The DWmegawad Club plays: Eternal Doom

[plums]

Demonologist said:

Quite haunting music track indeed, helps establishing the atmosphere and even partially redeems drawbacks of the map itself. Eternall's music isn't exactly perfect, but pieces like that surely leave a good impression.

Weeds' music tends to fall into two general themes, "energetic with marimbas" which I could do entirely without, or "solemn with a lot of strings and brass" which I really like.

Speaking of which, I'm sure I've heard a bunch of these songs in other wads before. Were they ever released with that kind of permission, or did people just take 'em anyhow?

I'm much preferring the medieval maps to the future ones, even though the gameplay is a lot less interesting in some of them. The roaming cyberdemon of MAP08 was an interesting trick, but what ended up happening for me is that he fought the spiderdemon briefly, before teleporting off to another area. So I basically left both bosses unharmed, as they harmlessly brooded against one another at opposite parts of the maps. The final fight was a bit interesting though as I had to make sure nothing else hit the cyberdemon so his anger never got redirected at me. Not that hard though, since he wasn't teleporting around, he was just moping around in a corner trying to move toward the spiderdemon.

[punnyone]

Map 7 - The Abbey - 100% Kills and Secrets.

When talking about Eternal Doom mappers who design very puzzle-centric levels, it is usually Bob Evans and Jim Flynn that are mentioned first. Honorable mention, however, goes to Paul Schmitz.

The Abbey is the first level in the game that I feel involves some true headscratching puzzles. The ultimate goal is to progress from west to east and get inside the main abbey sanctuary and acquire three keys in the process. Sounds simple enough, except this involves, among other things, hitting a random corner wall in the north-west to get the blue key, and repeatedly shooting two skull switches that turn out to be commander keens (something I never figured out in my early playthroughs because the music was all the way up). Yet, despite how negative these puzzle analogies sound, I still find them enjoyable and appreciate those "A-ha" moments when you finally manage to solve them.

The design of this level absolutely kicks ass. There is a diverse blend of colors, themes, and archetexture that keeps the level from dragging. I've always loved the final two rooms, the titular abbey and the "abandon all hope" spider den, complete with cobwebs.

The combat is quite tough in spots. That courtyard between the red and yellow keys ends up becoming quite bloodstained. We also finally get the plasma gun, which helps pick off the winner of the Cyberdemon vs Mastermind battle.

Overall, the more I have replayed this level, the more it has ascended into one of my favorites in the megawad. Tricky puzzles, fantastic architecture, and challenging gameplay: It is maximum Eternal Doom.

[Urthar]

MAP08 – Woodhead - HMP

There are ways of mixing science fiction with pre-technological elements, Star Wars for example did it well, but it just feels odd here. To be fair, Shores Of Hell felt equally jarring at times, and perhaps the Doom engine just wasn't a good platform for doing this kind of thing. The inclusion of Heretic/Hexen's textures seem to compound the problem since they have a definite gothic fantasy RPG feel to them.

From the way the exteriors are lit, I have to suspect that this map was originally designed to have a much brighter sky. The game play is quite fun though, and does a good job in showing you future parts of the map from earlier positions, ends on a nice frenetic finale and has a very readable progression.

[40oz]

MAP08

I liked it! That final fight with the teleporting monsters was tough! I wish I could have used the cybie more for the spider mastermind though before he teleported away.

[gaspe]

MAP09 - Forlorn Fortress

Chris Couleur kicks in with a really nice castle level. This is also present in Eternal Doom IV, with a big tune-up of course. The architecture is quite gorgeous with some different places to explore in the castle with its big halls, courtyards and even a little dungeon. The only flaw is that it looks like there could have been some more monsters, the gameplay is quite good for the atmosphere of the map but it feels a bit too much tepid.

[punnyone]

Map 8 - Woodhead - 97% Kills, 100% Secret.

Woodhead is fittingly a primarily wooden textured level, with some areas such as the exterior castle walls being made of stone. Even though the texturing is not as dazzling as the last two levels, the lighting continues to be superb, especially in the halls to the east.

