The DWmegawad Club plays: Hell Revealed

[mouldy]

Cynical said:

The one on the NE corner blah blah etc

Why are you fucking arguing about how i experienced the map as i played it? There is nothing for you to say about that. Do me a favour and never read anything else I ever post here again or reply to anything i say, thanks.

[T-Rex]

Back again to play more Hell Revealed. Going to take on another couple of maps. Map31 was okay, in my opinion, and Map32 was unadulterated insanity, though we'll get to see another one that trumps it later on. Onwards to Map 16.

Map16: The Path (Yonatan Donner)
100% kills, 100% items, 100% secrets
Time: 14:03

The cavern setting makes a triumphant return here, but unlike Underground Base and Great Halls of Fire which had a hodgepodge of themes, this one is very consistent all the way. Those who have played Hell Revealed 2 beforehand would recognise this as Map15's inspiration, only that the latter has four times the monster count than this map. Some would compare this to The Living End/The Final Frontier/Anti-Christ, but this one seems to take concepts from Limbo from The Ultimate Doom and possibly The Sewers from Plutonia in that you have to wade through harmful liquid (blood for Limbo and this map) but you have a lot of radiation suits to protect you. Besides, there's another map that is a clear inspiration of The Living End/The Final Frontier/Anti-Christ, no brainer on which one it is. This is a large and expansive map, but it's got lots of action to go with it. If you're starting this from Map32, my advice, is to hurry for the radiation suits before you die from the harmful blood, then make a dash up north to pick up the soul sphere in a secret that's hidden behind a fake wall. There's a lot of barons and hell knights here, so best bet is to rocket them, especially if they're grouped, because it will be tedious to waste them with your super shotgun, though if there's not too many of them, go ahead. Just be careful with the mancubi at the upper platform of the south section. It's easy to get lost if you don't know that you have to enter a door inside the compartment with the blue bars and hit the switch that's guarded by an arch-vile, but once you've figured that out, everything else is all fine and dandy, just be sure to pick up a radiation suit when it seems that the one you're using is almost wearing off. Know which teleporter to take as the right one will lead you to one of the keys. Once you reach the end, don't forget to fire your shotgun to wake up the cacodemons at the exit teleporter if you're going for 100% kills. Pretty good map and the creepy, suspenseful music "Watz Next?" from Rise of the Triad really goes well with the map.

Map17: The Black Towers (Yonatan Donner)
101% kills, 100% items, 100% secrets
Time: 09:47

Here is yet another tough cookie. Right off the bat once you open the door you are greeted with a bunch of barons and revenants firing at you from the blood fountain (I think they're arch-viles in the UV difficulty, I don't remember). My strategy is to run into either one of the three black towers so that by the time you've picked up a key, the barons will be grouped together so you can BFG them (if you're playing continuously of course since there's no BFG, making this very hard for pistol starters), or if you're playing on UV, have one of the released cyberdemons infight with the barons. There's a lot of Plutonic ambushes in this map, especially in the room where you pick up the super shotgun and the room with the berserk pack. Just be sure to get out as fast or you'll get surrounded by the spawning enemies and killed right where you stand. Luring them out of the room one by one also help to ease up things. Each tower has one key, and they're all heavily guarded (though the red key might be the easiest one to get). Play it safe, take advantage of getting the monsters to infight, and you should be fine with this map. This is one of the few maps in HR to use a track that was already played in one of the other maps, with this one using the same track for Map09, which was "Oww!!!" from Rise of the Triad. Good stuff.

I'm gonna stop here for now so that I don't get too far ahead of everyone else, not to mention that the next map is an exceptionally brutal one, though probably not to the same extent as Mostly Harmful or some of the maps we'll see in the last third of the wad. So for now, see you again, everyone.

[Magnusblitz]

Skipping the secret maps...

