is heavily focused on short-range encounters with zombies of various tiers, and is generous with the bullets and shells but not so much with the heavier ammo types. There's a stark contrast between MAP23's spacious hallways and the rather gloomier and most claustrophobic warrens here.

[scifista42]

MAP23 - "Pyramide of Pain" - More good than bad.

MAP24 - "The Sect" - Reminds me of Plutonia style, but I suspect that the actual intention behind this map was just to rip off Doom 2 MAP14.

Both abovementioned maps were alright, but lacked any notable innovative elements, which is what I think I'm missing in this wad and why I got bored towards the end.

[joe-ilya]

24 5/5
Very good, finally a challanging map after 10 simple easy maps, the hitscanners were nicely put in groups. And the layout was non-linear and usually made you run around pillars and hide from everything and sometimes drop into the water.
There's also a shortcut you can take that will skip the entire map; it's an AV jump at the start.

[scifista42]

MAP25 - "The Prefect" - Doom 2 "The Citadel" ripoff with really overdone symmetry and repetitiveness. Not my thing at all.

[antares031]

MAP25 - The Prefect
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 100/100/100

This level was not bad, although the layout was extremely symmetrical. The combat takes place in some kind of monster motel, I guess. Thanks to the symmetric design of this level, you won't have much trouble to beat the level, unless you haven't figure out how to open the exit columns. The secret with a soulsphere gave me a lot of frustration. I tried numerous strafe-runnings with no success. But later I realized that there's a "method" to grab that powerup.

EDIT: It's 25th today, so I vote Alien Vendetta or Hell Revealed for the next month. If the score of both wads gets tied without my vote, my vote goes to AV as a tiebreaker.

[gaspe]

MAP24 - The Sect

Kills: 100% | Items: 27% | Secrets: 33%

Fights were finally more challenging here. Of course because it's reminescent of Plutonia MAP18 (which is a rip-off the inmost dens). Overall it was a nice and fun map.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP25: The Prefect
100% kills, 1/2 secrets

Yeah, the symmetry hurts this one since the level is already so small to begin with that having the exact same encounters repeated twice or four times makes it feel even shorter.

[gaspe]

MAP25 - The Prefect

Kills: 100% | Items: 7% | Secrets: 0%

Symmetrical The Citadel rip-off. Though I like that in the last few levels it's present that 8 points star.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP25: The Prefect

Compact castle map with sector furniture and flimsy walls that make it feel more like a (demon-infested) suburban house in places. The largely symmetrical layout doesn't do the map's longevity any favours, and the close quarters mean that the heavy hitters of the map don't really get any opportunity to bring their strength to bear; what health I lost, I lost to opportunistic hitscanner pot-shots.

[baja blast rd.]

Ideas for January!

How about we play a few smaller wads. That'll tie nicely into February, too. We can sample 5-6 different mapsets in a short span. I think that's a sexy thing.

-- 50 Shades of Graytall (eighteen levels)
-- Suspended In Dusk by Espi (four levels)
-- Back to Basics by Espi (nine levels)

That's 31 maps, and January has 31 days. Graytall counts as a megawad, too!

The DWMC has been floating around ideas of playing Espi maps for a while, and I think it's about time we honor the legend.

If we absolutely insist on playing a "full" megawad, I'd recommend Khorus's Speedy Shit, which is loads of fun and challenging without being truly hard, since I imagine that some of us are still reeling from Sunlust. Maybe Swift Death -- but I'd rather put that off until next year, personally.

*takes off monocle and stops italicizing mapset titles*

[dobu gabu maru]

^ That's a good idea. I'm still gunning for Hell Revealed, but I wouldn't mind playing through Graytall (still haven't played Mech's masterpiece) and I was going to do Suspended in Dusk soon anyway. So either/or is good to me. We could also test Freudian Slipgate as an option too.

[Memfis]

D2KITANA, Garrulo, Ultimate Doom 2, Wolfenstein 3D

[scifista42]

Memfis said:

Wolfenstein 3D

...

I suggest a combination of this year's Cacoward winners, appropriately long to span a month. For example:

Erkattäññe + 50 Shades of Graytall + Breach + Sheer Poison

11 + 18 + 1 + 1 = 31 maps, as in 31 days in January.

[Suitepee]

I selfishly vote for Hell Revealed next month, so I can get it out of the way early as one of my 3 wads to play in 2016. (the other two being Sunlust and the Community Chest series)

[joe-ilya]

I vote for alien vandetta.

[gaspe]

HR2 or death!

[NuMetalManiak]

dobu gabu maru said:

We could also test Freudian Slipgate as an option too.

There's like no difficulty settings for the maps yet. and some map names are wrong and/or secret

I will vote for Estranged, again, because it is fun and that's what matters most.

[antares031]

Christmas is over in here, so here it comes:

MAP26 - Phragmobasidium
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 100/100/100

It has a similar satisfaction that I felt in MAP24. It has enjoyable non-linear layout and combats which are not cheap and unfair at all. Even the encounter with the last badass provides useful powerups to deal with that angry martian. And it has a secret with a BFG to make the fight even easier. But anyway, as a non-native english speaker, what the hell is phragmobasidium?