Just like Dia's Inter-Base, Woodhead also has a somewhat corridor crawl feel. With the striking exception of the two outdoor fields, which are among the most open areas of the wad so far, most of this level involves some tricky tight combat solutions while scuttling down hallways.

The Cyberdemon teases the player not once but twice before you finally get to battle him proper. This final battle can get a bit irritating due to his constant teleporting around, but with the help of monster infighting and an invulnerability sphere, this task isn't too tricky. I also found the outdoor mastermind fight to be a fun and visually appealing part of the map.


Overall, a delightfully challenging run and gun level that acts as a friendly contrast to the cautious puzzle solving feel of the previous level. So far, Eternal Doom is holding up quite nice for a 20 year old megawad.

[Magnusblitz]

See how long I can remain caught up...

MAP06: Pathos
99% kills, 2/3 secrets

And here we are in the Middle Ages. This map is pretty linear (just a look at the minimap will reveal a hallway-centric layout) but does a good job of providing nice visuals, or avoiding the hallway feeling with lots of windows and large outdoor areas. Combat is also pretty quick and punchy, helping move things along and avoiding anything that feels like a grind. I am trying to approach this with the mindset DotW recommended, that of "Doom version of a DnD campaign" and checking every suspicious corner or doodad. It helps that stuff like destructible walls were introduced in previous levels (and that most of them are in dead ends on this level). Short and sweet level.

[Ancalagon]

Fda Map09: The X switch returns and more hidden than ever!, pay attention to the brown texture that camouflages the X switch as we've seen them 3 times already in the wad. The fights in this map give waaaay too much space making all of them pretty easy.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 09 -- Forlorn Fortress - 103% Kills / No actual secrets
Ah, yes, time for the first Couleur map. I feel my tastes have changed somewhat in the intervening years, but back when I first played Eternal Doom his maps were generally my favorites in the set, and it's pleasing to find that I still enjoy them now. Hopefully the rest of you will find something to like here, as well, because he has several more in the set, and they are much like this one in overall feel and pace, broadly speaking.

Throughout Eternal Doom, Chris trades in expansive medieval-gothic macrotecture, generally depicting something which KMX E XII aptly dubs as a "megacastle"--try to imagine a Michael Krause map done in a Dark Ages theme, and I reckon you'll be on the right track. The sense of scale in his maps is quite striking, and as a fan of idtech1's particular handling of huge spaces I've always found them evocative in their way. While some may find the overall presentation a mite spartan on account of the broad expanses of unbroken surfaces, I would describe the look of Chris's levels as clean and stately, with a certain ease of broadstroke structural elaboration and an eye for understated incidental vista that keeps a walking tour consistently visually engaging (probably helps that many of ED's texture assets look more natural tiling over large/tall expanses than stock resources tend to). The price of all this scale and scope is that the lighting in his maps is generally much more rudimentary than in most of the rest of Eternal Doom--whether it's a general stylistic tic or a circumstantial thing arising from the great number of huge outdoor areas in his maps is hard to tell--thus depriving much of the scenery of some extra depth it might have otherwise had, though fortunately his schemes usually evince a sort of inoffensive overcast neutrality rather than anything more troublesome (though I imagine these maps probably suffer more for this in GL than they do in software). Couleur also has a thing for investing large chunks of gameplay content into huge symmetrical centerpiece areas, as becomes starkly apparent once you've spent a few minutes in 'Forlorn Fortress', though in truth it is far and away the most structurally symmetrical of all his maps here.

An affinity for symmetry is always somewhat risky as far as gameplay goes, of course, but generally speaking I think Chris's maps usually avoid the associated pitfalls, both because his actual thing placement is less symmetrically patterned than his major constructions (although it does absolutely exist in places, make no mistake) and because the consistently generous scale of most spaces in concert with the fact that there are usually monsters attacking from a different height level leaves the ball in the player's court as far selecting pace and tactics. The nature of the combat in these maps is heavily incidental/freeform in nature, with essentially no true setpieces (that I can recall offhand, anyway) and little in the way of staged encounters, though you will occasionally be presented something like a prominent enemy holdout or fortification which will frame the action in a given area, ala the revenant-manned council-tower in the Fortress's huge north quarter. In purely numerical terms, you'll be doing quite a lot of killing, and indeed most of Couleur's maps feature significantly higher bodycounts than anything else in the mapset; but in the context of these huge open environments, overall monster density actually tends to seem lower than in many other maps, which can sometimes leave the minutes feeling a mite empty.

