The DWmegawad Club plays: Hell Revealed

[antares031]

MAP21 - Siege
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 100/100/100

So this level is gonna be a tough one since there are lots of supplies at base camp... and I was wrong. The level starts with bulletsponges which is not my taste. Sooner, you'll encounter another bulletsponges. Yes, normally a mob of angry skeletons with homing missiles is a trouble, but these revenants can be caught easily with a chaingun when you hide behind the grey tree. The final quest is a bridge of cyberdemons. Once you get the first cyberdemon, activate the switch to lure some demons under the bridge. Then, the cyberdemons will do your job. Don't forget to find a secret inside the house. Otherwise, you'll spam the SSG against boss monsters. There's one spider mastermind in this level, but I bet you don't need to deal with her at all.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP20: Judgement Day
79% kills, 1/1 secret

My experience here matched mouldy's; this level is pure tedium. Wait for everything at the start to infight, then kill off the barons/knights with a single shotgun. Single shotgun your way through a corridor full of mancubi. Grab the SSG from the secret and grind through the rest of the map, which isn't challenging at all given the block monster lines. The only amusing bit was when I dragged the cyberdemon out of the yellow key area to deal with the barons in the red key area, then accidently let him get stuck on the teleports in that room, oops. Ran by everything at the end.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP20: A stupid map. The first time I just charged ahead and was just stumped by the YK hall, having only an SG and dozens of mancs to grind through. I eventually snuck by them but I couldn't get back to the central room with the weapons I had, so I was pretty much stuck. I watched Lingyan’s playthrough and realized I had to get some infighting between the secret revs and the manc—a clever gimmick but done in an obfuscated way (I mean, you can’t even see the AV/revs). Like MAP18, the rest of the map is a docile little lamb in comparison, only becoming threatening at that double AV jump section (it was hard for me to survive that with low health). Man though, that first part is real malicious until you realize the intended tactic.

EDIT: Looks like we're all having the same experience heheheh

[joe-ilya]

21

Myhouse.wad, anyone?

This map is clearly made to speedrun and trick you into pushing switches, it's memorable for the key in the HOM pit to trick you there nothing there upon first sight untill it pops out. The hardest part of this map was to avoid the line of cybers, and that's it.

Smart map, cool encounters.

3/5

[gaspe]

MAP21 - Siege

Kills: 23% | Items: 20% | Secrets: 100%

Here we have our base full of supplies from where we start. The house was quite nice actually. Gameplay we have just mobs blocking our way. I remember that there were some cacos here, and I hear them but noone teleported into the map. Idk if GZDoom screwed something, but nonethless I wouldn't have stay for long time into the map. Going for the exit was just trying many times until you dodge all the rockets of the cybers and the mastermind doesn't block your way.
Weird map, I liked the thing of leaving your house and goind into the neighborhood infested by demons.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 18 -- Hard Attack - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Hmm. HR's answer to "Tricks and Traps", perhaps? The layout's again a series of big concept-centric boxes with rather dull/directionless connecting areas in between, really more in line with the likes of maps 11 and 12 than with the other recent maps, suggesting this is again likely one of Yonatan's older levels, although there seem to be some advancements in structure and flow at play. The thing that most jumps out at me is the player's revisiting of the large central area a number of times (with extra monsters introduced at some points); reuse of space being something that's fairly rare in the mapset and mainly encountered in (chronologically) later levels, ala map 26 to come or map 17 just prior. Geometry is still simple and on a generous scale, but there seems to be more mind paid to having room layouts themselves be more of a factor in defining combat, ala the bridge area to the west or the iconic rampart-arena in the central area, the cleansing of which requires either extreme patience and low risk or high risk and extreme efficiency. Still very crude in places--and at this point the crass filler-play found in the connecting areas (such as the long string of monsters found in the winding dirt hallway early on) is most certainly beginning to become tiresome, I fully agree--but in this map I think we can really see an author starting to find what eventually became his 'finished' style.

