Play Time: /idgames Random

[BigDickBzzrak]

Inkie said:

Something Awful, part 3 - 7+6
By "Bzzrak Ktazzz", April 2016

Gosh, man, I love you. :3
--------------
I'll just add my own contribution.
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/deathmatch/p-r/rcktdeth
Rocket Death (no name is given, though), September '95.

So, what the hell is this. Just a D-shaped room with millions of rocket launchers. Supposedly a DM map, though I wouldn't try that.
OK, this was dull. 1/10.

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/deathmatch/a-c/cliffs11
Cliffs (no name given again), August '95.

Again a suposedly DM map, but SP is implemented. The author says "but I made it tough, so don't go crying to your mommy". CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
So, imagine The Chasm/MAP24. Now, make it completely linear, like you're going around a huge rock with lava around you. SUDDENLY a Cyberdemon appears down there, but he's no real threat. Your path to glory is filled with barrels, too, but they aren't really tough either. So, you go around and around and around. The map is marble-textured, btw. Anyway, you come to a switch. Behind it is a door, which leads to a really big falling down to a GRAYx textured area. That takes you to the lava. As you go out to the lava, you're warped to a platform above all that. The aforementioned Cyberdemon shhots you dead.
I would't DM on this either. 3/10.

I finally got a SP map, so here it is...
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/a-c/blood1
BLOOD!!!, May '97.
What we have here is a blood textured maze. It has a lot of ArchViles (5-6), so I was basically dying a lot whenever I met those jerks. Anyway, there is a hidden-behind-a-false-wall room with a key (necessary for map completion), so your automap skills need to be pretty damn good.
The map does have some tough fights (especially the AV ones), but I completed it in exactly 10 minutes. Summary: nothing you'll regret playing, but nothing you'll replay. 3/10 from me.

[gaspe]

I remember that I heard Memfis talking about playing ramdom wads from the archive, and it seemed rather interesting but I never did it actually, so...

Shadow of Darkness (Doom 2, 1995)

It looks like I got something good. I guess this was started as a level for Doom as it is pretty much like a E1 level, and actually there are few homages to many E1 maps. There will be few lost souls; and a SSG (+ RL and a secret PG too) though it isn't really necessary as the level is quite easy but very fun. There are some cool looking areas.

Btw guys if you really want to make some reviews there also the /newstuff chronicles ;)

[baja blast rd.]

I don't know if I could make reviews for something like /newstuff. It feels weird potentially having someone's decision to check something out depend on my specific tastes. At least here, wads can only gain potential players.

[Benjogami]

I felt like doing another book report.

This time it's Deep Purple, from '94 for Doom 1.

Here's a 20 minute long FDA.

I'll mix in my commentary with the screens this time:

Spoiler

Nice decor


There were some areas that were kinda cool-looking for their size and garishness. The stairs at the other end of this room, too.


Eventually this spider mastermind fight happens in this room. Due to the decorations blocking it, you end up throwing your ammo around the corner until it dies. That is, if you didn't grab the BFG that rose up from the pit with it beforehand.


There were 2 ugly, jagged brown mazes like this. The light is blinking randomly here. There were lots of areas with various harsh blinking lights. Pretty grating.


3 very non-threatening monster closets opened here, one at a time, and there were even more barrels inside of them. Kinda fun trying to kill everything with barrels. This wasn't the only area with ammo and powerups barfed all over the floor. There were at least 5 blue armors and 5 soulspheres on this map. 2 computer maps, too. And a few backpacks. There was a secret that I found (though its sector wasn't marked as such) that had a single backpack in it, even though I was given at least 2 backpacks previously.


Cool techbase area B) The lines around the silver floor areas were impassible, strangely. The exit to the level happens after you find the long narrow hall that exits this room. That hall has the 3rd berzerk pack that I found, and then some former humans all lined up to punch through to the exit. That was pretty fun at least.

[Walter confetti]

fast play from randomized file while making a pause from my map for ultimatum CP:

No Rest for the Wicked (Doom, 1994)

Reading the filename i've a some sense of dejavu and starting playing this map the feeling get stronger, then i found a certain room that make me think: "Hey, i played this map already! And it was from a long time ago!"

As i wrote above, i played this map ages ago on my shovelware cds (you know, the ancient ages where people don't have internet and the only way to play some doom wads it was from magazines cds and shovelware with lots of wads and other fancy stuff), but then i forgot what this map was called and even thinking it was a mirage, some fake faded memory and then you fund it back, at randomly!

This map is easy level with some cramped and claustrophobic layout and some really cool touches like "realistic" environments and such stuff, but also some weird choices like a way only door to a "secret" room, a toxic outdoor in a secret section of the map (why?), but for the rest is a really good map for it's age!

gaspe said:

Btw guys if you really want to make some reviews there also the /newstuff chronicles ;)

Yeah, i know (and already wrote some of them), but this is also a funny way to waste time a little diversion!