For the most part, though, I still found the combat here solidly entertaining despite having grown accustomed to a much heavier baseline level of intensity over the years, which I'd attribute to a peculiar knack Chris seems to have for the 'wandering monster' effect: very seldom do you find yourself having any really intense battles, but it feels like nary a minute goes by you aren't fighting something (though of course this has a lot to do with my mostly knowing my way around these maps and thus not spending much time wandering around what to do next). The genius here is that said 'something' more likely than not wandered over to you from a distant area, or came up behind you after being revealed from a closet much earlier in the map, or floated in through an innocuous window while you were otherwise occupied; monsters have almost totally free reign to roam the place at will, and while it sometimes takes those you evade or overlook ages to catch up with you given the expansive terrain, this makes for a surprisingly variable and well-paced experience. There's a very natural/organic feel to the way monsters and player encounter one another here, which is really very rare, and special in its way. I'd almost call it a 'lost art', except I don't reckon oldschool authors were truthfully any better at reliably pulling off this peculiar effect than modern ones are. Anyway, this approach plays well with the author's very 'equal opportunity' approach to monster usage (though cacodemons do seem to be his special favorite) and with his tendency to lay out big symmetrical playgrounds with lots of stairways and nooks and crannies ala the aforementioned north quarter, and ultimately these levels are great, casually-paced fun to tackle with an extremely aggressive/cavalier modern playstyle. I can't quite claim with a straight face that this is precisely what the author intended....but a happy accident's still happy, nonetheless!

Progression's another matter. Very rarely does Chris do proper 'puzzles' in the way that Schmitz or Flynn or Evans will, but you are required to be keen-eyed and exercise a certain capacity for inductive reasoning (e.g. if as part of obvious progression you opened up an area that appears to be literally nothing but a dead end, perhaps it's not a dead end at all if you poke around a bit), and of course the sheer expanse of the level may prove problematic for players to whom navigation and landmark recollection doesn't come naturally. Will be interesting to see how Club players fare in that regard.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP07: This is a diminutive outpost that sure gets a good workout. As I feared in the last map, I didn’t stumble upon an SSG which killed the pace of combat frequently for me (punching out nobles can be fun, but not when you're forced to do it this often), so I’m probably going to switch to play continuous from now on. Plus the maps are long enough that I don’t want to waste time whittling mancs down with 4 pellets a shot :P

Rest of the map is alright though. The courtyard with the hanging boxed windows is the most impressive, as there’s a decent amount of things to look at while you’re fighting off the hitscanner warp-in. The gameplay was tense enough that the un-sloggy parts were pretty fun… I especially like the rude chaingunner invasion at the end. I wish a few things were different about the map (like why did the red key need to be on a pedestal that high, forcing me to run all the way back to the top of the waterfall to jump on it?), but I’ve been tickled pink by Eternal Doom thus far. It’s nothing I’m dying to replay, but it’s faring much better than I thought it would (though j4rio's comments augur a frightening future).

MAP08: A good followup to the last map that has some pretty nifty cyberdemon use. Some gripes about the slogginess remain—couldn’t find an SSG here either so my continuous playthrough was of no help—but the map keeps you on a forward-moving track the whole time. I actually kinda like the exploratory aspect to Eternal Doom and am generally unenthused with linear combat scenarios, but a couple of them here (BK Archvile, doing the final battle with the blur sphere still on) allowed me to overlook the grievances I have. Also, still love the setting—I’d be perfectly fine with remaining here for the rest of the megawad (which seems to be very probable)

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP09 Forlorn Fortress

Couleur is probably the most prolific mapper in this set, and his designs are rather easy to spot. all of his maps here have the medieval castle theme, and are generally enjoyable in combat even though he tends to have them more oversized than others. He also uses the TNT-style teleport closet, where a monster sees the player behind a fake wall and then teleports somewhere. This got exploited by me since you can shoot through those fake walls too. This map is pretty fun to speedrun, I should say, as the progression isn't very obtuse here. One of the textfiles for this map pack says "Cacodemons come in bunches". This is the first level where I recognize that. Not that cacodemon killing isn't fun though.

also holy fucking shit shotgun guys just dotted everywhere.

