The DWmegawad Club plays: Vanguard & Hell Ground & Bloody Steel

[Pirx]

now on to hell ground:



MAP01 - "Werewolf Moon”

gloomy map, a desolate landscape with a haunted castle. the music adds to this impression. the castle is made up of rather simple shapes, but the elaborate texturing hides this partially. so much different from skillsaw who excels at natural looking places. others have commented on the cunning traps already, i found that playing a bit more careful, that is just waiting a split-second before doing something really helps, didn't die once although i have somehow missed HG and i'm playing it now for the first time.


MAP02 - "Blood Runner”

a tribute consisting of parts taken from several plutonia maps, well, not copypasted of course, but reimagined while keeping their origin obvious. complete with all plutonia delights like immortal chaingunners, these 2 were my biggest beef as they kept draining my health every time they saw a pixel of me. there'S not a lot of monsters, they're rather placed in unpleasant ways, much in the style of plutonia.but at least there's a rocket launcher and a soulsphere, which allowed me to leave the map with 100%.

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP03: Paranoia
20:32 | 100% everything

So as much as I enjoyed the last level, it didn't really feel like it belonged in the WAD (at least as far as I could tell this far in.) MAP02, thankfully, is back to a similar atmosphere as the first level, though the way it plays still feels Plutonish. Hm. Anyway, it actually reminded simultaneously of something from Eternal's own Epic 2, but also a bit like something out of the Russian community, like it could have been from Whitemare 2 or something. Pretty straightforward level, but with lots of nasty Plutonia-style traps. The commando/vile ambush near the end is the only thing that killed me, though, and that numerous times, as I had saved it in an alcove at 23% after the first chaingunner wave, but before the viles made their appearance. Frantic stuff, but eventually I figured out to hide behind a corner pillar and fire rockets around it, praying I didn't get chipped away by bullets. Oh, and the backpack secret I got by "bumping" through the wall looking for a secret door. Good map, if a little blocky and linear, but sheer atmosphere makes up for any other deficiencies.

[Cynical]

Map 03:

This map is the first one in the wad where I remember exact details, and probably the one I remember the most clearly (although the next two will give it some competition in that stakes; the 3, 4, 5 stretch is my favorite part of the wad). Ironically, the only thing I didn't remember is the single most dangerous thing in the level, which is the only thing that killed me on this playthrough.

This map marks where the action really starts to rise. The start is vicious, and can kill you in an eyeblink if you hesitate; grab that SSG and plug those chaingunners ASAP. The pillar room has two surprisingly tough fights, the first one being a hitscan attrition festival, and the second one featuring a very good Arch-Vile deployment; those Mancs' dodging pattern requires enough attention that you can't just focus the Vile down easily, and the fact that they're spread out means you can't just escape the whole situation. Very subtly tricky fight.

The YK wing is a bit of a breather, but the catch here is that your ammo is likely starting to run low at this point. The ammo tightness continues into the next wing, and can cause a bit of awkwardness against that distant Manc -- he's really too far to SSG from across the moat, but you really don't want to waste those bullets.

The finale Chaingunner/Vile clusterfuck is by far the most dangerous thing in the level, though. It's pretty much guaranteed to be lethal if you make the bad decision of forsaking the megasphere (like I did on my first try), and it's still tense even if you do grab the big brown ball first. You can open by just firing rockets down into the pit, but once those Viles come out, you have to start hiding, and the whole thing becomes a lot trickier.

Like the last map, this one is pretty generic thematically, but it plays well enough that I'm more willing to forgive it. Plus, the theme is better executed here anyways, with the cryptic Rocket Launcher temple-wing on the tech-base adding a bit of interest, and the pillar room having some nice splashes of detail. Good map, and the next two are even better.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP03 Paranoia

the real paranoia here is the music track, I don't like it that much. and the beginning for that matter too. surrounding a player with chaingunners is less of a challenge and more of a sick joke nowadays. debate that if you want. Less of a Plutonia influence here, just drab style in a short Eternal map. the teleport traps are a bit more nefarious this time around too.