MAP16: The Path
74% kills, 0/2 secrets

Now this one definitely feels like a puzzle-box map, in fact, some parts gave me a Chip's Challenge-esque vibe to it, as it has lots of 'rules' on how the monsters can move and what the various gameplay elements are. The barons are stuck on the paths, the player can move off them but needs a radsuit to do so safely. Then there's a few squares blocked off with hell knights/AVs in 'em. A few areas have different enemies in clumps (revs, imps, mancs), and there's a big wall of demons at one point that should be lead around from afar to deal with. Need both keys to exit.

So yeah, SSGing all the Barons on this map would get pretty dull, so I only eliminated what I felt I needed to in order to feel comfortable that I could turn my back and deal with the other enemies (like clearing out the HK/AV pillboxes). My favorite moment was probably leading the huge pack of demons to one end of their area from afar, then moving into the other area and rocketing them down from the other end.

There are certainly a few annoying aspects of this map - there are a couple of blind teleports that will result in instant death for the unprepared player (one to the three AVs and the plasma gun, one to the mancs corridor) so it definitely requires some learning. There's also a bit of 'what does this switch do', the hell knights at the red key are pointless, and the barons that teleport in half-way are really stuck in place and basically just make annoying turret-walls for the latter half of the map. I also think the general aesthetic does the map a disservice, it's not ugly but certainly workmanlike brown at best... just because the level is more of an arcade concept type doesn't mean it can't be prettied up a bit too. Still, a fun level.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP17 The Black Tower

A smaller version of City in the Clouds, if you will. Opening shot is rather tedious, with barons being nuisances while chaingunners are even more annoying. Hub level though, so pick a tower, go through, grab key, and then repeat. Much like Doom II MAP19, you really only need two, and the red key is one of them. red key room has a weird floor drop segment, which is nonsensical. blue key tower has an annoying entrance hall with nobles up the stairs, plus a berserk segment which I can easily escape from. yellow key tower has the SSG and a nasty ambush in it. Overall the buildings themselves can be cramped in combat sometimes. Outside after picking up a key, one of those demon blocks lower to reveal a baron on easy skills, archie on HMP, cyber on UV. It's got some enjoyment in the least.

[Urthar]

ZDoom – Continuous Play – HMP

MAP17 – The Black Towers

The smash-and-grab approach that earlier maps selectively reward, generally gets you punished here. So the message to the player here seems to be, here's a hundred rockets, now kill a ton of Barons. In HMP you get a free pass to the green armour, and the grinding is toned down a bit, but it's not a particularly fun map.

[antares031]

MAP18 - Hard Attack
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 91/85/50

This time, you have a companion cyberdemon. Do not try to shoot it unless you want to punch it to death. Yes, In ZDoom, It's possible to beat that cyberdemon with bare hands. I tried, and it took me 3 minutes and 10 seconds to kill it. But, why do you want to kill your cute buddy? :( Anyway, this level has a linear layout. Just move forward and kill everything you meet. And yeah, before you leave the starting room, make sure to grab the backpack behind you. In the end, you will reach the giant room with a monster dispenser. And now this is the time for the companion cyberdemon. Just activate the lift to grab some monsters, and your buddy will do a job for you. Yes, if you get bored of it, just play the normal first person shooter instead of monster infighting simulator. And of course, I hate arch-viles.

P.S.: I've noticed that I missed a secret area with some monsters.

[Budoka]

MAP17: The Black Towers

You've got your introductory Baron assault which is pretty tricky (those damn Chaingunners don't help), and then three grueling challenges you can tackle in any order you wish, but you have to complete at least two of them in order to leave. Works for me. I like it all except for that stupid stuck Spiderdemon. Re-watching SAV88's demo, I am astonished at the range of completely viable options to tackle this map which are far from obvious on first notice.

[joe-ilya]

17

Another boxy layout! Hooray :(
A claustrophobic map, I didn't like the many monsters shoved into the little space and especially when I had to use SSG or chaingun because you need a weapon that kills quick.
Getting the blue key is a dumb desicion if you just want to get through the boxes as quick as you can.