[antares031]

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

Okay, I wasn't expecting both Spider Mastermind and Cyberdemon in the MAP08. Anyway, the layout of this level is pretty much linear; move-shoot-keep-moving. And you'll hear the roar of Cyberdemon soon, which was really intimidating. Although I was expecting some tricks to deal with it because it's just MAP08 and I haven't got any heavy arsenals yet. And I was right. By using the gimmick from MAP20 of Doom 2, you don't need to worry about that Cyberdemon anymore... Or do you? Did you fail to kill that Cyberdemon from that monster-infighting stage? Well, don't worry. You just need to deal with that rocket-shooting bastard later... with that annoying monster teleportation trick. Overall, the linear layout was a little bit boring, but the combat was designed interestingly.

[Urthar]

MAP09 – Forlorn Fortress - HMP

The progression is more or less what you would expect at this point, but it's not too painful and gives the map a sort of Dungeons & Dragons vibe, which fits well enough with the castle setting. The gun-play is relatively sparse, and fairly easy with the resources provided, and you're unlikely to feel pressured at any point, though there's enough hit scanners knocking around to provoke some snap shooting.

It's not a bad map. It has a coherent theme and looks quite nice, but I can't help feeling it would have felt more at home in Heretic or Hexen rather than Doom.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP08: Woodhead

Exiting the stone abbey of the previous level, we're thrust now into a primarily wooden fortress overlooking a pair of gardens that surely won't remain tranquil for long. This map is visually crisp, but doesn't offer up much by way of puzzles, and I found the combat static compared to what's come before, with a lot of situations featuring monster-packed zones ahead best handled by chokepoint camping.

MAP09: Forlorn Fortress

This one borrows heavily from Hexen and Heretic in its graphics and atmosphere, while a spinal corridor serves as its hub as the player breaches the outer courtyard and great hall before exploring the wings in search of keys. Progression is once again relatively straightforward, for the most part, and the environment is well-realized; for some reason, it's the side-by-side juxtaposition of the ascent to the chapel and descent to the grisly dungeon that really sticks by me out of all the chewy little morsels of architecture this one has to offer up.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP09: A nice, spacious, beautiful map. Combat feels a bit smoother since there’s a lot more room to move around and most of the “big” weapons are handed to the player early. I really admired the architecture in this map, though I was somewhat torn on the gameplay—that switch hunt in the final courtyard is stupid since it’s so huge. Not bad though.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP07: The Abbey
100% kills, 3/4 secrets

Pretty fun map, even with a bit of the cryptic parts. As I said in my comments on MAP06, now that I'm in the right mindset of "check everything" I'm not having too much trouble getting through these maps... and it'll even lead to some nice secrets like the SSG to boot. Had no problem finding the blue key (found it before even using the yellow key actually)... did take awhile to figure out the Keen part, but finally saw the skulls open after repeatedly returning to the blue skull marked rooms figuring there had to be SOMETHING there.

Lots of impressive use of invisible walls too, though there's a couple spots where they work a bit funky. One is in the left yard at the start, where there's an invisible wall as part of the iron fence, which only goes up about halfway, so depending on the angle between you and the imps on the ledge it'll sometimes block shots/fireballs and sometimes won't. There's also something weird going on in the courtyard beyond the yellow key, as I stood on one of the white staircases on the side and none of the hitscanners tried to shoot me.

Anyways, really good map. Good combat and fun progression, looks good too aside from being a bit too overly bright in spots.

[punnyone]

Map 9 - Forlorn Fortress - 100% Kills, 100% Secret.