[Solarn]

Vanguard MAP04, Hangman's Paradise

This map was much better than the previous one, both aesthetically and in its gameplay. We're still in the Plutonia-styled ruins, but this time there's also a lot of natural terrain as we explore a small, crumbling cliffside fortress. The pressure never really lets up as hitscanners and imps fire at us from all sides, accompanied by a much more generous selection of mid-level enemies than previously. Especially cacos start showing up in large numbers in this level. The cliffside area requires some really good dodging as battalions of imps will throw fireballs at the player from rock pillars too far away to return fire at first, while hitscanners on the fortress walls punish anyone who immediately tries to close distance with the imps. Enemy placement is top notch, the only questionable part I can think of is the utterly defanged (as usual) Vile stuck on top of a pillar behind a doorway where the player can take their sweet time killing it in safety. The exit trap was really fun and I actually died to it a few times. There are only a few enemies, but the way they come out behind a player in a smallish enclosed space makes avoiding their hits a bit of a challenge. Altogether, this is my favourite map of the WAD so far. I hope the quality only increases from now on.

[Walter confetti]

MAP03: A map that kinda reminded me of a Plutonia E2 map (MAP17 maybe? I don't remember that much of Plutonia maps now), this map difficult... is kinda cruel sometimes. I mean, jeez, did you ever dreamed of a situation like this?



(playing with cheats, that's the reason i've so much health. Yeah, i'm horrible)

Or like the start with 4 chaingunners and a SSG? Did i told you that you start all the maps without ammo?

Overall, this is a nice map and i liked the style of it, especially some detailing and texture choice (where that modified COMPUTE1 in the blue key room come from?), and also some interesting puzzle tricks... Like dthe music too, it creates a good tense atmosphere...

Ah yeah, be careful with your ammo here...

[scifista42]

MAP03 - "Paranoia”

Decent gameplay, aesthetics and level structure, I quite enjoyed it. I only got lost after getting the yellow key - the repeatable switch that only works after a given event happens is something I find unintuitive, although now I understand that the bars around it represented yellow bars. The final encounter's idea was interesting, but it didn't turn out as efficient as it was supposed to: I died on my first attempt, then I just kept firing rockets into the monsters on my second attempt and none of the Archvile's even managed to retaliate against me and Chaingunners did negligible damage too. I've found 2/4 secrets, I straferan into the Backpack secret instead of using the hidden teleporter nearby.

[Cynical]

Out of curiosity, which secrets did you miss (or, I guess I should say, which ones did you find)? The backpack (done the intended way) is actually one of the harder ones, IMO; I'm guessing that one of the ones you missed was the one inside of the pillar in the pillar room (that one's method of access is kind of bullshit), but the other two are both pretty obvious IMO.

(DotW makes a mantra of "always check the door behind you at the start", to which I'd like to add the corollary "always check the back sides of switches").

[scifista42]

I have actually cheated to find the remaining 2 secrets before exiting the map. The ones I missed were the Blue Armor secret and the Berserk secret. Funnily enough, I did find and press the switch on the back side of another switch that opened the Berserk secret while I legitly played the map, but I didn't notice where the secret door has opened, assumed that something happened somewhere far away, continued playing, and then I completely forgot about that hidden switch at all! :)

[Spectre01]

Demon of the Well said:

IIRC, you were using Brutal Doom, right? It (and other in-depth gameplay mods) is presumably conflicting with/overriding the PWAD's internal DeHackEd changes. While this issue won't show up terribly often in most of the WADs the Club plays, it's always good to check a PWAD's textfile before you begin play to be aware of possible conflicts (granted, the HG textfile makes no explicit mention of its changes other than to note that some are present). In this particular case, the difference between having the 50 bullets to start with and not having them is mostly very minor, and probably not worth eschewing your preferred mod for.

I'm actually not running any gameplay mods and haven't for Vanguard or Hell Revealed. The only ones I'm using are smooth weapon animations, ketchup (blood only) and the HXRTC HUD mod. Plus I'm loading the PWAD after all of those visual mods. But you're right, it's not something major enough to warrant removing my sweet, yet very minor visual enhancements.

Anyways, on to Map 3.

Quite a challenging map where I found myself having to focus on conserving health and ammo. Can't say I'm a huge fan of some of those Chaingunner traps/teleports which end up chunking your HP for a huge amount if you're not ready. Died once during that mess in the Chainvile pit but otherwise just played very carefully.