[glenzinho]

dethwalk, (Doom E2M1, 1994) Demo

This is a small one room map from 1994 with narrow catwalks running over a damaging nukage floor. Author states it is primarily a deathmatch level but has placed sarges on the catwalks and demons in the nukage. It has one of those invisible deathmatch exits, activated by standing in the middle platform with the BFG and pressing on the linedef from the inside. There are barrels dotted around that are mostly useless to the player and features sarges often blowing themselves up.


I've played this before on a shovelware cd back in the day and even modified this map myself for my own deathmatches over serial cable... for shits and giggles here's a pic of my version. Should take less than a minute to finish on UV.

[gaspe]

Ralf01 (Doom, 1994)

As you can expect from a 1994 wad the texturing and some shapes are quite weird. There's also a key behind a secret. By luck I took the right path, as after a fake wall there's a long corridor with a BFG that it will be almost necessary. The action was pretty good I must say. There will be a mastermind and a cyberdemon (+ few barons and few cacos) in two different fights and both with a invulnerability. It was quite nice actually, it's a powerup that you rarely see.

[joe-ilya]

Bobcat Doom2 (Doom 2, 1997) - No FDAs because this only runs in Zdoom.

Horrible, horrible, so fucking broken you can't exit, so broken you can't play the wad in it's prefered source port.
There are new graphics for skill levels, but there's no difference between them in the map. And the author thought it would be funny to recolor the medikits to pink for some reason.

About the map, it's short (thank god), flat and uninspired.
Use your ammo wisely, I exited the map with 2 rockets and nothing else, to exit the map you must either cheat or rocket jump.

0/5

[Megalyth]

rdwpa said:

Lakeside (Doom II, 2013)

Cool, one of my maps came up randomly. :)

Nice demo, you made good use of the fist to counter the tight ammo. I remember a few players reported running out of ammo completely.

[Walter confetti]

time to revive this:

Canto (Doom, 2015)

A short hell map from Jacob B. Orkloff, it's for zdoom and uses some scripted thing actions, is pretty short and compact, but the ending section is kinda of punitive....

Maybe there's really too much shotgun ammo in the final battle (and expecting ammo for the harder weapons present), but overall it's a nice map!

Now, i'll better use this writing attitude for the missing /newstuff reviews!

[Yugiboy85]

Oh man, i love this idea. Gonna have to try it myself :)

[Walter confetti]

BARREL2.WAD (Barrel Version 2.0) (Doom, 1994) - bunch of obnoxious FDAs where i die in the first room of the level. Wow.



This map is the speedrunners heaven (or hell), you must know some speedrunning tricks to beat this, otherwise you will found locked in the first room, just like me the first time i played this.

The level itself is the classic 1994 map with a lot of puzzle gameplay, you need to be careful to hidden switches here and there... the map concept isn't bad, but the execution looks little chopped to me, i don't get the high votes and the hype beyond this, sorry. If someone can said me the fascination have this map for you, please explain it...

[GregLafitte]

So I ended up with this: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/g-i/hellfall

Title: The Fall of Hell

Game: Doom 2

Author: Nambona890

Date: 02/10/15

Yep.... "Nambona890".... I was afraid it was going to be a terry wad but it actually turned out to be normal. The map is basically a small arena full of monsters and after you defeat them a cyberdemon appears, once you defeat him the map is over.

[Walter confetti]

The Ultimate Maze (Doom 2, 1996) - FDA -UV-Speed of this thing in 0:22

A large grass area surrounded by a door maze and the dumbest sound / music combination ever heard... great.

[gaspe]

Omega Facility (Doom 2, 2001)

A good looking space station. It's plenty of details and it has some nice lightning. Gameplay is rather easy, the monster placement isn't really effective and even though the map is non-linear is mostly a room after room full of chokes. Overall it was relaxing to play it, the music helped a lot on this. And about the music this is taken from a review lol: "The music, which is rather gay in mood".

[vdgg]

I wonder if you guys are posting everything or only some chosen ones. I'm surprised so many good WADs get played by using Random feature.

@walter:
I don't find BARREL2 that outstanding, but it's above average for its age and the trickery make it legendary in my eyes.
@gaspe:
Good pick with that Omega Facility level, I'm striving to get such a polished base look which seems so easy for the mapper...

[Walter confetti]

vdgg said:

I wonder if you guys are posting everything or only some chosen ones. I'm surprised so many good WADs get played by using Random feature.

@walter:
I don't find BARREL2 that outstanding, but it's above average for its age and the trickery make it legendary in my eyes.

Well, not all... personally i leave deathmatch maps, combos, trollwads (i just really, REALLY HATE them),nusic and sound replacement and all that jazz... one day i've come into one of my maps!

