The DWmegawad Club plays: Hell Revealed

[antares031]

MAP07 - Arachnophobia
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 100/100/100

All of a sudden, the theme has changed from tech-base to hellish and bloody one. And yes, this level is all about spiders. Get ready to face dozens of baby spiders all over the place. Heck, even this place resembles the shape of spider(well, it looks more like some kind of mite than actual spider.). Unfortunately, for pistol starters, there's one problem to beat this level; it only gives you an SSG to deal with arachnotrons, not even a single barrel shotgun, so you need to make count your shells and try to hit them at close range every time. The combat is too repetitive, visiting same spider legs over and over. And secrets are kind of disappointing, too. Good concept with bad combat.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP05: Core Infection

Claustrophobic little techbase map in which the dominant theme seems to be windows that you can shoot through (and by shot through) but can't access - linking the gameplay and combat of spaces without connecting them as part of the same route. It hammers home the theme well over successive encounters, but it's got the same utilitarian minimalism to it as the preceding Hell Revealed maps, a dry tone that communicates all the necessary information without adding depth or warmth - if mapping styles were writing styles, this would be technical writing, focused on the functional over any aesthetic concerns.

MAP06: The Round Crossroads

Form follows function is the name of the game, and while the tight tunnels and right-angle corners of this map are perfectly serviceable, they're neither inspired nor inspiring. Gameplay is focused on subverting the expectation that this map will be a straight hubspoke construction. The presence of switches that give no clue as to their function is once again made amenable only by the map's compact dimensions. Not a favourite.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP06: The Round Crossroads
100% kills, 2/2 secrets

Still heavily orthogonal, still corridor-rific, and still backed with too much boring meat (those barons, ugh) but despite that, still better than the last two maps. Probably because the SSG is given freely at the start, honestly. It feels like the author tried his hardest to use as many of the boring brown textures as he could... I realize he can't be responsible for the "STARTAN = default texture" that Doom Builder has scratched into my brain, but still.

[ReFracture]

Map 06 The Round Crossroads
KIS 100 69 50, carried over equipment from previous level but primary used the SSG which I acquired at the start.. and there was no shortage of ammo to be sure.

I enjoyed this level, the barons however made it somewhat tedious, didn't add any real challenge.. should have put maybe half as many to keep things moving.

I agree with the overall sentiment that the levels look kind of bland but they are not offensively so. But then again I am playing in vanilla Doom lol.

[joe-ilya]

7

Map shouldn't have been here, the layout is symmetric and the combat is garbage, it's a dead simple remake done horrible. Plus the gameplay is repetitive and the rocket launcher is up on the exit ledge you can only reach when all the arachnotrons in the map are dead, there are 46 of those and all you have is an SSG.
You basically mow down heavy meat for 6 minutes without going anywhere and just rush to the exit. The spider automap doesn't make a favor either.

0/5

[scifista42]

MAP06 - "The Round Crossroads" by Yonatan Donner

This is what I think an oldschool slaughtermap is. A blandly detailed, relatively cramped yet relatively extensive one, filled with monsters almost as much as possible, but not really difficult, just prone to tediousness at times. Definitely comes from the times when merely shooting monsters could have provided endless satisfaction to Doom players. The map's theme "techbase with a grassy hub yard" was simple to begin with and it could have been executed significantly better than it was anyway, but I thought it was still more aesthetically pleasing than 1994-like layout/texture chaos. After all, exploration of optional areas was present in a reasonable amount, although the secrets weren't secret at all. The fact that the gameplay involved lots of SSG-ing varied monster types also helps. So, I though the map's quality was on par with the couple previous maps, even though I wouldn't even give it more than 2/5-star rating, still.

[Spectre01]

Map 07

I actually enjoyed this map. The flesh textures were cool and I got a chance to dump some of those 500 plasma cells that have accumulated. I can see this being incredibly tedious with just the SSG though but it's quite fun on continuous play. +1 for not having the player start surrounded and getting shot by crap from the start. Too many Dead Simple ripoffs do that and it's annoying more than anything.