The most memorable parts of the level are its concepts, of course, which here are all share one thing in common: Extreme cheek. Very sass. Much troll. Etcetera. That your very first experience when the level loads is a frank and intimate appraisal of a certain popular portion of demonic anatomy makes it pretty clear that things aren't going to be quite the norm in this one. I'm not sure I share the analysis that Donner was going for a 'horror' angle--indeed, I think most of the really colorful ideas here are goofy as hell, and proudly so--but either way, the upshot is that highly lethal Traps, each with a very simple Trick for disarming them, are what is most likely to take your life here, and not the endless supply of rampart-guards or hall-monitors. The aforementioned 'Trick' often revolves around rewarding paranoia/prudence--i.e. the key to avoid getting roasted by the cage-viles in the central arena is to actuate the lift ahead of time so you can run back out at a moment's notice, and not choking at the exit is predicated on realizing that yes, that megasphere IS in fact too good to be true--and so most of the encounters are very simple after the first jab, but there's some more elaborate and spectacle-heavy stuff in there, too. My personal favorite of is certainly the visually disorienting and ultimately hilarious plasma rifle secret, which baits you into unleashing an almost comically lethal gangbang upon yourself (complete with ethereal green fireworks show!) via the tempting medium of a poor, helpless zombieman. The designed telefrag-chase sequence with the cyberdemon in the northern room is also particularly clever, and can be surprisingly tricky even to a modern perspective.

As aforesaid, it's a bit of a shame that the mind-numbing gameplay in the connecting areas casts a bit of a pall on ideas like these (the monster-cleaning in the central ramparts is something I feel less antipathy for, incidentally, since how quickly/smoothly it goes is largely a question of what risks you're willing to take), because they're the core of the map, and indeed generally the liveliest aspect of Yonatan's personal style. From an analytical DWMC perspective it's proving hard to avoid the assessment that the mapset as a whole suffers to some significant degree from being built on top of a 'My First Levels' collection (this was much less taboo in those days, but taboo or no it's still a valid qualitative concern, of course), and schizoid levels like this one certainly seem to highlight that contrast. Ultimately, I think the best of Donner's maps in HR tend to marry the creative concepts he has sequestered in the spokes here with the loose 'sandbox arena' style we've seen him developing a bit elsewhere, but most of said maps are still yet to come at this point.

Map 19 -- Everything Dies - 100% Kills / No actual secrets
Never have much cared for this one, and as such I don't have a lot to say about it. Even for a windbag like myself, there's not much to talk about here--it is a short, totally linear sequence of one-off rooms where all combat is frontal and direct. That there is some architectural distinction between areas (e.g. bridge-canyon vs. cage-yard vs. rampart-box, etc.) helps to smooth the presentation over a bit in comparison to completely unrefined setups like the quasi-maze corridor segments of earlier maps, but in play terms the end result's not much different. The gameplay in Hell Revealed takes most of its flavor from routing/planning (with the requisite early exploratory recon period on a blind play), from finding efficient ways to clear out large, dangerous spaces, and occasionally from conceptual curios, and the way this map is built, with its linear series of modestly-scaled box-rooms, is simply conducive to precisely NONE of those things.

It would be unfair to gloss over the presence of some gimmicky ideas here which lend the level a certain personality, I suppose. Of course everyone knows about the wink-wink nudge-nudge bit with the sterile-but-not-really pain elementals in the first room (a very early example of a very rarely 'featurized' limit/bug), while the concept that's clearly supposed to define the map as a whole is that you receive your entire supply kit at the very beginning and have to last the whole level with no refills (gotta admit I'm kinda surprised so many of you assumed you only had the shotgun here....). It's a concept that certainly has potential, but to a modern perspective the level is likely too easy for the need to really budget resources to ever come into play, so all in all it's a wash.

I suppose it would be fair to say that this level's really not very conceptually different from map 21 later on (which is one that I like), but I reckon the devil's in the details, y'know?

[T-Rex]

Demon of the Well said:

I'm not sure I share the analysis that Donner was going for a 'horror' angle

What I mean by the 'horror' angle is how you have a cyberdemon with his back in front of you at the start and you have only a backpack. Not to mention the hidden roaming arch-viles as you wander through the hallway. I feel the map heavily implements the element of surprise than anything else.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 20 -- Judgement Day - 101% Kills / 100% Secrets
Not particularly fond of this one, either. A lot of the basic precepts for HR gameplay that were absent from the previous map return here, but the execution of them is so hamfisted that most of the runtime lacks verve and vibrancy. Those who pistol-start the map and react with incredulity to the notion that Donner seriously expects you to use the pump-action shotgun to clean out the whole 'spine' of the temple are on the right track, as the intended strategy is presumably a mad dash to the SSG at the start (which is in a very orthodox/easy pushwall secret likely to be missed only by those who refuse to search for secrets as a matter of principle), which speeds up the janitoring somewhat. In contrast to some previous maps which used a similar concept, though, I think it's much easier to make the argument in this case that what you're 'supposed' to do isn't intuitive enough--fighting all the lineblocked monsters with the shotgun from the outset doesn't seem right, but elbowing (literally) past the oversized clots of monsters clogging up each of the narrow rooms doesn't feel right either (esp. since whether or not you can actually pick up the SSG when you get there is largely down to the vagaries of RNG/monster-pathing), more like you're stubbornly breaking designed progression.