I've downloaded long ago a 10 maps episode called 24hours.wad, maybe i'll check that too! But until now i choose to play only single maps...

Anyway, thanks for sharing your memories of BARREL2 with us!
Is the same conclusion i've had with that map, nothing incredible but some cool tricks...

[sabrina]

Title: Guts and Glory
Date: 06/20/96
Author: Brent Hollett
Description: These levels are for you to kick some monster arse!! Good stress releif, pretend it's your BOSS!!



it's not too hard to imagine what the map actually looks like playing the wad, bland default textures for a few rooms. slay a bunch of enemies and exit map. rather than multiple maps in 1 wad, each map is numbered for the map it replaces. map01, map02, map03 for 1.wad, 2.wad, you get it.
the map02 and map03 replacements aren't much either. after those, i just gave up.
plain suckage. not recommended at all.

[joe-ilya]

AliensDoom 2.0 (Doom, 1994) - No FDAs because this wad is ultra broken and I shouldn't bother

The randomizer gives me another crappy wad to play. Yey.

The custom graphics and sounds are so horrible that I decided to play without them (because they're separate wads too) it doesn't make anything better, but at least it's less of an eyesore, seriously, most of the flats are just glitches and the sounds are annoying/loud.

First map was OK, it was balanced. But the rest aren't, you spend your time shooting many enemies with a pistol (even when finding a bazillion secrets), I even doubt the hardcore '94 fans will like this.

E2M8 doesn't even have an exit.
The only thing I liked were the custom sprites for the enemies. 1/5

Here's how awful this wad is:

Spoiler

With custom graphics:

Without:

[Ribbiks]

I got some time to kill... (I kept rolling until I got something non-deathmatch, and boom-compat or earlier), I landed on...

SCHOOL DOOM!

Time to shoot up the school, hurray. I can feel the edge already. My memories of doom modding in the late 90s/early 2000s are fuzzy at best, but I wonder how long it took for the "just put everything in one wad" to become the standard... Well, after loading up the 5 or so separate wads, we get...





oh. ok then... -warp 1 8 gets you...





dear lord. Revenge of MS paint and offputting sound replacements. oh 90s pwads, how I missed you.

After some rather standard "make a flat building with lots of hallways and side rooms" style of design, the mapset continues at slot e2m8 for some reason (I'm guessing it's relying on the text screens for the "story")...





and holy shit. It's a level filled with Scythe2-style crackhead-speed Mr. Xs, all equipped with rocket launchers... Even with 999 hp and 200 armor it was still stressful killing all 17 of these. The enemies apparently occupy the cyberdemon's thingid as the level promptly ends when you kill them all.

but wait, there's more!

e3m8... a big pyramid hubspoke with some hallway offshoots. some invisible floor traps and switch "puzzles"...





I about hit my patience with the west-most area, moving on...

e4m7... blue and orange! this one is laid out more like a typical doom level, central structure, interwoven layouts, not shabby.





e4m8... it keeps going, basically a sequence a micro-arenas, until eventually you reach an area with flying mastermind replacements and more of those Mr. X fuckers. presumably the level ends once the mastermind guys die, a la standard e4m8. They got to infighting with each other, and it gave me the impression the author might've gone a bit over the top with their HP values (note the time in the bottom left)....


-->


so yeah. school doom. what a ride.

[joe-ilya]

GAMMA: One Nerd And His Doom (Doom 2, 2002) - No FDAs because this is for Zdoom.

You apperently play as Linguica and kill regular doom monsters with experimental behaviours, barons (which are less healthy now) throw a quick 3 direction fireball stream and when they die an imp pops out of it and throws 3 fireballs in a row in 1 direction, the imp fireballs can kill in one hit. The hell knights and the AV explode in a harmful explosion while dying like the IOS, the nazis have a ton of health now, rest of the monsters are unchanged.

You get two new weapons, such as a turbo chaingun and an imp fireball rifle, and you can punch super-quick too.

About the map, it's just a flat basic plain base with room-door-room progression style, there's a couple of new technial effects and a couple of cutscenes and that's about it. Boring! 1/5



Days of Xornox The Oracle of Ordeals (Doom 2, 1998) - No FDAs because this wad is pointless

Two oversized rooms, one is a yellow armory. the second's grey and has a boss, you get to the boss room through a go-through window and the armory closes down behind you, then you're trapped in the boss room with a plasma gun, a rapid rocket launcher and the boss who's a marine that the author claims him to be you.

The boss never dies and you're stuck there for the rest of your life, or you can just exit and delete this WAD and DEH the instant.

One funny thing is that there's a MAP11 that just has a bunch of invulnerable spider masterminds, and the rockets explode really-really-really slow, it takes 20 seconds for it to dissapear.