2/5

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP17: Yet another grinder. Yet this map oscillates wildly between boring you to death and then just smashing you over the head with certain encounters. Mastermind behind a door? Yawn. Triple AV surprise at the blue key? Dafuq?! And then there’s stuff like the Mastermind encounter down in the basement… good lord. It’s an ugly mess of a map, variability in running be damned.

[j4rio]

I've never managed to like HR, despite reading all the praise from many reknown figures. HR2 is better.

[dobu gabu maru]

j4rio said:

HR2 is better.

My interest in HR2 has vastly increased now that I've played the original; I'm very curious as to what stayed the same and what didn't.

[Naan]

MAP10 - "Chambers of War" by Haggay Niv - UVMax on first try

Well, that was unexpected, this 90's house level feel out of place in such a mapset. Easy, lots of health, generous ammo and pretty much uneventful.


I tried maps 11 and 12 on pistol start and they seem pretty much unplayable on pistol start without doing a good amount of trial and error saves just to "explore" the map and get sufficent weaponry to clean out the early rooms. Or am I a not good enough Doom player?

[Cynical]

HR2 plays like a parody of HR, IMO.

"Look, it's The Path, but stuffed with three times the monsters, and with a basically mandatory one-shot SR50 jump to a BFG right at the start! Look, it's the cage fight from Last Look at Eden, but it goes on for four minutes! Look, it's Dead Progressive with literally thousands of monsters! etc."

[VGA]

joe-ilya said:

17

Another boxy layout! Hooray :(
A claustrophobic map, I didn't like the many monsters shoved into the little space and especially when I had to use SSG or chaingun because you need a weapon that kills quick.
Getting the blue key is a dumb desicion if you just want to get through the boxes as quick as you can.

2/5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gOWXYa72is

Was that Spider Mastermind dormant?

[Naan]

MAP11 - "Underground Base" by Yonatan Donner - HMPMax on first try without saves

So I guess it's all or nothing, eh?

For this map, HMP features the same monster count without downgrades, except the health and ammo support is way more generous, too much in my opinion but it's still MAP11 after all, and my early tries on UV may have biaised my playthrough. Still, I had some sloppy moves, didn't play tightly with ammo while the map provided more than enough recovery to continue until I hit the exit switch.

Onto the map itself, the starting shotgun is replaced by a SSG, the early secret has a rocket launcher and the plasma gun is given out as you fall down in the water. There are no really memorable moments, the secrets, having played Erkattäññe the month before, are no longer match to me. I liked the interesting caged baron design next to the exit switch, shooting those blocked demons near the BFG9000 room was sortof cool, but the 50SR jumps to get to it was unneeded and cut off the action quite a bit.

At least this map marks the beginning of the tougher stuff the mapset is famous for. But I would've appreciated an in-between difficulty between HMP and UV as the latter feels rather unfair on pistol start to me.

[j4rio]

Cynical said:

HR2 plays like a parody of HR, IMO.

"Look, it's The Path, but stuffed with three times the monsters, and with a basically mandatory one-shot SR50 jump to a BFG right at the start! Look, it's the cage fight from Last Look at Eden, but it goes on for four minutes! Look, it's Dead Progressive with literally thousands of monsters! etc."

To me HR is like a boring version of HR2. The slow clean-up in max demos of most HR maxes is sleep-inducing.

[mouldy]

MAP17 - "The Black Towers" by Yonatan Donner

This one was hard enough when I played continuous, but pistol start is crazy. Took me forever trying to get a toe-hold somewhere, in the end by sheer luck i managed to squeeze past the mastermind who was distracted by something else for a moment. after messing about in that building for a while and getting the red key, a cyber appeared to help destroy all the barons. Good job I remembered that and didnt bother trying to kill them all with rockets, like last time. I took the blue key building after that, which wasn't so bad, just some tedious clearing out to start with and then grab the key and run away. I did have a look at the other building but then I realised I only needed red and blue key to escape, so that'll do for me. Getting pretty tough now these maps, though mainly the challenge is from figuring out the only option for survival and then executing it in tidy fashion, which is a bit too orchestrated for my taste.