[Noiser]

gaspe said:

Heh, Eternal and Strain are both from the same year and they are superior visually. Even Memento Mori II (1996) is better.

Fair enough. It's certainly simpler than Strain, MM2 or even Plutonia. But, at least for me, it doesn't looks bad on low-res (where some details have less importance).

[Budoka]

MAP07 : Arachnophobia

A very silly meta-gimmick map about… well, spiders, clearly. Truth be told, every single map in HR is a gimmick map, or at the very least « conceptual », although very few are as upfront about it as this one is. It’s part of what gives the megawad its unique character, and I’m alright with it. It’s very easy all told, circle-strafing should do the trick unless you get really unlucky and have your path cut off by a wall of meat, which can happen. Only two things wrong here : the Spiderdemon should act as a proper obstacle to the exit (BIG mistake), which would have been as easy as unlocking the exit in the start room instead of the head, and the secrets are really dumb (there were plenty of places where Haggay could have put at least one real secret).

In other news, I tried doing this map in UV-Fast a while ago, and I’m pretty sure it’s impossible.

Noiser said:

Fair enough. It's certainly simpler than Strain, MM2 or even Plutonia. But, at least for me, it doesn't looks bad on low-res (where some details have less importance).

As I pointed out in my previous post, HR was released near the start of 1997, the other two (Strain and Eternal) near the end. So it doesn't qualify as "around the same time" by any stretch of the definition. Obviously I'm 100% certain of this, since I have a timestamped list of every full megawad ever released which this very forum helped me create.

Regardless of such considerations though, I'll echo Cynical's opinion that HR has aged pretty well in spite of its simplistic architecture, especially the later maps.

[driftyloon]

MAP06 – The Round Crossroads

Secrets: 2/2 Kills: 125/125

This one is definitely a more competent map but I do think that the large amount of barons does kind make this level longer than it ought to be. In my opinion, crushing ceilings are rather odd and have not seen anything really utilize them properly except in traps ( or ultimate doom e2m2). However the one in this map is just annoying and serves no real purpose. Again the soulsphere secret has no indication so it was pure luck that I humped that wall…

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP07: Arachnophobia

This one doesn't do a lot for me; I feel its signature gimmick significantly overstays its welcome.

[Solarn]

I think I'll join in on this, I always wanted to play Hell Revealed. I'll be playing in Chocolate Doom 2.2.1 for maximum authenticity, on UV difficulty.

MAP01, "Into the Gate"
Kills 100% Items 100% Secrets 100%

A pretty short and simple introduction map that doesn't offer much challenge. Enemies are zombies, imps and demons and are generally spread out enough that they don't overwhelms the player. The final fight would probably have been harder if the enemies didn't teleport in one by one, making their numbers easy to manage. I assume later maps will ratchet up the difficulty.

MAP02, "Gateway Lab"
Kills 100% Items 100% Secrets 0%

I had to open up my damn mouth, didn't I? This map is much more difficult than the previous one, not so much because of the amount of monsters, but because they are still mostly hitscanners, and with larger rooms and longer corridors, they have more chances to hit me while I try to kill them. All in all, the map was pretty fun, though a bit confusing regarding where to go at times. Also, it reminded me of one particular element of map design that has become ubiquitous at this point, but which this map completely lacks: traps that release new monsters all over the level instead of just ahead or behind the player. I have to say, it feels pretty damn good not having to watch my back as I go through previously cleared areas. I honestly have no idea where the secrets could have been, though.

More map reviews coming later.

[Azuruish]

Budoka said:

In other news, I tried doing this map in UV-Fast a while ago, and I’m pretty sure it’s impossible.

Nope... It's possible.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP07 Arachnophobia

Arachnoception it seems. A map shaped like a spider, so you're basically inside the spider, with spiders. lots of arachnotrons only in this more or less concept map and all need to be killed to reach the exit. Since it's right there, the spiderdemon seems a bit useless, also those two secret sectors are silly.