(No screenshots either)
0/5

[Walter confetti]

Going full random this time (well. 4 days ago, but i finished playing this just yesterday) and i got:

James Brown Doom(sound wad for doom, doom2 and final doom iwads, 1995) with Aeternum (Doom 2. 2007) - FDAs for all maps, no exit

James Brown Doom:

A sound replacement wad with the immortal voice of James Brown replacing the player and some monsters sounds, kinda annoying for starters but after you listen to this in long time, you get used to the "Soul Man" screams....

Aeternum:

A really good set of 3 hard maps from skillsaw, made in a time when he wasn't that well known as now with Valiant and Ancient Aliens, with the second map the best of the 3 imho.



MAP01: A medium\large arena map, lots of brown bricks and metal, grates are above some places and them are filled with hanged corpses, the place is filled of traps and monster closets



MAP02: A large map that starts from a canyon that then descents into caves, hellish places and a final outer world dimension... The final keep awaits you!



MAP03: A final hellish map with a puzzle style gameplay and a easy IoS final room...

In other worlds, awesome maps from skillsaw, as the author standards will get used...

[Ribbiks]

took me like a dozen clicks to get something that wasn't deathmatch, but I got a good one:

Battle Strategy



A rather nice tribute to skepticist's cacoward-snubbed skepland, crafted by fellow ruski mapper/speedrunner Plut. Skepland is still in my top 5 mapsets, so I'm more than happy to land on this wad. I remember playing this when it was first released (my post here is from dec 2013), so I remembered some of the traps, but many still caught me by surprise. Here's a cl-1 fda with shameless saving: https://www.mediafire.com/?kjohun70x373jly

I love claustrophobic traps stuffed with high-tier mobs, as well as the ssg-centric tight-on-ammo design. My main criticism is that to say this map is reliant on AVs for its primary source of difficulty might be an understatement. They're sprinkled around the map in droves, with at least 1-2 of them involved in nearly every encounter. Another critique is that the "sudden pincer attack via teleporting mobs" started to feel played out by the end of the map, but seeing as it's a rather short affair it's not a huge setback. A third critique might be that while the map interconnectivity is nice, the "get 3 keys in different map branches to exit" layout doesn't quite match the elegance of Skepland's extreme nonlinearity.

This map seems to have slipped under the radar, both on dw and /idgames (where it had just 2 votes before I landed on it). If you're a fan of rougher stuff and are looking for your daily dose of dick-trap ass-kicking, give it a whirl. I very much enjoyed replaying this.

[Paul977]

Ribbiks said:

Battle Strategy

This wad doesn't work for me on glboom/prboom keep getting R_InitTextures: errors

[baja blast rd.]

Runs with Plutonia.

[Voros]

Damn, you all write nice reviews.

Why don't you write for the newstuff Chronicles? There's literally only two main people doing reviews, with a few out of the blue.

[Ribbiks]

Voros said:

Why don't you write for the newstuff Chronicles? There's literally only two main people doing reviews, with a few out of the blue.

hmm. sure why not. I see tls.wad in the queue and I think I can do that one justice, at least :)

[Remilia Scarlet]

Voros said:

Damn, you all write nice reviews.

Why don't you write for the newstuff Chronicles? There's literally only two main people doing reviews, with a few out of the blue.

I actually did just a few days ago :D

[valkiriforce]

I actually got darken2.wad for my random file but I'd rather stick to single levels that nobody knows about since The Darkening 2 is pretty well-known.

Fear Island by Gurkha Boy (Doom 2 - 09/06/99)

Well, be prepared to shotgun dozens of imps and chainsaw/berserk punch some demons over again if you happen to die on this one. Otherwise, I thought it was a simple but interesting map idea. It replaces MAP22 so it's got that sort of Doom 2 hellish-atmosphere going for it with GSTONE and such. It reminds me a little of the exclusive levels found in PSX Doom so I kinda like that. Just try saving it once you've cleared that horde of imps/demons otherwise you'll be on the brink of giving up like I was when I happened to die by a revenent's rocket afterward (not to mention some lower health/traps that might catch you off-guard).

Doom Map by Doug Merrill (Doom 2 - 11/13/97)

Fun little romp - probably has too much ammunition and some odd texture choices in a few places but I did have fun with it. It sort of combines some map ideas from Doom episode 1 and Doom 2's first episode maps with a mix of original ideas, like a large outdoor area where you get to take out a bunch of imps/cacos floating around the place. Overall it has a nice Doom 2 atmosphere about it and I found it enjoyable.

[Doomkid]

Vampire 5 or Frodo 5

A fun little oddly named map from September 1994, just the type of map I like and extremely well made for it's age. A few satisfying little secrets (the one with 2 medkits saved my ass) As one of the commenters said, it would fit in nicely with the rest of E1. I enjoyed it!

There's an E1M9 as well but it's not very good, still above the usual quality for 1994 though.