[gaspe]

MAP18 - Hard Attack

Kills: 75% | Items: 85% | Secrets: 0%

A linear map, it was a bit a mixed bag in its moments, some were cool and others not so much. But it was a fun map overall. In the upper belt that keeps to get repopulated I lost some time before realizing that I could just skip it by using the elevator bridges to reach the next area.

[T-Rex]

Cynical said:

HR2 plays like a parody of HR, IMO.

"Look, it's The Path, but stuffed with three times the monsters, and with a basically mandatory one-shot SR50 jump to a BFG right at the start! Look, it's the cage fight from Last Look at Eden, but it goes on for four minutes! Look, it's Dead Progressive with literally thousands of monsters! etc."

While HR2 is an okay megawad, it is a mixed bag as well. People here seem to think the levels of HR are ugly, but to me, they were nicely made, while the sequel, due to having a team of authors, had some questionable map designs, some of which are ugly, and some of which are crampy. It seems as if the authors wanted to exaggerate the overwhelming odds situation you sometimes get in the original without realising and understanding what gave the original HR its charm.

[Naan]

MAP12 - "Great Halls of Fire" by Yonatan Donner - UVMax on third try

Ok, I was refering to MAP13 as another example of a map that can't be beaten on pistol start barring some unorthox or sheer luck. This one is significantly easier than the previous on UV, but still harder than the ten first anyway.

It's a rather short map that have the particularity of having nothing to do with its name. There some red walls and a lava pool, but nothing like GREAT HALLS of FIRE, y'know? I can see some bottleneck parts if you do the map the wrong order - releasing the arachnotrons right at the beginning is a very bad idea, awakening the cyberdemon without killing him so when you come back to exit he'll wait at the small alcove ready to smash you, the upper archvile in the green walls section that will reanimate dead knights if you let him go out of his room.

Another okayish map, nothing stood out really.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP17: The Black Towers
100% kills, 2/2 secrets

More like the black squat boxes amirite

Anyways, the fun of the last few maps comes to a grinding halt, as this map is basically just Meat Box after Meat Box. Lots of squares connected with doors or tiny 64-wide hallways that doesn't leave much room for gameplay ideas beyond opening the door, slowly but surely whittling everything down, then repeating. There's also two Spider Masterminds and three Cyberdemons, all of which I ended up killing with the SSG because at that point I had nothing but shells left. I suppose if you know the map you can try to grab a key quickly first and use one of the cybers to handle the initial barons in the courtyard for you, but given how all the ammo is provided up front, for the first time the grind seems the way to go (unlike some of the prior maps, where it feels much more obvious that trial-and-error to find weapons or a strange path are what to do).

[Demon of the Well]

HR2 is quite a different beast from the original, and outside of certain obvious homages (i.e. Path II, Descent II, etc.) doesn't really seem like much of a sequel at all (esp. since its homages tend to be some of its weakest maps), rather its own distinct thing. It's definitely more stylistically varied (and so there aren't so many maps that are about routing/grinding, comparatively), but IMO the overall quality is chaotically all over the board, with some really terrible, dull maps and a few really nice ones. The lack of thematic/stylistic coherency is something of a double-edged sword for it vs. the original, I would say, but perhaps some would find the way it yo-yos around more to be refreshing. I think it's fair to say that if you take E1 of the original into account (which, as has been said, a lot of the WAD's fans/advocates kinda shy away from doing) it doesn't have much better a batting average, though, so there's that to consider as well. Also interesting that the WAD didn't have a whole lot of obvious stylistic influence on later mappers/projects moving forward, though there is at least one talented French mapper, called JCD, who seems to show some real fondness for the peculiar look and feel of pre-E3 HR2 in his work. Every once in a while a bright-eyed/bushy-tailed newcomer to the community will talk about getting some people together to make an HR3, amusing to surmise what that might end up looking like in this day and age.....