[driftyloon]

MAP07 – Arachnophobia

Secrets: 2/2 Kills: 47/47

Worst Dead Simple “Homage” I’ve seen! The level is shaped like a spider (sort of…) and contains 46 Arachnotrons and a Mastermind. It is extremely tedious to get through all the Arachnotrons from pistol start. Even carrying on from the previous map it still takes a long time. Also there are two secrets which are the mandibles and contains nothing. A large step down in quality from the last map.

[Budoka]

Azuruish said:

Nope... It's possible.

Six people no less. I'm not sure why I didn't check that earlier. I must have assumed that almost all the HR demos had been uploaded to YouTube by somebody-or-other, but I guess not.

[scifista42]

MAP07 - "Arachnophobia" by Haggay Niv

This map seemingly ran out of inspiration/inspired-ness right after the mapper came up with this idea for a shape of layout. Visuals are at least tolerable, but architecture (in relation to gameplay) isn't. The Arachnotron horde is just too big and compact to be fun to counter (and finish off), and it looks like I have to consider myself lucky for playing continuously and having the rocket launcher with me! The final optional Mastermind encounter and the secrets also don't make sense.

[mouldy]

MAP07 - "Arachnophobia" by Haggay Niv

I'm surprised that anyone has a good word to say about this map, it appears to be utterly pants. Circling around a room full of arachnotrons, chipping away at them with SSG, its an absolute grind. Then finally you get your hands on the rocket launcher and its all over, unless you really want to turn around and deal with the mastermind rather than just press the exit switch. Not sure the general concept could have been improved in any way, giving rockets instead of shells would have sped things up, but its still pretty one dimensional.

[antares031]

MAP08 - The Jail
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 100/100/100

Note to self about the name of level; I'm not in jail, but monsters, yay! Anyway, It's another vanilla level with simple walkthrough. So there's nothing much I need to say. Except the monster placements are not really good IMO, especially the room with demons and captured imps on the second floor. And I don't like secrets without a single hint.

[Solarn]

MAP03, "The Dumpster"
Kills 100% Items 95% Secrets 0%

One thing I forgot to mention with the previous two maps is that the map design itself feels a lot like the original game, except mostly cleaned up. There are several parts to this: the flow of the maps, the graphical choices (the texture and flat combinations they use aren't usually seen nowadays, even in maps that deliberately try to invoke an old-school feel), the unnecessary flourishes (all one switch does for example is raise a staircase to another switch a few feet away) and the sometimes bullshit rooms (that goddamn pit). All in all, not as good as the first two maps, but still enjoyable. Also, it has a crate maze. A small one, but a crate maze nonetheless. Also, a single, lonely Lost Soul.

MAP04, "The Garden Terminal"
Kills 100% Items 100% Secrets 100%

A short, gimmicky map that introduces the player to some of the more powerful monsters in Doom 2 in the safest way possible. A revenant in a cage, two Hell Knights behind monster-blocking lines, a Baron that gets telefragged and a Cacodemon in the exit room are the only enemies above the level of Pinkies here. Most of the difficulty comes from hitscanners again, as the beginning dirt path and the grassy area around the base in the end allow them to get a few shots off from a distance while you are occupied with more immediate threats. Quite possibly the worst map yet in my opinion, with no real purpose to it.

[ReFracture]

Map 07 - Had it gave the rocket launcher upfront and littered the map with rockets I would feel like this is a passable map07.

