The DWmegawad Club plays: Revolution!

[Pirx]

MAP27 - "Necrosis"

nice moody map, wooden structures surrounding a green slime pool the player has to cross repeatedly and climb through a hole in a damaged wall. a berserk pack comes handy for a few knights and revenants (two of them attack from behind when you cross the bridge over that pool). most of the opposition are imps however. there's an ambush of four cacos in the cellar where you get the red key. the exit has a surprise appearance of two PEs (as this enemy is rarely used in this megawad)


MAP28 - "Exodus"

starts with an image of a cross in front of a blood lake. a bunch of enemies spawn behind you and make for good infighting, from which the revenants emerge victorious. pushing against the cross parts the sea of blood, making way to a metal fortress of grand scale. collecting the keys opens the way to a large courtyard, where an army of imps emerges from the sides. i expect something like sunlust where the imps serve only as a shield for the main main actors... here it's an army of imps, and then a mastermind stuck in the exit, while you have a bfg.


MAP29 - "Hall of Maim"

a large demon fortress with a name that promises slaughter. hm, not quite. there's a nice trick of denying the player a soulsphere first and surrounding him with pinkies instead, but pinkies vs ssg... the same trick with 3 or 4 imps was more fun, as you telefrag the imps when trying to move away. then a bit of platforming to get some items. the map feels empty for its size vs population. some custom graphics in these last 2 maps:


MAP30 - "The Forgotten God"

... which is a pink giant on a throne, press a button, ride an elevator to shoot rockets at his brain. and the universe has a new god, or so the text says.



overall, not a bad mapset, but many maps suffer from being very easy and / or centered around some gimmick.

my favorite maps here:

MAP13 - "Amok"
MAP17 - "The Miners"
MAP24 - "The Sect"
MAP27 - "Necrosis"


some custom graphics in these last maps:

http://imgur.com/a/wGGZy


well then, on to hell revealed?

[antares031]

MAP30 - The Forgotten God
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 87*/100/100

Another day, another battle against icon of sin. Today's trick is the fast and precise straferunning. You need to run fast in order to reach the lift, which is activated by switches, before it hits the highest point. Otherwise, you won't hit the boss with rockets. You might use SR50 this time to make it easier, but it is possible to reach the lift with SR40 because that's how I did. Or just simply use the vertical aimi...(BONK!)


Overall
This wad features some awesome concepts with vanilla doom theme at the beginning with easy, casual gameplay throughout the entire wad. If you're fan of slaughter maps, you might don't like this wad since there's only one level which features more than a hundred monsters in UV difficulty. But If you're not, go try this one. 7/10

[Naan]

MAP29 - "Hall of Maim" - UVMax on first try

A castle level with a small Eternal Doom feeling at the beginning. I liked for what is was but I expected a bigger map for the last "regular" map of the set. Sweet looking, but kinda disappointing.


MAP30 - "The Forgotten God"

The obligatory IoS last map with the trick being the platform from which you can shoot rockets to the icon has to be raised again as it falls down when you step it... Unless freelook is activated.


Overall

I may have sound a bit harsh in my criticism (granted Eternal Doom type maps are more my style than short maps), but it's not that bad at all considering it's a one man vanilla megawad from 2001, and the only wad from this year I can remember was Equinox. Too many overkill secrets, difficulty progression is uneven and there is a bit too much random arachnotrons here and there. A good experience anyway!

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP30: The Forgotten God

Short, sweet, and more compact than most IoS maps (though that economy of space seems to be an established part of the WAD's theme).

[gaspe]

MAP30 - The Forgotten God

Really short IoS map, and the only remarkable thing is the boss made of sectors instead of beign a giant wall.

Overall the wad was quite good and fun to play, even though I didn't find anything really impressive in it. The author managed to pull out something with many nice ideas and themes, and without making something really bad even in the lowest points of the wad. I liked how it started with giving some continuity to the level progression, but in the middle this thing was lost as if the author changed his mind, then for resuming it in the last levels.