Map 15 -- Gates to Hell - 101% Kills / 100% Secrets
Another of the set's 'signature' maps, I reckon what sets this one apart from the others is that it has a little more of a sense of definite setting/place to it than most of the set's other levels do, particularly for it being one of Donner's maps (Niv's tending to have a more pronounced slant towards representationalism). There are exceptions, of course, but most of the playing fields in Hell Revealed are mainly just simple, pragmatic backdrops for the combat scenarios they house, with thematics being minimalist/vague, and ambience and atmosphere being more an incidental function of how stylistically coherent the second half of the WAD tends to be. "Gates to Hell", then, is different from the HR norm in that its conceptual backbone doesn't really lie in any of the individual fights or even in the permutations of possible routes (the obvious path is linear to a certain point, although with metagamery/foreknowledge you can sidestep it, which proves equally viable), but rather in the way the map is actually built and interconnects. A central 'henge' of arch-style warpgates lead to different segments of the map, all arranged in a contiguous ring around the hub at the center. As the level unfolds, more and more gates in the central henge become accessible, and barriers between the segments of the outer ring lower, eventually connecting everything together in one large circuit. The combination of a more obviously themed level progression and the characteristic understated/coherent texturing with some small details (!) here and there (notice that each gate is marked by its own unique pair of props, for instance) make for a level that seems to be something more than a series of arenas, even though, objectively speaking, it really is just a series of arenas. ;)

On a conventional playthrough the impact of all this is largely cosmetic--i.e. you get a sense of progress from seeing areas under your control expand before your eyes (to say nothing of the piles of corpses in the central area)--but if you're playing fast and loose it can be a good way to juice up your game a bit (i.e. unlock a lot of the circuit through evasion/pacifism, then start cleaning house once you've got a lot of momentum going and a big alley to blitz down). Not one of the set's more difficult entries, most of the danger elides from your initial teleportation into various segments, where monsters will often attack immediately and you'll have to scramble to keep your bearings in unfamiliar (if compact/simple) surroundings. Each of the segments is the same size but has its own particular configuration of structures, with some housing quirky little micro-concepts (e.g. the vile + switch + crusher gazebo in the first segment you port into) while others are just straight fights. In line with the more linear progression, weapons and supplies are rarely an issue--you're fed ammo and armaments as you need them, and since you need them in pretty short order, things gear up fast. Most encounters are simple straightforward blastathons, with the obvious punctuation marks being the periodic introductions of cyberdemons into the poison pool in the main hub. Again, players who know the map tend to leave a lot of the mess in the hub to sort itself out over time, although a certain 'cleanup' period (on a maxkills run) becomes inevitable at some point, almost certainly involving a lot of circlestrafing and SSGing, not the most elegant thing in the world tobe sure. This period of janitoring is one of the prices of the general style (i.e. it's still found in maps in this genre to this day, where there is more of a premium placed on smoothing it over somewhat), and I suppose how much of that style of play you can stomach will have a lot to do with how palatable you find the mapset as a whole. In its heyday I think this 'cleaning' aspect of HR was not seen as inappropriate because it tied into the feeling of triumphing over insurmountable odds and gaining total control of a space, but to modern sensibilities where more elaborately choreographed action is king it is of course just as liable to seem a pointless timesink.

Edit: Oh yeah, that secret exit. I found it one way or another 'back when', but I'm pretty sure I'd heard something about it beforehand (maybe from the hint in the infopack, dunno) rather than figuring it out entirely on my own in this case. I think the assumption at the time was that players would be privy to the hint in one way or another, so it's not something I'd write off as categorically bullshit, though to my current tastes it is rather lazy (these days I kind of prefer the exit to map 31 being the reward for an involved optional sidequest rather than hidden behind a metagamey trick or the like). Hey, at least it's not an off-texture pushwall!