However you end up doing it, once you sort out your initial foothold you rapidly gain momentum and can begin to clear out the rest of the temple one room at a time. The gathering of momentum and the sieging of entrenched enemies is of course very HR, but the room-by-room nature and heavy presence of monster-blocking lines sucks most of the fun out of the proceedings, making most of the gunplay feel rather stilted and artificial. You don't really have much say in how you fight these encounters--most are by design either nothing but campouts or nothing but out-tanking slugfests (e.g. the pair of arch-viles guarding the red skull key), and in those few instances where you can get more creative, ala Magnus' pitting of the second cyberdemon against the phasing Barons in the western wing, it again feels more like you're playing against the author rather than with him. There are some of Donner's characteristic concepts at play in a couple of places, but these are either largely cosmetic in nature (i.e. the first cyberdemon 'statue' who you end up fighting a few minutes later) or not without their own issues. The phasing Barons setup, for instance, is the one designed encounter that might've really benefited from having a blockline to keep them from filing out the door into the main hub after you (or, even better, from having a trigger to seal the player in to their room upon entering), and also the only one that DOESN'T have one. Ironically it's the simplest setpiece of all that comes as the most refreshing, that being the totally straightforward cyberdemon + infighting scenario in the final yard, a standard Doom trope that is rare in this mapset, perhaps surprising to some.

Some mention of aesthetics are in order, I suppose. The layout is another simplistic hubspoke (and again, I can only conclude that this was another map from Donner's developmental phase) that takes on the vague aspect of an alien crucifix on the automap, but more in line with lateform HR maps the theming is very clean and coherent, here depicting a stately marble edifice that comes off as something like a Greco-Roman temple + gothic cathedral hybrid, courtesy of architectural detailing (red columns and cascade-style font in the eastern wing, vaguely 'domed' vaulting in the central hub, etc.) and the tasteful appearance of a few custom stained glass window textures for accent. The maze-like congeries of random corridors are, thankfully, absent, and there is a sense of Yonatan paying special attention to visual detailing in some areas, though others still appear quite sparse (e.g. final yard with the strangely contorted MARBFACEs) in execution. Another small quirk is the presence of the stock Doom II music track for slot 20 instead of something from RoTT, something which IIRC persists until map 27 or so. Incidentally, rdwpa, if that file were a music WAD instead of a .mid file I would gladly load it over top of one of these stock-track maps, even if it is to be inspired by something in the vein of a Sensitive Girl Sensitively Singing the Sensitive Lyrics to a Sensitively-written Sensitive Song about Her Very Sensitive Sensitivities, or the like. ;) Let it not be said I won't try new things!

[Dylan Jarvis]

MAP12: This one is a bit scaled back in difficulty compared to the last. I like it except for that dumb baron trap with multiple elevators coming down. It just gets boring and repetitive. Other then that it was fine.

MAP13: This map has a pretty fun hectic start that forces you to move around a lot thus using enemies infighting to progress. Then there's the dumb stairs room with lots of barons an archvile and dumb revenants that tele in behind you. I also still hate that unfair cage trap. It would be a decent trap if it wasn't for the bullshit chaingunners. The rest of the map is fine however. Not great not bad.

MAP14: Horrible map. Some of the worst enemy placement in doom history. Poorly placed revenant cages, poorly placed caco demon trap, poorly placed archviles in the shotgun room. For pistol starters this map has to be the worst. The First cyber was fine, using him to help take out the enemies. The other two are in very tight rooms making it really difficult to dodge the rockets without getting hit by splash damage. Plus one of them spawns down a set of stairs making it to where you can get caught up in rocket fire before going down. This map is just an absolute mess. The way to get the BFG is absolutely asinine as well I failed the jump like 10 times. Yeah this map is trash. This is the worst in the set by far.