Terrible SSG grind.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP07: Arachnophobia
100% kills, 2/2 "secrets"

PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW

Yeah this map is crap. The initial arachnatron horde could be charitably described as 'challenging' (I'm sure in 1997 it would've driven me nuts, now it's easy to deal with by circle-strafing) but clearing out the legs is just tedium. The mandible secrets and final Spider Mastermind are just pointless. It's not even fair to call it a Dead Simple ripoff, at least Dead Simple had mancubuses as well. This is one half of a Dead Simple clone and a poor one at that.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP07: I remember when I first played through this map I thought it was really cool and tense, so it’s funny revisiting it. It’s a novel idea—fighting spiders in a locale you’d predominantly see in E3, but the lack of the RL on pistol start makes it extremely grindy. Making a track around the spiders and whittling them down can be rewarding, but having to one-by-one chew through each of the legs is just a straight-up chore to do. Also lol at the mastermind missing the entire party and being optional (and not really fun) to fight.

[Solarn]

MAP05, "Core Infection"
Kills 100% Items 100% Secrets 100%

This map was a mess. I spent more time shooting through windows, up lifts and over monster impassable lines than anything else. The visuals were bland, I got snagged on corners several times and at one point I had to push a switch on one end of the map to raise a staircase on the other end, without any clue as to what happened. Ammo was very tight right up until I got the plasma gun, after which I no longer had to worry about anything. The enemies were all over the place, I don't think there was a single non-boss monster that got left out, but with most of them it felt like they were just put in to fill a quota. The whole thing felt like a repeat of MAP03 with scaled-up monsters, which simply doesn't work. Fighting a pair of Mancubi in close quarters can be terrifying, but not if I can just take potshots at them from behind a corner they can't reach. In the end, this is my new least favourite map of HR. MAP04 was just pointless, this is actively bad.

[Demon of the Well]

Alright, finally got some time to get started here. Hell Revealed is something I know fairly well at this point; I believe I played it for the first time around '99 or so, maybe in 2000 at the latest, and I have revisited it (or at least certain blocks of maps from it) periodically since then. Lacking the 15-16 years of extra experience playing the game that I have now, I recall my first encounter being difficult, laborious, and yet also very exhilarating and rewarding. Back then it was a WAD touted as being for "Doomgods only" or the like, but as I made my way through it I found this was not quite the case; as others have remarked, much of the WAD is not so much demanding of microsecond-perfect twitch skill, but rather of a sound plan of action, and the ability to see/predict how different setups can be efficiently approached or even exploited, and how different enemy forces can be played off of one another to your own longterm benefit. It is of course possible to go through many of these maps quite quickly if you have the reflexes and know the route (as generations worth of .lmps prove), but for me at the time, very much a bog-average Everyman in level of skill, conquering the mapset was satisfying more as a demonstration that brains could be equally as valuable as brawn--sometimes even MORE valuable, perhaps!--when facing "impossible" challenges, something I recall as being very empowering moving forward in my Dooming through the years; and, lo and behold, the lessons I learned here are still very valuable in meeting the challenges of today's modern "high skill-ceiling" maps/mapsets, even if the nature of those challenges has changed significantly.

Thanks to Antares031 for the mapname .deh file. I will probably never once look at the map while actually moving through this playthrough, of course, but it's nice to have that little something that was missing from the package anyway :D.

Map 01 -- Into the Gate - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
That the first several levels of Hell Revealed are fairly 'normal' in pitch is something I recall as being confusing to me back when I first played, but of course as a design decision it makes sense enough: you introduce players to the general character of your mapset in very manageable situations, and then periodically up the ante as you move along, until your engine of destruction has eventually been fully revved up. This helps to combat early exhaustion, makes it easier for a wider audience to break into your vision for gameplay, and improves variety over a 32-level span where the main gameplay focus is heavy combat. It is a template that has been followed time and time again through the ages (DWMC has most recently seen it in Sunlust); in modern terms the two most broadly-imitated models for pacing and map arrangement in challenge-oriented PWADs are probably Alien Vendetta and Scythe / Scythe 2, but it is hoary old HR that they modeled themselves after, something to consider. Of course, the theoretical validity of this approach is not one and the same as how it will be received 'on the ground', and it doesn't surprise me in the least that the reaction to HR's E1 thus far has been lukewarm at best. We are of course dealing with quite an old mapset here, and some conflicts with modern sensibilities (particularly the one that teaches that it's wrong to allow or even require a player to ever stand still!) are going to be inevitable. I believe that HR's more iconic and more conceptual maps still hold up very well to this day, offering a unique and rewarding gameplay style seen only seldom, but truth is that precisely none of those maps reside here in E1, and even 'back in the day' I recall the sentiment that "Hell Revealed doesn't actually start until map 09/10" being pretty common. ;)