[Demon of the Well]

Map 31 -- The Descent - 101% Kills / 100% Secrets
This one's cute. Over the years a lot of different maps (at least one of which the DWMC has played!) by a lot of different authors have referenced the main fight with the steady stream of monsters appearing on the slow descending lift, although it may be untoward to credit all of those to this map, as the core concept is presumably something originally lifted from E3 of the original Quake. All of the fine-and-filigreed-sounding stuff about routes and planning and strategy and whatnot that has been tumbling out of my wordhole for most of the playthrough to this point sort of goes out the window here, all you really need to do is 1) find the first four secrets (essentially mandatory on a pistol-start) and then 2) pick a spot to stand and shoot. Skilled players should have no trouble holding their ground, but of course less experienced marines might find themselves getting a bit intimidated or pushed around, and if you lose control of monster-mitigation things spiral out of hand pretty fast here.

It's kind of unfortunate that the map doesn't simply end when the lift stops, though, as the remaining action at the bottom is pretty crass--you SSG some symmetrical rooms of specters and then grind away four lone cyberdemons in four corner-rooms, at some point triggering a lone arch-vile to appear in the corpse-pile on the lift (barely registers as a happening), and at another triggering some nobles/skeletons to port into the lower halls. Block-monster lines spoil most of the fun in this second half in one way or another--they are what keeps the cyberdemons contained, and also provide you a safe camping point in one of the corner rooms for the latter ambush, turning it too into another campathon. Bit of a shame, really....it'd be kind of neat to be able to plug the teleporter point with your body for the whole ride down, then scoot off of it and let a cyb or two out for one giant brawl at the bottom.

Incidentally, I seem to be putting my foot in my mouth a bit here (I'm good at that), but I reckon that HR2's sequel to this map handles the initial descent better (by introducing a cyberdemon at the outset who makes it much trickier to gain/keep momentum), although the second part of that map unfortunately becomes a really egregious slogfest thereafter (imagine the congested corridor-centric layouts of early maps here in the original HR stuffed with approximately 1000% more monsters).

Map 32 -- Mostly Harmful - 102% Kills / No actual secrets
One of the mapset's most infamously difficult maps, this one surely seemed utterly insurmountable to many players back when the mapset was shiny and new. I wouldn't say it's as tough as the equally infamous map 24, myself, but it's more than a little rough-and-tumble, to say the least. The presence of monster-spawners in the central area is initially quite demoralizing when you first become aware of them, but in practice they don't matter much--the spawn-points tend to clog with monster bodies soon enough, and so their actual impact tends to be minimal. The real challenge is not dying a hilariously brutal death in the first 30 seconds, as you squirt out of a small cairn into a modest little yard watched over by a pair of cyberdemons and other unpleasant fellows, with an intractable web of arch-viles with only one real blindspot to make your life even more difficult (and fleeting). This fight actually repeats three more times before all's said and done, the only difference being that in the latter three you start from the far entrance rather than from the center, which doesn't make things much easier to deal with (although if you clean up in the center you might provisionally be able to camp out some of these later iterations, clement monster-spawnage allowing). Also featured is a brief trench-run in the center and a crowd of decidedly insistent skeletons (who are NOT held in check by blocking lines, incidentally) on the upper walkway that you'll have to deal with at some point, all making for quite an array of firepower stacked against you.

As was the case with map 31, though, I don't want to try to make the gameplay here out to be more than it is--in all honesty this map is essentially one protracted, scrappy, messy, health-gobbling/ammo-wasting BFG spazz-out. If this sounds to you suspiciously close to how slaughtermap philistines describe the genre writ large, well....well-spotted, I suppose, but of course there's at least a little more to it than that. ;) Finding a route to take through the map is still a key part of play (the layout's simplicity and symmetry balanced by its being a dangerous hotbed of hostile activity in this case), and there is still more than one way of going about things; it's simply that as you move about you're going to be holding down the BFG trigger about 90% of the time. Surviving here is not so much a function of artful dodging as it is of boorishly tanking damage in order to inflict tons of it yourself while staying just mobile enough to snap up health and powerups at key moments; ammo's a non-issue once you've had some practice, though you may end up having to fire a few rockets at some point until you git gud. Whether you succeed or fail, the outcome will be decided pretty quickly in this one, and so in that regard it is something decidedly different from a lot of the other maps in the 'signature' stretch of the game, if you're inclined to look at things from the map 31/32 novelty-centric perspective.