[Cynical]

It's the weapon animation mod that's doing it. Hell Ground's dehacked patch modifies the pistol's values to create the "0 ammo start" effect.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP03: Paranoia
100% kills, 4/4 secrets

The music track immediately made me think one thing: "trying too hard." It's a horror soundtrack, but completely ill-fitting for the level it's tied to, which is a pretty banal Plutonia-esque techbase. The only interesting combat of note is at the start and the end. The start feeling a bit bullshitty IMO - four chaingunners with no cover and being forced to pick up the SSG, which is a poor weapon to deal with them in that situation... basically need to hope RNG gets you some infighting to survive. The end with the Vile/chaingunner pit is fun, at least, but also a bit too easy. Everything in-between is rote room clearing, a couple of monsters at a time, and almost always in front of the player (though the Vile in the computer area and the one that teleports near the backpack can provide some difficulty). I hope this WAD picks up soon, because three maps in I feel like the high point was the opening vista on MAP01.

[baja blast rd.]

MAP03: "Paranoia"

A lot of these atmospheric wads toss in encounters in a way that suggests the action was an afterthought. Even the big fights are just "hey, monsters". You can see a lot of this in mapsets like BTSX. But I haven't seen much of that from Hell Ground yet; even the simplest setups seem to have some thought put into them, like the pain elementals in the megasphere room.

[joe-ilya]

3

After being knocked around two boring symmetric and mazey maps, I'm given a decent map with a horrible ambush at the start and nothing else to pick on.
There's more focus on the outdoors and quick reactions to monsters, it's cramped in some places, but I think it's fantastic compared to the last two maps.

3/5

4

Oh boy does this map suck asssssss, you begin in a long corridor cave and you have to choose the correct or you'll end up in a limbo, it's a good intro.
I did like the individual revballs floating as a lost soul, the floating platforms to the castle were great and the introduction to the portals was nice too, but the portals themselves are the worst part, each is a symmetric and mazey, killer color zone where you hunt switches with your finger and sometimes face bullshit challanges, the blue realm is completely cramped pukefest,
the pink (flesh) portal is a maze with pinkies, barons, switch hunts and too little ammo, you'll have to find the soulsphere with ammo to survive this asstube, and then there's a huge baron ambush that you must run through and push several switches in the deep corridor monster closets
the gray portal was OK, I liked the ambushes on the catwalk,
the green one was good too, even if symmetric.

2/5

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP04 Warp of Time

make absolutely no mistake, this is a grand one. the tunnel is very nicely made if a bit monotone, and the revenant rockets floating here can be shot down before they activate. a nice touch, also they don't count towards kills so happy hunting but don't get lost out there. the tunnel empties out into a very beautiful watery vista over some chasm. hopping those blocks (I'm not sure why they move other than pleasure value, because it doesn't seem to affect they way I cross) leads to the central hub. yep it's one of those maps.

thankfully, Eternal tackles the Killer Colours theme in a nice twist. I almost always go in compass order, starting with the NW portal and working clockwise. so I start in the red zone. this has demons, conveyors leading into useless pits, and a rather annoying switchhunt, also those barons on the conveyor are inaccessible anyways but get killed by a crusher later so no worries. I find it interesting that the imps in one secret corridor behind a translucent sector can be shot at through the walls. somewhere in the switchhunt is a crusher segment, easy to run through the first time around, impossible to avoid damage on the return trek. remember that if crusher segments are impossible to avoid damage on they are not good in the slightest. the megasphere in the cavern gives way to a killer baron battle with lots of rockets flying.

NE section is blue, with cacos, spectres, and other guys, plus secrets (and I get a plasma gun too finally). pretty linear throughout, until a certain puzzle (1, 3, 2) and a lift upwards. pretty tough to manuever and kill enemies up there without dropping down and pressing the switch to lower the lift again.

SE is green, so hell knights added to the mix of spectres and imps. a few traps, like the lock-in at the rocket launcher and a teleport trap near an armor secret. the very alien-like laser floors end this segment, and remind me of Equinox.