[Budoka]

MAP20 : Judgment Day

This one is pure, unadulterated insanity. Although, I’m not sure what you people are going on about regarding having to slog through the first three rooms. Ryback doesn’t bother with any of that in his run, though granted that move he pulled to evade the Mancubi looks a tad tricky and I don’t think I could reproduce it. But since this is made by speedrunning pros for speedrunning pros, I say it’s fair.

Kudos as well for setting up the first Cyberdemon against the Barons behind the red door and then cleaning the Cacos outside in the meantime. I would never, EVER have thought of that on my own.

I never noticed those outstreched faces until Suitepee pointed them out, they do look very goofy. I’m also not a fan of making climactic fights optional like this (looking at you, « The Living End »). Even so, good map.

MAP21 : Siege

Cool concept, mostly bad execution. In other words, it’s a Haggay Niv map. Waking up the entire level and cleaning it out of order doesn’t seem to make it much more dynamic, either.

[mouldy]

MAP21 - "Siege" by Haggay Niv

Exit with 34% kills. I'm quite happy to have missed out on the other 66%, the monsters I did kill were a grind. After rocketing the hellknights I decided to empty the manc cages with the chaingun, there was probably a more exciting way to do that but the alternative to machine gunning them in total safety meant risking health and rocket ammo, and I wasn't sure what was coming next. What came next was a bunch of skeletons warping in, who were rocketed in short order. Then there was a bridge of cybers who i decided I really couldn't be arsed to kill, so I waited until the mastermind at the other end had annoyed them enough to be destroyed by infighting and then just ran to the exit. I have to assume that these maps are designed to encourage that kind of cowardice, since they don't really provide the tools to make killing everything enjoyable.

[Urthar]

ZDoom - Continous Play - HMP

MAP21 - Siege

This map feels wrong. The opening is basically the lull before the storm, but the storm never really turns up. If you had walked out of this condo into the middle of MAP22 - Resistance Is Futile then it might have worked.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP21 Siege

Siege was one of the inspirations for NOVA MAP22. I wanted to make it seem like most of your supplies were at the start. of course, this map isn't so much of a siege, unlike it's true sequel in hr2final, as all the stuff's at the start while I just have to go through a linear romp. the first few rooms after the supplies are caged pincers with enemies behind them, and the blue key room has a convenient teleporter leading back so I don't have to go all the way. the final stretch is just not fun, mainly because of the mancubi. the switches lower the walkways that they're on, which seem pointless but I can see some tactical usage of lowering them so projectiles don't fly straight to my face, although the demons below could catch up. The imps around the spiderdemon are quite annoying, for him and not me.

Why can I not grab this berserk pack!

[Cynical]

Demon of the Well said:

Map 20 -- Judgement Day - 101% Kills / 100% Secrets
Not particularly fond of this one, either. A lot of the basic precepts for HR gameplay that were absent from the previous map return here, but the execution of them is so hamfisted that most of the runtime lacks verve and vibrancy. Those who pistol-start the map and react with incredulity to the notion that Donner seriously expects you to use the pump-action shotgun to clean out the whole 'spine' of the temple are on the right track, as the intended strategy is presumably a mad dash to the SSG at the start (which is in a very orthodox/easy pushwall secret likely to be missed only by those who refuse to search for secrets as a matter of principle), which speeds up the janitoring somewhat. In contrast to some previous maps which used a similar concept, though, I think it's much easier to make the argument in this case that what you're 'supposed' to do isn't intuitive enough--fighting all the lineblocked monsters with the shotgun from the outset doesn't seem right, but elbowing (literally) past the oversized clots of monsters clogging up each of the narrow rooms doesn't feel right either (esp. since whether or not you can actually pick up the SSG when you get there is largely down to the vagaries of RNG/monster-pathing), more like you're stubbornly breaking designed progression.

How were you handling the pop-up Vile past the Mancs? When I tried playing this way, even when the Mancs moved right for me and I was able to get past them, the Vile ultimately created an untenable roadblock.

It seemed to me like the only really viable way of doing things here really was the old "watch a blob of monsters infight" chestnut in the first two rooms, followed by chipping through the Mancubi with a single-barreled shotgun.

[Devalaous]

joe-ilya said:

You start the map with an ass infront of you, if you touch it, it will disappear

Amazing.