Aesthetically this is one of the more elaborate maps in the set, with mirrored 3D bridges leading from the elevated cloister walkway onto the central dais, and an overall structure built out of concentric layers with symmetrical/mirrored offshoots for a vaguely kaleidoscopic look on the automap. If a lot of HR's visual presentation is more practically-minded than anything, this was definitely a rather notable bit of ornamentation-for-the-sake-of-it, back in the day. The general theme here--a sort of marble/masonry garden-fortress temple look under a dazzling starry sky--is something some of you may recognize from the lategame cluster of maps in Kama Sutra, a similarity which is assuredly not coincidental.

[Budoka]

MAP18: Hard Attack

To this day, i can't settle the question of whether this is the best map name ever or the dumbest map name ever.

I like the contrast between calm and relaxed moments and extremely stressful ones. It's as if the laid back music and brightly lit environment were trying to lull you into a false sense of security, but you know you're not safe because everything else in the map is tailor made to startle you and freak you out.

A Cyberdemon in front of you right at the start, indefinitely teleporting Lost Souls that you can't reach (and thus can't identify as Lost Souls), lots of heavyweight monsters in very cramped corridors, something like fifty monsters constantly warping all over the place under a strobe light in the secret Plasma Gun room (it was a little cheap of Ryback to come back and clean it with the BFG), another Cyberdemon assaulting you out of nowhere in a tiny room and warping all over the place, being assaulted by two Spiderdemons and a bunch of other monsters overlooking an exposed catwalk, the exit room displacing you into a surprise Archvile attack... it's all pretty nasty, isn't it?

Also, the map is gigantic, and really over-dimensioned in general. It's too big, it's too long, it's too mean, and... it's absolutely freaking awesome.

Well, except for that stupid central ring which constantly gets resupplied with bullshit as you progress. I guess ignoring it as much as possible until you get close to the end helps. In a way, I get what Donner was going for with the Baron overload, they're meant to take a somewhat long time to kill and the player is challenged to do it as fast as possible. It's still stupid though.

Other than that particular element, great map.

[Paul977]

MAP18: Hard Attack

First part of the map is nice: I liked the long corridor dug into the rock with arch-viles coming at you: i also liked the other following two rooms both for the monsters placement and architecture.
In the large central room there is a lot of space to cover from the big number of Revenants walking over the structure but took me a lot of time to kill all of them plus the hks and barons that teleport later (I used the Cyberdemon to help me in this task). Architecturally is a good map (even I'm not a fan of gigantic map).
There is enough ammo, infight, health to make this level not very hard like mentioned in the infopack in fact it took me several less attempts to finish this one compared to map 13.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP18 Hard Attack

Getsu Fune and the attack of the "Fuck You" hard map.

apart from cyberscarecrow in front of me at the start, the SSG has a grieving chaingunner ambush right then and there. Also that teleport noise is incredibly annoying, a lost soul consistently making it happen and it bugs me that he is in a place where I can't kill him. Following the SSG room is a big winding flat hallway with a secret with teleport-o-rama enemies. This linearity wouldn't be so bad if not for barons, excuse me, doors with health. I'm not sure where in Doom Community Jargon the term "Door with health" originally referred too, but the barons on this map alone pretty much sum up what I think a door with health is.