SW is a drab segment with small amounts of enemies and a short lava segment in some complex. coincidentally it's the shortest segment too. I always seem to take it last, but it's not notable at all and is a true linear trek. finishing all the segments leads to that exit. The adventurer in me is quite proud to play this map. oh, and watch out for those revenant rockets that ambush as you try to hit the well.

[Solarn]

Vanguard MAP05, Forgotten Village

A fairly easy slaughtermap to end the ruins episode. There isn't really anything here visually that we haven't seen before and I'd actually consider it a bit behind MAP04 in terms of interesting architecture, but it's still a solid map and I enjoyed it. My strategy was to clear the red key area first, which provided a natural chokepoint for the enemies, then slowly make my way through the water, basically killing as many of the enemies as I could while avoiding the Spider Mastermind. I did die a few times due to running out of health at the red key and then getting blasted when I tried to get out, but otherwise I didn't have too much trouble.

So, the ruins episode is over, on to the tech/concrete episode. Currently the order of maps from most to least favourite goes 04 > 02 > 05 > 01 > 03. The only one I'd consider a miss was 03, which just felt lazily done, with the overuse of brownish gray bricks and the disappointing outside corridor. Let's see what the new episode brings.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP02: While the last map is steeped in a gloomy atmosphere, there’s not too much going on here besides the music. However, this map is a lot more fun to play, using hitscanners to harass you from afar. I still don’t have a good feel for what Eternal’s style is yet—he seems to prefer symmetry and slightly unfair ambushes—but I’m sure I’ll get a better grasp on it as Hell Ground marches on (it's been too long since I've played Plutonia to notice the similarities here). Honestly, I kinda want the weird, esoteric setpieces from MAP01 back.

MAP03: Hey, looks like my theory of Eternal preferring unfair ambushes holds water! This map is pure dickery from start to finish, probably playing to the titular “paranoia” theme as you slink around the fortress hoping a chaingunner won’t pop out and kill you. But they will. Over, and over, and over again. And right when you think you’re near the end, the largest chaingunner jamboree of all time will appear to tear you to pieces. I’m not exactly stoked on the gameplay here, but Eternal undoubtedly makes very interesting combat and isn’t shy about withholding ammo from you. I definitely enjoy it to a degree, but the way it makes me feel so tense is a little unnerving... perhaps I was just letting the song eat at my sanity…

[plums]

Hey I played Vanguard over the past few days. As a very quick write-up:

I liked Episode 1 a lot, the jungle/ruins theme is cool and I liked the level design.

I didn't like Episode 2 very much, don't like that kind of techbase design and the larger encounters weren't very interesting IMO.

Episode 3 was better than 2 in both atmosphere and combat, but I still preferred Ep 1. I feel like Skillsaw's attempts at making large-scale slaughter-like encounters while still being pretty easy on the player just didn't work so well for me, for the most part. However Ep 3 has a bit more teeth and a decent last map where you can get everything riled up at once.

The Punch-Out end map was funny. I broke it a bit by camping on one of the teleport spots.

I haven't played Valiant before so I should go check it out sometime! I think many of the people who were worried that playing Valiant before Vanguard negatively coloured the former would not have had a much different opinion without playing Valiant. Vanguard was fun overall but it definitely feels like there was room for improvement.


dobu: Did you not play Epic 2 when the DWMC did it? I thought you had but I must be wrong.

[Walter confetti]

MAP04: What a trippy journey is this map! Sure, the starting cavern maze is really boring, but then you found fighting against... sentient revenant missiles? Dafuq? Luckily these things doesn't follow you everywhere like their game counterpart, they even looks stupider without a reverant controlling them, they just go straight and crushing against walls!

Anyway, you found a building in the sky after the tedious caves with the most bitching door switch ever seen, and then you reach a portal room with four different coloured sections a la "Killer Colors" (MAP31 of Alien Vendetta), with the meat / hell section the most tripping of the four, proceeding to a larger portal that leads you to the final building, a slow start and the hard part when you reaching the KC part, take 30 minutes to finish this level.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP04: Warp of Time
91% kills, 4/15 secrets

Killer Colors writ large. Starts off in a long cavern "maze" (there's a few wrong ways which are pretty obvious given the jolt of the silent teleport) with some odd lost soul-esque revenant missile enemies. Then it's a drop into a temple floating in the clouds, which is a pretty awesome view. Inside are four portals, allowing you to hit each of the color areas (blue, green, flesh pink and foundry metal) in the order you choose. Each area is pretty linear, but they all have some cool themes and are pretty short (too short, for the foundry area) and give a good feeling of progression, so the linear aspect isn't too bothersome.