"Into the Gate" is actually one of E1's most dynamic and memorable levels, incidentally. It's rife with quirky little bits and bobs, ala the block of pinkies in stasis in the central room (who do not stay that way indefinitely, of course), the lonely cacodemon stuck outside in the yard, and the slipgate two feet behind you when the game begins, which actually functions....and ports you those two feet away, back to the player starting position. No going back! Despite its high difficulty (high for its time, of course), between the peppy RotT soundtrack and weird little curios like the ones seen here, HR is not usually a particularly grim or oppressive mapset in terms of mood, and indeed features a sense of light mirth and awareness about itself throughout, which of course is also one of the defining characteristics of Kama Sutra, (seen earlier by DWMC), widely seen by myself and others as HR's true successor (HR II is a different story, one for another time).

The vast majority of the 70 or so monsters in this map pour out of the teleport gate that the green armor sits atop in a few different waves, so in practice the vast majority of the action can boil down to simply holding one of the doors (the door leading into the weird little X-floor room is easier, since the pinky wave has trouble getting around the barrel closest to the door); you can do it with small-arms fire or by dispensing hearty knuckle sandwiches, but if you use firearms alone you could actually run out of ammo depending on wave timing and your positioning, so the 'zerk pack is not purely for show. I reckon the intent of the action here is to immediately impress upon you that with sheer monster-density that this "isn't your Dad's Doom"; it's not difficult to handle, especially for a modern player, but it's not without its nuances either, i.e. it's quite possible to get flanked and devoured by the wave of pinkies at the end if you stick too close to the main door opposite the exit, because some will dogpile over the port line on their pedestal and end up taking a chunk out of your ass while you're camping away the main gate. Cuteness aside, I never have liked that one caco out in the yard, killing him at the end only ever feels like emptying the dishwasher or taking out the trash or something. Nevertheless, nice peppy little map 01, something that avoids most tiresome map 01 tropes (e.g. calmly pistol a scattering of imps and former humans with one hand while digging around in your skivvies with the other as you soliloquize to no one in particular about the virtues of ludic/empathic game design) through simple, crass bloodiness.

[gaspe]

MAP07 - Arachnophobia

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

A spider-shaped map with only spiders as enemies. Cute concept, but on pistol start you have only the SSG and after a while it gets as a really repetitive task. It could be better with less enemies. I noticed the exit switch after I killed the mastermind, I would have skipped that fight.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 02 -- Gateway Lab - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Yeah, I don't get the thing with the 'blue door' that's not actually a door, either. I guess we could interpret this as another joke (which actually is possible, the more I think about it), but regardless what was needed with the setup here was another wave of monsters to teleport back by the switch which builds the staircase to the exit room. Easy way to guide players in the right direction, and of course it's not like spamming out more trash enemies to brutally mow down would be out of step with the general flavor of these first few maps.

This map is essentially a long corridor of unrelenting shotgun violence, incidentally, there was something very 'oldschool' to its approach to action even those many years ago when I first played it, vaguely redolent of old KR/Fiffy or Nick Bell maps in terms of pace, if not in style. Perhaps a bit too much of a skew towards pinkies/specters early on while you're only toting the pump-action shotty, although the game's first SSG, available later on in a simple different-tex pushwall secret, renders any and all remaining opposition about as stout as a sheet of ricepaper once it's in your hot little hands. Height variation as a combat element makes its debut here; it may not be evident from the early maps, but one thing HR ends up not being is flat, certainly.