Chris Couleur finally shows up in the mapset with what is in my opinion one of the most classic maps in the set. Up until now, there have been mostly upper mid-sized maps, but here, we have quite an expansive map. It's not that it is the largest, but it shares a common trait with other Couleur Eternal maps: Backtracking. This, combined with the sizes of all of his contributions is what I feel turns off others to this levelset. Me, it is what I've come to actually really appreciate.

Forlorn Fortress is mostly a realistic-looking level. There is a grand dinning hall, fireplace den, and a dungeon, plus many other fantastic looking outdoor and indoor sections. There are a few neat tidbits such as the broken window in the dinning hall that spits out cacodemons, and the caged tarantula texture that gives the place a creepier tone.

One of the minor downsides to this level is its use of mandatory secrets (Literally as well since you get the level's one and only secret when you start the map!). Some of these sections are so cryptically hidden that it's no wonder many choose to resort to iddt. The combat is also much easier due to the spaced out placement of enemies in this large map.

Overall, despite having rather easy gameplay, Forlorn Fortress looks amazing, and it is one of the first levels that comes to mind when I think of the classic "Gigantic Eternal Doom map".

P.S. I would highly recommend playing/re-playing the sadly perpetually unfinished Eternal Doom IV, where Couleur made a zdoomy revisit of this level. With the major exception of the near-constantly respawning enemies, It is otherwise an even more impressive and expansive version of this map.

[Ribbiks]

09: fda. The final area here makes me realize what people meant when describing this mapset as switch-hunty. I'll have that stone "X" switch burned into my memory now after wasting like 10 minutes there looking for what to do -.-. I don't have many compliments for the map's gameplay, "largely inoffensive" is appropriate.

[gaspe]

MAP10 - Crimson Tide

From a castle to another one. I do like the look from the outside with the moat and the tour on the battlements was really cool, though imo this is one of the weakest map of the set. Most of the inner rooms of the castle use a black flat as ceiling, it gives a quite unique look but it feels too much weird. The locations are quite nice actually, but the previous map is more charming so maybe that's why that this one feels a bit lacking. The main hall of gets repopulated with almost the same setup when you have to return there. We are going to play the best maps of Eternal Doom I now (that it ends on MAP13).

Last thing, I wanted to capture this revenant:

Spoiler

[PsychoGoatee]

Which maps would you recommend to a player who doesn't want to do the hard to find switches and more complex puzzley stuff?

Any maps thats are good in general, for a more usual Doom playing experience? I'm definitely not patient enough at the moment to try the headscratcher maps, but I wouldn't mind playing a few good maps in general. Or even anything that highlights the better aspects of Eternal Doom while also not having "mandatory secrets" or confusing progression.

[Demon of the Well]

^^So you basically want to play Eternal Doom without playing Eternal Doom, eh? Try map 13. ;)

Seriously, though, if you don't want anything to do with any of those game elements you just mentioned, you're almost certainly better off playing some other WAD entirely. The simplest proper maps in ED, if my memory serves, are 18 and 23 (which are also among its shortest, incidentally), both by Dia Westerteicher, though I suspect even those might feature at least some measure of 'obtuse' progression in the form of the ever-popular 'camouflaged switch.'

Map 10 -- Crimson Tide - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Hmm. I really like that music track, sort of goth-calypso or something.

Agree with gaspe about the map, though, it is one of the megaWAD's weakest entries, with a generally lower level of overall craftmanship on display all around, whether the arena of consideration is aesthetics, concourse, action, or whathaveyou. There is a palpable sense that the Brunis were simply less practiced with Doom editing than most of the mapset's other participants, which leaves the level feeling somewhat half-baked in comparison to its setmates, though perhaps certain tastes may find this relative 'naiveté' to be more endearing in some way than the more honed/practiced craft displayed by the other authors.