I don't think they're well balanced for being able to choose, though. I ended up going blue-pink-foundry-green, which felt like a mistake. Blue is the longest of the sections, and is quite miserly with ammo - I found myself needing to pistol cacodemons and was frequently running around with only a couple shots left. Ammo starvation maps can be done well, but I wasn't feeling it here (probably because the areas are so linear and cramped that the player can't really run ahead and explore to find more supplies). The pink area also felt this way, especially since it's filled with demons and barons, which just feel like bullet sponges. The final battle of that section with the hundred barons was especially bad, as I ran out of all my rockets and only had the single shotgun, so I just risked hitting the switches and leaving. Both the foundry and green sections have free SSGs, which would've certainly been useful in the other areas.

So, combat is still highly questionable in spots, but at least this map gives a pretty cool playground to trek through. The pink flesh section in particular had some good visual ideas, shame its also the most annoying.

[Crusader No Regret]

More Hellbound

Map 2: 102% kills, 3/3 secrets, 0 deaths

Haven't played Plutonia so any references go over my head. Some mean monster placement present: trying to escape line of sight of the immortal chaingunner towers puts me within reach of more (thankfully mortal) chaingunners and a pain elemental. Nasty. Hint, the chaingunners are more dangerous than the painie. There's another setup that could get ugly with a revenant/archvile teamup but when I saw the revenant teleport away, I backtracked to hunt it down. Options like that make more interesting gameplay (as one isn't forced to seek it out).

Got this one first attempt though it came rather close. Decided to take the mega armor at the start instead of what I usually do (saving it to exit with 200%). I had 0 armor when the last monster dropped. Stepped on exit with 200 health and 3 armor, whee.

Bloopers: I missed the SSG until after acquiring the first key. So ammo felt really tight for a lot of the map. Ran right into a revenant rising out of an illuso-pit too.

Map 3: DNF, 0/4 secrets, 1 death

Really short attention span, huh. I dealt with the start by sweeping up SSG and running for cover. Took more damage from provoking infinghting. Ammo got really tight and a resurrected spider certainly didn't help matters. At one point I had no ammo except for about 7 rockets. I was rather careless at the fight past the yellow key bars so got lucky when a delayed mancubus appeared at close range.

While I didn't trigger any secrets, got the backpack by bumping the wall from the other side and found the blue armor but was saving it for later. This does bite me in the butt when I see the megasphere and can't backtrack because the room is locked. That encounter with the swarm of chaingunners is what ended the attempt; an archvile had just teleported in.

[Solarn]

Vanguard MAP06, Punchline

We enter the techbase episode and the first thing I notice is that compared to the ruins, it's incredibly drab. The primary colors are concrete grays and washed out browns, with only a few computer screens and metal strips for decoration. Definitely a step back in my opinion. As for the map itself, it's a short Tyson map where the main difficulty lies in not bleeding out to the hitscanners taking potshots at you from behind imps and demons and in getting the finicky melee hit detection to cooperate. Fortunately, even on UV there's nothing more threatening than a Lost Soul (technically there's a Pain Elemental, but it's easy to stick close to it, making it harmless while you punch it to death) until you get the shotgun, at which point a bunch of Cacos come out of the walls. The exit room houses a Revenant, which is easily dispatched with either the shotty or your fists. There's also enough ammo for the pistol to kill almost everything with it if you don't like Tysoning. All in all, I think this is my new least favorite map in the set. It plays well enough, but after the previous few maps it's still a letdown and it looks boring as hell.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP05 Undertaker

back to the gritty Plutonia thing. pretty straightforward, although that ominous water circular room beckons something later. the big stairs leading down is also a designer highlight. the battles aren't too intense, as it's mostly enemies around corners, very few teleporting ambushes even. Might as well say that that room with all the square blocks is pretty ugly, where you need to step on some platforms and then some more enemies ambush afterwards. That circular room emptied out while I got the red key, and the switch creates a "Descent" style shootout. And we JUST finished Hell Revealed as well. once again, everyone in one teleport destination. Eternal tried to spice things up with two different destinations, for only about two monsters. For fun, I saved the invulnerability until after I warped to the cyberdemon room and tried to kill all of them before the Type 11 took my health all the way down.