Quite simple visually, of course, though very clean and tidy in terms of concourse issues like texture alignment and lighting contrast and the like. Most of HR is generally spacious, with a similar sort of scale as this map shows, though as we move along yards and arenas and other more complex constructions will eventually come to dominate in favor of the broad, squat corridors seen here. It is of course a simple truism that the visuals in HR are not going to impress many players weened on some of the beautiful things WADsters have made in the years since '97, and it is also true that some other WADs from the same time period feature more elaborate visual presentations and much more nuanced architecture, but rest assured one thing that HR is unlikely to ever do is actively offend your eyes, barring a weird kitschy moment or two. It is a paragon of a very practically-minded, gameplay-oriented WAD, where aesthetic nicety is a secondary concern at best, and bearing that in mind I think you'll find the visuals are quite reasonable, if rarely ever something to write home about; usually it's overall environmental concept that will define the set's most memorable presentations, rather than ornate architecture or delicate lighting per se. That being said, the side areas in this particular map (e.g. chaingun room) seem more than a mite undercooked by the mapset's general standards, and I'm led to wonder if 'Gateway Lab' might be one of its author's earliest works...? Maybe the old HR infopack could shed light on that, but I never could get that damn thing to run right, even on the old heap I used 15+ years ago, so your guess is as good as mine.

Map 03 -- The Dumpster - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Much more emphasis on verticality in this one, with progression prosecuted mainly through long drops and lifts up/down through various grungy little trash-chutes. In combat terms, things mostly play out much like the green-composite switch 'maze' from map 02, with clots of weaklings filing towards you to be mown down, hoping only to eventually inflict enough chip-damage to defeat you (not very likely if you find the secret combat armor early on). The greatest danger, ironically enough, occurs all of 3 seconds into the map: if you churlishly take a potshot through the little window at the imp quietly minding his own business in the next room over, you'll have a very difficult time making it down the very first chute, thanks to the timeless magic of infinitely-tall hellspawn. Fairly easy to criticize as a questionable design decision, I suppose, but given its placement it's something I tend to interpret more as another cheeky joke.

Despite the simple knot of corridors and straightforward/frontal encounters that comprise the layout and gameplay, I reckon it's easier to see here that the mapset was in fact designed by speed-minded players, e.g. via the alternate skip route for the YK early on that is available to the fleetfooted, or via the 'secret' rocket launcher, which is only practically useful in the room where it's found, and then mainly only for a player with enough foreknowledge to act immediately and in a specific way upon first teleporting into the area. Some other anomalous quirkiness appears in the form of the staggered soulsphere lift-pillars, I always like to try to time things so the zombie on the next lift is descending as I'm ascending, letting me blast him off his perch with a single shell in that brief instant where we're face to face. That I fixate on things like that fairly suggests there's not a whole lot of substance in the gameplay, I suppose.

Visually, again things are quite orthogonal, quite clean, and quite unadorned, with a greater emphasis on tight/cramped pathways than in previous maps, which I suppose is sort of in keeping with the avowed "dumpster" theme. Despite the generally solid/serviceable performance on a concourse level, I do notice that the texture selection is much broader and more haphazard here than in most of the game's other maps, with some textures appearing only once in isolation in a small/unremarkable room or corridor and then never again, again leading me to wonder if many of the earliest maps in HR might also be some of its oldest, as well.