[Salt-Man Z]

I'm still playing this (up to MAP19 now, and the last few have probably been my favorites) but I'm not going to post anymore here. Really, there's not a ton for me to say about each map. I'm enjoying myself, though: they're all, for the most part, competently-made, good-looking, fun levels.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP28: Exodus
100% kills, 1/1 secret

Wow, a monster count over 100, a rarity! This is a pretty fun map, from the chaotic beginning to actually having some threat throughout. There are a couple encounters that are pretty close to being good, though just aren't quite there - the tunnel with crushers I think would work better with all the monsters being awakened at once and the player needing to hold out, rather than being able to go forward a chunk at a time; the hundred imp march and spiderdemon at the end would work much better together instead of being separate (even if the player tries, it's hard to get them to infight much with the design of the arena and the spider being stuck). But still, good map, and the custom textures here are pretty tasteful.

[joe-ilya]

30 1/5
Dull boss, push a button, get on a lowering floor quick, fire rockets into skull and win, not hard.
At least it was kept short.

Overall rating of megawad: 1/5
This mappack is hiding gems but when you find the gems you enjoy it after a ride in a mine of dull rocks.

I expected more maps as the great ones found in community chest made by Thomas.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP29: Hall of Maim
100% kills, 4/4 secrets

Nice little castle assault map, I enjoyed moving throughout it as it has lots of windows, jumps and secret passageways. Unfortunately it's just too damn small and ends before really getting going.

MAP30: The Forgotten God

As others have said, this is just another IoS setup, and a pretty banal one at that (wow, one demon!) Not sure how ubiquitous freelook was in ports back then, but the map is beatable in about 10 seconds with it. Even without it, it's a breeze if you're fast enough to get to the platform when it's still rising (and thus won't lower when you run back onto it). The seated god is cute, I suppose...

[dobu gabu maru]

Pirx said:

well then, on to hell revealed?

I think we're actually doing 50 Shades + Erkatanne. It could go either way since three of us are basically voting for both, but it's leaning more 50 Shades. Also, I'm not tacking on Breach and Sheer Poison to the end of the month, mainly because we don't really play single maps for the Club. It's a bit discriminatory but I'd rather not start encouraging filling each month to the brim with maps, despite how good Breach and Sheer Poison are, as simply choosing a megawad for the next month is so divisive that I can't even imagine everyone throwing in their own solo map suggestions. It's a hardline stance I'm taking that could change somewhere down the road, but not now.

------

I think Revolution! is a good mapset, but the qualifier I'd use is borderline good. From a design standpoint, everything works as intended and there's plenty of fun locales to explore, but the gameplay in Revolution! is far from striking. I liked the sandy brown temple theme of E3 (as opposed to the usual crimson Hell), but warping around from map to map... I just don't remember much. There's not a lot of inventive settings, memorable battles, or distinguishable gameplay variety to make a lot of maps stand out from the rest. Some set-pieces stand out like the train, beach, and that maw you climb into in E3, but for the most part... I dunno. Felt sorta like Doom fluff—something you play when you don't want to think too hard about what you're playing. Again, it's put together fine, but leaves little lasting impact outside of "it's alright".

[gaspe]

Dobu pls I thought that we would have played the brutal Doom megawad.

[Magnusblitz]

If you want a vote to help swing it, I'd rather play 50 Shades + Erkatanne than HR.

[Pirx]

that's fine for me. haven't played these yet.

[Magnusblitz]

Final thoughts on Revolution!

A lot of people are giving final thoughts as short as the maps themselves - even DotW basically took the month off and summed it up in two paragraphs - but I'm gonna attempt to pontificate here.

As I find to be somewhat common for me, I had no pre-existing knowledge of Revolution! before playing it, beyond a couple of comments here and there. One mentioned that the author had a few maps in Plutonia 2 (which I admittedly did not get to) and I've also seen a few here and there extolling its virtues, such as Jimmy's MIDI project for it where he praises its "heavily creative map design." With comments like that, I certainly expected a lot more, and halfway through the month figured my opinion would be that the WAD was "ridiculously overrated."