The hub area, oh my god no. It's enough for having ground-floor enemies behind block-monster lines that make bridges later on, but that whole terrace filled with revenants is ridiculous. I decided to clear it out in its entirety first, but that's tedious business, since going up the lift right away is suicide thanks to cyber and his lackeys attacking me from the center and being pinched by revenants up above. As such, it's the lame "lower the lift, and kill the enemies coming down" ordeal until I see clearly in the central ring. Now the center. Lots of those guys in the open is fine, including the cyber, but getting the BFG causes the cages to be populated with arch-viles, with ZERO cover. Unless I made the dashing plan to lower the lift, get the BFG, then run the fuck over before it goes up I really think this was an intentional death trap, of the pull your hair out variety.

Through the black skull door (what?), we have more caged idiots and a room with a teleporting scenario. I'll call out HR's difficulty setting enemy placement again. On ITYTD to HMP, an archie teleports around the room, on UV and above a cyber. Seeing if I could telefrag whichever it is was harder than it looks.

More monsters on the ring, fuck me.

Left part: monsters on ledges, wee. Again, difficulty setting wise. Those are some huge blocks, accomodating spiderdemons on UV and higher. On lower settings, arch-viles on HMP and barons on ITYTD/HNTR. The blocks when they open eliminate like all cover, so avoiding arch-flames and spider bullets basically translates to kill those fuckers as quickly as you can and pretend you never saw them again.

I think grabbing the soulsphere triggers the final bridge, and what do ya know, more idiots on that ring. the final rooms have arch-vile cages. with replacements. Goodness me can't you see I'm gonna cough it? Oh, and one more trolly trick, teleport me back with another arch-vile. Man, screw this level, my absolute least favorite in the whole wad. I've heard so many things about how the previous few levels end up being boring or something, but this takes the cake for me as far as frustration goes. I guess the one admirable thing this wad has is no keys at all, and that's hilarious.

[Urthar]

ZDoom - Continuous Play - HMP

MAP18- Hard Attack

I sort of like Hard Attack, for it's bizarre spectacle and straight up WTF moments. I think I prefer the UV version though, on HMP it loses some of it's impact. Probably one of HR's most memorable maps.

[antares031]

MAP19 - Everything Dies
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 100/100/100

It's time to get some rest. Compare to previous levels in this episode, this level is surprisingly easy. You start the level with free IDFA and megasphere. Next, you just clean the another extremely-linear level. But keep in mind, the free IDFA from the start is the only supply you can get from this level in Ultra-Violence. Even the secret area doesn't give you anything, but a boss monster.

[mouldy]

MAP18 - "Hard Attack" by Yonatan Donner

Finished this one with 49% kills. I'm assuming most of those were the endless wall of revs circling the parapet of the bfg courtyard, I did start trying to kill them but then figured out that whole area is optional anyway. There were tons of other monsters that I just ran away from, safely left behind bars, on distant ledges and in the plasma rifle secret room (who don't even warp in if you are quiet). I like a map that lets you run away like a coward, and given the walls of meat you have to deal with anyway I feel like I did my fair share of killing. Funny map, especially the ring of monsters who end up standing on each other's heads when you lower the lift. I'm guessing thats a zdoom thing.

[Cynical]

Huh, I didn't know it was even possible to get to the Plasma Rifle room silent. I always figured it was mandatory to clear out some of the first hallway in order to make the run fast enough.

Unlike everyone else apparently, I hate that center room. Trying to get few enough Revs on the lift so you can get to the center and kill the Cyb/grab the BFG is an incredibly annoying grind and a massive pain in the ass. You can't even really plink at them from the ground. And then there's no reason to deal with them anyways, since they can't get on the two side lifts. And then there's the dumb monster-block lines that stop the two huge groups of nobles from being able to approach or do anything but be rocket fodder. I really have no idea what Donner was going for in that room.

The fight in the plasma secret really reminds me of the kind of "secret fight" room Ribbiks likes to make. It even has the super-dark lighting going on, and similar teleporter gimmicks to the type he's used in several of them!

The teleporting Cyberdemon is probably the most unpredictable and chaotic version of that setup I've ever seen. I love it.