Map 04 -- Garden Terminal - 100% Kills / No actual secrets
Despite being spatially more expansive than previous maps, this one is over in an eyeblink without registering much of a presence, something I believe was my impression even back on my first playthrough. The most memorable bits are all purely cosmetic, ala the 'halo' gazebo in the main garden, the BFG as an unattainable objet d'art in the main fountain (yes, I too wasted some time trying to figure out how to get it back then), and the totally unannounced and gratuitous telefrag of the poor Baron trying to get in a little 'alone time' outside the titular Terminal at the end. In addition to the Baron, revenants and hell knights also debut here (and this also marks the presence of the first caco in the mapset who is actually able to reach you), but they all spend most or all of their time hemmed in via one means or another, so I suppose there's a sense of the kid gloves still being very much on. Biggest risk is probably bumping into something and taking a heavy hit out in the garden (not a whole lot of clearance between the bounding walls and the stuff in the center of each quadrant in many cases), but it's really no big thing. Best part is probably cutting loose with the chaingun for a charge around the large 'horseshoe' yard at the end, though there's nothing to stop you from door-camping from within the Terminal if you prefer to do so, I suppose. The presence of a non-secret "secret sector" in the exit room is a hallmark of the WAD's age, something done in pre-port-proliferation days to force the game to give a tally of 100% in the category on the intermission screen for maps with no proper secrets designed into them, purely for the sake of formality, you understand.

Not very memorable, as I said, though evidently there are those who disagree: believe it or not, this is one of a number of maps from HR to eventually receive a formal fan 'sequel.' Different strokes, I suppose....

[Naan]

MAP05 - "Core Infection" by Yonatan Donner - UVMax on second try

I liked this map more than others, even without SSG. It's just a simple non-linear action packed techbase crowded with monsters and it plays rather well. It was a bit generous with health and armor. Pain elementals weren't much of a nuisance here. The plasma gun could've flagged as secret.


MAP06 - "The Round Crossroads" by Yonatan Donner - UVMax on second try

Much similar to the previous map with a sort-of central hub that does not prevent it to have some nonlinearity. It seems barons are teaming up looking to avenge their poor telefragged victim from MAP04 and they amassed in small groups in tight corridors, which is very manageable with a SSG handed right at the beginning of the map, in contrast to the previous one.

Other things worthy of note are the random crusher because hey it's MAP06 after all, the pointless optional shotgun (which could be some kind of a joke), and the unnoticeable soul sphere secret until you get the computer map right before the end, when you don't need it anymore (another joke?). Anyway, the general difficulty and quality is quietly building up.



A sidenote about textures and general level architecture: for a 1997 mapset which focused on gameplay rather than eyecandy visuals, I think it is still above average here. And like some others I played Erkatäññe just before (well I still have 2 maps left to review) and I must say I'm pleased to play clean, well finished and aligned maps after playing though Monti's abstract polygonal design.

[gaspe]

MAP08 - The Jail

Kills: 98% | Items: 66% | Secrets: 0%

Weird map. The music is unfitting for this level. The gameplay was easy, but I noticed that if you want to kill everything the ammo is really tight. The dead ends will punish you, interesting idea. I'm not sure why there those pinkies and imps in the big room with the switch.

[Pirx]

MAP05 - "Core Infection" by Yonatan Donner

i don't know what yonatan thought about this one, how people are going to speedrun his map when it mostly consists of tight corridors joining cramped spaces with barons and other creatures stuck in them. plus it's mostly orthogonal and startan-textured. at least there's a plasma gun to push into that demon flesh. the hrmus track was the best part.



MAP06 - "The Round Crossroads" by Yonatan Donner

apparently an improved version of map05. a kind of central hub (the first round structure) with still orthogonal branches, textured similarly like the map before, but partly outdoors, and there's a bit more space. plus the ssg is given right at the start. so much it's fun. the crusher and tight spaces full of barons were less inspired imo, but again there's a plasma gun for dealing with them. not a stellar map but much better than the maps before.



MAP07 - "Arachnophobia" by Haggay Niv

a spider-shaped map full of spiders. if circlestrafing the main hall with the ssg until they're all dead is not tedious enough, clearing out the legs certainly is. there's 3-4 of them in each leg. then a spiderdemon appears but can be simply ignored. good flesh textures but the gameplay just serves the gimmick.


btw, i also was unable to start the hr info pack, regardless of compatibility options (i'm on windows 7 pro / 64), but i remember that it ran with win98 on an ancient pc.