[Azuruish]

Hm... Actually that map (MAP18) impossible finish on Nightmare skill without BFG9000 //CyberAss will not allow it

[antares031]

MAP22 - Resistance is Futile
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 100/100/100

This level is all about spamming rockets. To make it possible, there are lots and lots of boxes of rockets all over the place, even if you play this level on UV. But since every boss monsters, cyberdemons and spider masterminds, are immune to blast damage, get your plasma weapons ready when you're about to face them. In other words, do not spam your plasma cells against other monsters, except the beginning of the level. Keep in mind that when you're spamming rockets, be careful to deal with anti-rocket monsters, such as pain elementals and their babies. In the end, you'll manage to clean the level by spamming rockets. So yes, this level is all about spamming rockets... and a little bit of BFG. Just spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, BFG, spam, spam, spam and spam.

[NaZa]

Azuruish said:

Hm... Actually that map (MAP18) impossible finish on Nightmare skill without BFG9000 //CyberAss will not allow it

Let's send it to AltimaMantoid for his new Trial of a Doomgod!

[vdgg]

On nightmare no, but -fast -respawn yes... But no-one bothered

[Budoka]

vdgg said:

On nightmare no, but -fast -respawn yes

Is there a difference?

[vdgg]

-fast -respawn you have normal ammo, but most importantly, monsters don't attack on sight, there's delay. HR MAP18 is a good map for testing this :)

[dobu gabu maru]

Getsu Fune said:

Siege was one of the inspirations for NOVA MAP22.

Ahhh that explains why all the medikits were only at the start. Interesting.

MAP21: This is the kind of map that gives slaughtermaps a bad name. I’ve been critical of the weapons given to you in the last handful of maps, but this one gives you the munitions lotto winnings right off the bat. And despite being called “Siege”, none of the monsters can actually make their way to your house, so you feel less like a desperate Spartan and more like a pest exterminator. Plus there’s a pitiful trickle warp-in and the entire last fight is completely skippable so… it’s all kinda just bleh. Niv doesn’t seem to be as sadistic as Donner but he also isn’t as interesting with his map design. Not entirely sure which one I’d rather be stuck with.

[Suitepee]

http://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/v/48776775 = part 3 of my playthrough, covering maps 24-30. (UV, continuous)

1 out of 5, this megawad was awful. Just plain awful. I'm glad people took inspiration from it to be BETTER than Hell Revealed, but playing this solo was just miserable.

I did some speedrunning trickery on map 24 to skip that slaughterfest, since I didn't fancy wasting 2 hours beating it.
It's weird how HR suddenly gets easier for the few maps just before the end.
Map 30 is the worst Icon of Sin map I have ever played. Ever. Only one person in the chat's insistence got me to beat it legitimately, and even then it sucked.

I never want to play another megawad like this ever again.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP21: Siege
74% kills, 0/1 secret

Like MAP19, this map provides all the goodies up front and then has the player tackle an extremely linear assault. While some parts are more challenging, it's not any more fun. The largest difficulty for me was finding the blue key in the pool since I had no reason to pick up the blue armor hiding it.

EDIT: I guess it's not in the pool, but instead in that weird lit empty square in the room with the lone former human, whatever.

[Demon of the Well]

Cynical said:

How were you handling the pop-up Vile past the Mancs? When I tried playing this way, even when the Mancs moved right for me and I was able to get past them, the Vile ultimately created an untenable roadblock.

It seemed to me like the only really viable way of doing things here really was the old "watch a blob of monsters infight" chestnut in the first two rooms, followed by chipping through the Mancubi with a single-barreled shotgun.

Getting past the mancos is pretty simple, you generally just have to use the rows of red pedestals as blockers to create a lane you can run through (that is, between them and the wall). The arch-vile + revenants who actually stand on top of the SSG are the big problem. Either they jitter out of the way in time (usually because of errant mancubus attacks) and let you scoop up the gun, or they......don't. Which essentially kills your run. If you can actually pick up the SSG and run back out of the secret sector, though, you can hide out in one of the curved stairwells pretty easily and gain ground from there. Sometimes one of the popup viles at the top of either stairwell will nuke you, of course, but most of the time they can't seem to get their shit together quickly enough to manage this. You can get fucked by RNG at almost every point of this process, as I said, but having to try it a handful of times for the dicerolls to work out in your favor is still generally preferable to (and quicker than) slow-balling through everything in the spine of the level with the regular shotgun, methinks.