As far as presentation is concerned, the overall impression is that the level is really a holdover from an earlier era of PWADing, with many of the classic 'castle' tropes on display--there's a moat (no specters in it, surprisingly), a dungeon, a chapel area (strikingly oversized, of course), battlements, a banquet hall, the works, all wrought with enough clarity that one can generally tell what each area is supposed to represent, but without much in the way of aesthetic niceties like detailed lighting effects or purely cosmetic architectural elaboration or the like. Concourse issues like general lighting scheme and texture alignment are also generally much rougher here than most of the other maps (an impression which hit me immediately as soon as the map loaded--check out the look of that teleporter flat), although major salient environmental features like doors and stained glass windows and such are generally rendered cleanly. Kind of cute that an external view of the castle shows it to be made out of the smaller green moss/algae-covered masonry (a texture most commonly used for underground/cistern areas in other parts of the mapset), though, which does at least give it a different aspect than more or less all of the set's other castle scenes.

Once you get past the castle facade, the actual layout breaks down as a series of totally linear and self-contained branches. Though there is a limited form of visual interconnection between some areas (looking down into the dungeon's slime room from the next path over, being seen by the cacodemons outside from the soulsphere balcony some time before you can actually meet them, etc.), the overall impression comes off as fairly crude or contrived--other maps in the set are also very corridor-heavy, of course, but many of those have some other quality or additional concept that disguises or distracts from the fact, ala the unfolding interconnection of map 03 or the cyberdemon gimmick of map 08. Again, progression and navigation are not always entirely user-friendly in the conventional sense. Sometimes this seems like it's more a function of the relative visual crudity than of an active attempt to be puzzling or obscurantist (lifts that look like totally blank/featureless walls going up to the battlements, etc.), while at others it does seem to be an active design choice aiming to create the impression of a mysterious castle, ala the blue key hidden in a secret off the dungeon (which this time is actually officially flagged as 'secret', incidentally), though things do become much more straightforward from there, I suppose.

Despite all of the above, though, in truth I don't really find it to be an offensive map, mainly because its heart is more or less in the right place as far as action goes. It is actually one of the set's bloodiest levels, featuring a Couleur-sized bodycount in a map smaller/shorter than any of his. The setup's pretty straightforward here--you get an SSG and a shit-ton of ammo right from the outset--but the action's not entirely trivial; hitscanners feature prominently in several parts of the map (and demons/specters in others, oddly), and while ammo remains plentiful throughout, armor can much tougher to locate and healing tends to come in large blocks with little to hold you over in between them, making for a significant attrition element, especially if you let the chaingunners on the battlements tear you up early on. Of course if you know the map it's pretty easy to just tear ass through it--the vast majority of the actual combat boils down to blasting stuff in front of you at point-blank range with the SSG--but I do like that there are attempts at catching you out here and there, ala the heel-nipping specters presumably intended to flush you into an even large pack of their brethren along the soulsphere branch, or the surprisingly harsh teleportation onto a monster-laden battlement near the end. However, as with many other aspects of the level's design, some of what's offered here is clumsy or amateurish in aspect, like the dementedly large pack of pinkies en route to the yellow key, the obnoxious shotgunners behind stained glass midtex in the chapel (better to just ignore them entirely and soak whatever damaged RNG decides they should dish out until you can meet them gun-to-face later) or the tendency for some of the restaff monsters (esp. cacos) to wander off into parts of the map that you'll never visit again, rendering them useless and/or a nuisance from a maxkills perspective.

I guess it's not that bad--certainly not the worst map in the set, anyway--but it doesn't really stack up against much of the rest of what's on offer.

[SoundofDoomDoors]

I'm glad I know the maps we're playing right now. I couldn't have caught up in one sitting otherwise.

MAP07: I remembered the thing with the switches from this map. I also remembered the jerk lift you had to hump walls to find in order to get the blue key. This map took me over an hour when I first played it, mostly trying to resist using a walkthrough. Welcome to Eternal Doom! I was hoping to beserk a cyberdemon to death, but one invuln isn't enough for that. Pretty easy overall. Only one of the hitscanner ambushes had me worried. The last one is mitigated by a well-placed blur sphere. Pick it up to live.

99% Kills
50% Secrets
0 Deaths
27:50 Clear Time



MAP08: Breather level! A running theme is charging at cyberdemons to make them disappear. That's one I haven't seen before. Otherwise, the puzzles are fairly straightforward compared to some of the silliness in the last map.

The clusterfuck at the end got me four times. That's one cyberdemon that DOESN'T disappear. I like it.