[baja blast rd.]

MAP04: "Warp of Time"

I didn't feel like writing so I recorded an FDA instead. It's like 42 minutes long. Over/under on # of people who actually watch this is set at 0.5. :D

I found this map quite easy, but that might be more of an artifact of the route I stumbled into. I will say that the exit area is probably the most beautiful thing I've seen in a while. Great-looking map and fun too.

[joe-ilya]

There seems to be copyrighted music in this wad, not sure how this went into IDgames.

5

Just a bunch of rooms and corridors with traps and keys, the only interesting part was the room with the many wooden hatches that open up into a big group of toughies to kill (including two AVs and a PE), there's a ripoff of a horrible Hell revealed map when you push the red key button, with the same mistake of putting only one teleport destination, but there are actually more, but they are used way later, when the elevator fully lowers, you rush to the exit past some AVs fall into hell and die to win.

2/5

[Lingyan203]

joe-ilya said:

There seems to be copyrighted music in this wad, not sure how this went into IDgames.

ya I've noticed that too. My runs on maps 02 and 04 have been posted to YouTube but have copyrighted music identified by YouTube's Content ID.

I've also noticed on Whitemare 2's maps 28 and 30 have also had copyrighted music in them, but when I uploaded my run of map28 with the music, the whole video got blocked worldwide by yt's content id, this time by MC from Warner Bros. So I had to upload maps28 and 30 without music :(

[scifista42]

MAP04 - "Warp of Time”

More like warp around places, only the ending implied an anachronism. I also don't understand why the colored sections didn't use any of the ZDoom-specific colored lighting that could have been seen in random sectors in the previous levels. Also, all nonlinearity here was pretty much pseudo-nonlinearity only, and too many switch hunts were involved, which doesn't match my preferences. But the level was generally OK, that means entertaining enough, even if not as great as it could have been. I liked the Revenant missile spirits, although they posed nearly no threat here, they were kind of creepy, except that some of them didn't activate until I went around them because they were in fact monsters limited to their 180 degree field of view if they didn't hear any sound yet, which spoilt the immersion a bit. On the other hand, the Baron encounter in the red section turned out just tedious, there was no sense of imminent danger or pressure after I found out I can circle-strafe freely. Lastly, those shootable switches raising stairs in the blue section were a nice little gimmick.

[Solarn]

Vanguard MAP07, Dead Symmetrical

A Dead Simple clone that is actually really easy despite the number of monsters it contains. The main theme continues to be drab concrete, but this time it's compounded by the really simple layout. Utterly forgettable.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP05: Undertaker
97% kills, 1/4 secrets

The first half of this map is pretty boring, back to some dim Plutonia-esque settings, which is nothing more than a linear trek through some random hallways and rooms with little of interest. I'm fine with these sorts of old-school flavor maps as long as there's something interesting to see or do, but this is not it. Thankfully the second half of the map picks up a bit, with the spacious staircase being something to look at and the room with the wooden hatches being interesting to fight in. The player can open things up a bit at a time to play it safe, or go for the goodies and open up things quicker (which, with AVs included, is tough). The last part is the old "monsters teleport into the descending elevator" trope which feels a bit been there done that coming right after playing it in Hell Revealed. Having only one teleport exit is a big mistake, especially since some of the monsters won't come through until well after everything else has cleared out (since the mancs are so slow to move off the spot).

EDIT: Also, I finally figured out what makes that horrendously annoying tink sound, it's whenever you finish firing the chaingun (or pistol). Uggh so unnecessary.

[joe-ilya]

6

I don't see the point of having to make the map ridicilously wide at the HUB.
The rest of the map is just going for different keys, solving some puzzles and going through a jumpmaze section. And what's up with the lost souls at the exit and the delayed exit itself? And the huge HOM at the jumpmaze heaven section, I can't believe it's there. (thumbnail)

0/5