Map 21 -- Siege - 101% Kills / 100% Secrets
Who is it that is under siege here? Certainly not Doomguy, his little bungalow is as idyllic as can be (who ever would've thought that demons would respect NO TRESPASSING signs?), never mind the massive amounts of military surplus he has just lying around. I put it to you that is actually the demons themselves who are the beleaguered ones, and the bridge in the night their point of last stand. Poor bastards, nearly all of the cards are in Doomguy's favor in this one.

As aforesaid, on a fundamental level this is more than a bit like the recent map 19 in concept; that is to say, a (mostly) linear sequence of one-off frontal assaults with all of the available equipment and supplies located at the start of the path. Whereas map 19 has always seemed like a dud to me, though, there's always been something I like about this one, some alchemy of the quaint little setting (the bungalow is the most high-fidelity setting in the game, to whit) and the encounters being both easier to toy around with and large enough to make doing so worth the effort. What I like to shoot for is a pacifist dash all the way to the blue keycard (easier than it looks, though of course sometimes the first two arch-viles will have hairtrigger reflexes and spoil the run), using it to pop the blue door (which permanently stays open) before taking the teleporter in the BK room back to the bungalow. This can be a bit fiddly in that usually the two 'trons outside the blue door will get in your way and keep you from opening it, meaning you likely have to blast them and start the ball rolling a bit early, but the upshot of this scheme if you can pull it off is that the big cluster of monsters between the house and the bridge area will be caught in a devastating crossfire between yourself and the first cyberdemon on the bridge, amusing to say the least. It's just as easy to pound through everything yourself, of course--you certainly have the resources to do so--but it's more entertaining to get a bit tricksy, I think. The bridge area itself is also fairly flexible, since you can use switches to lower different segments of the crossing, either feeding the hordes of pinkies to the cyberdemons or, in rare instances where pathing works out right, feeding one (or more!) of the cyberdemons to the pinkies. OR you can be a spoilsport and just skip it all, I suppose, in which case the pacifistic approach also works.

Again, not what we'd call high art these days, but the (potential) differences in playability between this and map 19 make for a good example of how to get the most out of the mapset, if you're so inclined. I believe I'd also stand by my opinion that it's Niv's most enjoyable map in the set...his later entries show more ambitious architecture and the like, but none play as well, largely due to his persistently homogeneous monster placement style.

[Lingyan203]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2cPKvqgv_g

Map21 NM 100 in 54 seconds

[gaspe]

MAP22 - Resistance is Futile

Kills: 89% | Items: 66% | Secrets: 100%

A playground full of monsters where we have just to go crazy with the RL, and occasionally the BFG. Extremely simple visually but it was really fun to play for what I care. After taking an initial foothold and the archiviles on the ledges are dead it isn't a very difficult level, it was only quite tricky that cyberdemon inside the building.

[T-Rex]

Alright, after a couple of days on break, it's back to playing more of the legendary megawad.

Map19: Everything Dies (Yonatan Donner)
100% kills, 100% items, 100% secrets
Time: 03:40

Very linear level. This is thankfully a breather from the humungous and difficult Hard Attack, and it makes an attempt at creating a narrative of some sorts. This level has you getting all your weapons and ammo through a voodoo once you step on the marble platform where the megasphere rests, but that's all you're going to get for the map as there's weapons or ammo (save for shotgun and rocket ammo in a couple of areas) anywhere else. You have a group of pain elementals that can't spawn Lost Souls due to the limit bug that's applied to the map (though they'll spawn them in modern source ports), but will once the lost souls are crushed. I prefer to eliminate them first before getting the megasphere after learning the trick behind it. The setting, theme, and the RotT game over music played is meant to depict an "end-of-the-world" of sorts. But anyway, this is somewhat of a gauntlet as, you make your way past a bridge with revenants, cacodemons and imps, jump down to some mancubi, then enter another area with demons and an arch-vile, with imps and chaingunners overlooking from the battlements, past that is a yard with a shelter and more monsters, then you reach another yard with a caged garden and more nasties, and you jump down the moat filled with spectres, before entering a cavern with revenants and an arch-vile, and finally the end with zombiemen, imps, arachnotrons, and a spider mastermind. Very neat concept, and a welcome breather before getting back to more tough maps. The Plutonia-ish sections are a nice touch.