Now, I will say that for some reason, I thought this WAD was circa 2008 or 2009, along with Van Der Velden's more well known works of Harmony and Plutonia 2. This, of course, is not the case, as Revolution! is from 2001, and probably Van Der Velden's first major work. This does somewhat alleviate my opinion of it - as far as first major releases go, it's pretty good, and certainly not something I would feel embarrassed to have as my first Doom release.

Enough about the talk around it, what about the megawad itself? Obviously, Revolution! is a small, bite-sized megawad, with I believe only one - one! - map over 100 monsters on UV. With such a small size, I certainly don't begrudge people for being unable to muster up much to say. On top of the small monster count, it's also ridiculously easy to the point of many maps feeling empty or like filler - there's few memorable fights or setups, and the large majority of the WAD places monsters in ones or twos, almost always in front of the player, with very little threat.

I'd find it somewhat interesting to know how the mapset came about, since to me it feels like the maps can be lumped into somewhat separate groups. The first maps are heavily representationalist - a moving train, a movie theatre, a beach resort, etc. Midway through, the author starts to slide more into abstract territory, though still often maps with a theme (for example, Dead End's corpse pile, or Hausterium's worm). Then there's a few maps where the author starts experimenting some more (XS is a very gimmicky map). At the end, maps start to feel a lot like Doom 2 IWAD maps - part of it is due to ripping off design points (XS has some parts that feel like The Chasm, Pyramide of Pain copies off the teleporting imps from Tricks and Traps) but the latter maps from MAP24 and MAP26 onward do a good job feeling like original but IWAD-style levels. One thing that always comes up whenever a newbie announces they'll start to make a megwad is advice to make individual maps first, since over 32 maps the latter ones will be much different/better than the first ones, and I wonder if that's what happened here. After all, the 'representationalist' phase is something many people go through at first, and maps 24, 26, 27 and 28 feel like an obvious cut above the rest.

At the end of the day, though, while there's a couple of interesting bits here and there, I wouldn't recommend Revolution! as anything more than a curiousity. It's certainly not bad, but it's not good either, and doesn't feel very unique. Just much more like a decent, unembarassing but forgettable debut.

[T-Rex]

So I guess 50 Shades is next. I was hoping to play HR, since it's by far a classic and I highly recommend anyone to play it. Challenging yet consistent gameplay, beautifully designed architecture for its time, and to experience HR is to be acquainted with Plutonia and other similar wads. Let's not forget the pumping tunes of Rise of the Triad to complement such an awesome wad. Ah, well, least I'm playing the original Rise of the Triad in the meantime.

[dobu gabu maru]

T-Rex said:

I was hoping to play HR

As long as everyone that voted for it this month votes for it next month, it'll definitely win. I feel like a playthrough of it has been long overdue, so it's definitely going to get its turn soon.

[Tristan]

I'd definitely be up for attempting to play along for at least 50shades

[Surreily]

MAP28 (100% kills, 100% secrets)
This is the first map in the WAD to bring us more than 100 monsters (on Ultra Violence at least). As soon as I move forward, a hidden door opens behind me to reveal a nasty cache of monsters. After this surprise, the map is surprisingly easy until the fleshy hallway with the crushers - another brilliant opportunity for our rockets. At the end of the map, we run into the biggest pack of imps we'll likely see in this entire WAD - there's probably about 100 of them, and they're coming from both sides! After this, a couple of BFG blasts to finish off the spider mastermind, pick up the megasphere I strategically left for myself at the beginning, and off to the next map!

MAP29 (100% kills, 100% secrets)
A nice big map with good gameplay and a fantastic theme. I would have expected a map like this to conclude the WAD, but there's still one more coming up...

MAP30 (N/A kills, 100% secrets)
This is definitely the easiest Icon of Sin map I've ever played. Good, because I hate Icon of Sin maps :D

Overall:
I enjoyed it. Some weak maps, but the majority were good. It was far easier than the stuff I'm used to playing - perhaps even easier than Doom II itself! Maps generally took around 10 minutes to beat for me, and I had lots of fun most of the time. If I were to rate it, I would give it 4 stars. Looking forward to next month already!