85% Kills
5 Deaths
0% Secrets
13:08 Clear Time



MAP09: Pretty good. I missed the blue key a few times in the first area. I also forgot where the x brick was in the last area. Good thing I remembered I had to hump walls in the libraries there. I like the slow pacing, though. It's kind of relaxing. Mandatory secrets are fairly easy to find here. There are more difficult wallbangers than this, even in the three I played today.

95% Kills
100% Secrets
28:24 Clear Time
0 Deaths

[PsychoGoatee]

Demon of the Well said:

^^So you basically want to play Eternal Doom without playing Eternal Doom, eh? Try map 13. ;)

Seriously, though, if you don't want anything to do with any of those game elements you just mentioned, you're almost certainly better off playing some other WAD entirely. The simplest proper maps in ED, if my memory serves, are 18 and 23 (which are also among its shortest, incidentally), both by Dia Westerteicher, though I suspect even those might feature at least some measure of 'obtuse' progression in the form of the ever-popular 'camouflaged switch.'

I do play other wads, and I wasn't planning on playing Eternal Doom beforehand. Just figured hey why not try a few maps, if there are a few that might be up my alley none the less. But yeah if they all have camouflaged switches I guess I can just skip Eternal Doom. I like a lot of the TNT Evilution maps, though I guess TeamTNT is pretty different in Eternal Doom.

[Ancalagon]

Fda Map10: +points for giving backpack and ssg at the start, -points for placing the blue key in a secret, +points for the map not being confusing and
rewarding exploration with nice secrets. My favorite map in eternal so far, and the only one that has been enjoyable.

[antares031]

MAP09 - Forlorn Fortress
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 96/100/100

Congratulations, you've found the only secret area within zero second! Anyway, the concept of this level is medival fortress with decent vanilla architectural details. The majority of combat areas are little bit large, so you don't need to worry about getting stuck around. But please note that there are lots of shotgun guys around the corner, waiting to piss you off. Those shotgun guys are really annoying to deal with, but at least they'll make your shells never depleted. In fact, the worst part of this level is yet to come. If you played this level, you know do what I mean; That damn cryptic switch. Anyway, the detail and combat is pretty enjoyable. But in the end, this level pissed me off because of that fatal flaw.

[dobu gabu maru]

PsychoGoatee said:

Which maps would you recommend to a player who doesn't want to do the hard to find switches and more complex puzzley stuff?

At the end of the month most of us list our favorite wads from the set, so you'd want to probably wait until then. I'm not finished with the megawad yet, but I can't see anything overtaking MAP19 in my eyes if you wanted to give that a shot. MAP05 is also a pleasant one.

[PsychoGoatee]

dobu gabu maru said:

At the end of the month most of us list our favorite wads from the set, so you'd want to probably wait until then. I'm not finished with the megawad yet, but I can't see anything overtaking MAP19 in my eyes if you wanted to give that a shot. MAP05 is also a pleasant one.

Thanks, will do. And I'll give those a try.

[Ancalagon]

PsychoGoatee said:

Which maps would you recommend to a player who doesn't want to do the hard to find switches and more complex puzzley stuff?

I recommend you not to play eternal

[PsychoGoatee]

Ancalagon said:

I recommend you not to play eternal

It's too late :P, I probably won't play most of it, if that's any consolation.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP08: Woodhead
93% kills, 0/1 secret

A fairly linear, corridorific map. Not much to say, but there's a couple of cool bits (really liked using the staircase to avoid the cyberdemon at first). I switched to continuous play on dobu's advice, which is good since I never found the SSG secret on this map. The giant clump of enemies on the spidermind was funny too, unfortunately the cyberdemon teleported in and out before taking any damage from it. I did abuse the red door (open, get monsters to fire, then close before it can hit you) to get the cyber to clear that room out for me, but it still ended in a sloggy circle-strafe battle. Having him constantly teleporting can sorta make it exciting I suppose but honestly it just feels frustrating having him teleport out of the way of your shots.

Definitely agree with everyone else that the florescent lighting strips look really out of place among the medieval assets here.