Map20: Judgement Day (Yonatan Donner)
100% kills, 100% items, 100% secrets
Time: 08:20

This map feels like an amalgamation of Thy Flesh Consumed and Plutonia. It's a marble fortress with some heavy opposition, which can be rather gruelling if you're playing this from pistol start, but is otherwise manageable in consecutive play. Here is where we'll be hearing stock Doom 2 music as they didn't bother putting new music for Map20 up until Map26, somehow reminding me of Plutonia's music selection as they even use stock Doom 2 music from Map20 to Map26, except for using a different track for Map21. If only Jimmy's team could consider adding something to HR's soundtrack, but oh well, who cares, it's still cool to hear Doom 2 music every now and then. Anyway, the start has you facing some hell knights and imps, which thankfully you get the super shotgun, then you enter the large circular room that acts as a hub as you have to the north the hallway with mancubi which leads up to a large battle with imps and barons along with other vicious monsters guarding the way to the yellow key. To the east (yellow door) is an area with arachnotrons, a frozen cyberdemon (ala the demons from Map01), and some invisible stairs to leading to the red key which opens a couple of arch-viles and releases the cyberdemon. Finally, the west (red door) has a hallway with constantly teleporting barons, leading down to a chamber with an arch-vile and a lava which you'll need to cross by activating the switch which rises back up the hall. Reaching the pentagram releases another cyberdermon, and entering it takes you to the ending which is set outdoors with some blocks that has some rather funny edits of the marble faces and a big fight with a cyberdemon, some barons, and monsters that teleport in. I noticed a lot of homages here. The map itself is obviously similar to Episode 4 of Ultimate Doom, the circular hub reminds me of Milo Casali's mapping style (along with the symmetry and curved corners in some of the rooms), the yellow key area seems to remind me of E4M7's red key chamber, the east room with the columns, arachnotrons and frozen cyberdemon, most likely from TNT Map31, the fountain seems to be lifted from E4M5, the invisible platforms were a staple in a few of Plutonia's maps (despite the gimmick being introduced by Leo Martin Lim) and finally, the teleporting barons must have been inspired by Sverre Kvernmo's Black Tower of the Master Levels. Judgement Day is a pretty hard, but good map.

And with that, the second episode is done and we're up to the last episode of Hell Revealed. But I will continue on tomorrow, so until then, see you guys later.

[dobu gabu maru]

Suitepee said:

I never want to play another megawad like this ever again.

Aww shame I missed the final playthrough, and double shame you (basically) skipped the best map in the set! I notice that sometimes you get yourself into a "stress loop", where you think a challenge is harder than it actually is, whereas just taking it calmly and creating back-up saves can get you through almost any obstacle. MAP24 has some of the best challenges in the set, and there's more than enough ammo, megaspheres & radsuits to make sure you survive.

Oh, and if you hate Hell Revealed that much, I'd take Kama Sutra off your "to play" list too—it's more similar to Hell Revealed than Hell Revealed 2 is (also in case you didn't know, HR2 was made by completely different mappers).

MAP22: Finally, a map I actually enjoyed. This isn’t just because all the armaments are given at the start (though that helps a lot)—the monster composition actually makes sense, and you don’t have block monster lines everywhere getting in the way. When you start, there’s perched AVs to keep you from camping the southern area, and although you are given loads of rockets, pinkies are your main enemy! See, this creates intriguing gameplay, not camping behind mancubii and crossing your fingers that they eventually kill an AV behind a midtex. And sure there’s some stupid bullshit like fighting revs in a 64-wide corridor and the stupidly huge surplus of ammo, but there’s so many good cyber encounters here that all is forgiven. You have the cool duel on the roof, having to slip past the first batch in the southeast so you can lower the wall and have them fight with the mancs, and then a quick BFG-party reprisal before the BK. Even some stuff like the arachs and PEs in the northwest are used well, since they’re both pretty dangerous due to the length of the passageways (and that you're mostly using rocket ammo)

It’s not the most impressive level, but it’s a decently fun slaughtermap… I kinda felt like I died and went to heaven while playing it.

[Urthar]

ZDoom - Continuous Play - HMP

MAP22 - Resistance Is Futile

If you skipped the secret levels this is Hell Revealed's first recognisable slaughter map, and it definitely made an impression when I originally played it on UV. Though compared to what's coming it's just a warm up.

On HMP it's more or less the same map, except now you can't walk 50 paces without tripping over a megasphere, which suggests the authors didn't spent a huge amount of time balancing the lower difficulty levels, or perhaps exceptions were simply very different back in 1997.

I happen to like spamming rockets against masses of enemies, and there's certainly no shortage of either on this map, so it gets my approval.