The DWmegawad Club plays: Estranged

[T-Rex]

I've been waiting so long to play Alien Vendetta. Great mapset by some of the most talented mappers like Andy Johnsen, the late Kim Malde, Brad Spencer, and a few others. Yeah, AV isn't slaughterish, with only a few popping up in the second episode before more appearing in the hell episode. It's harder than HR, that's for sure, least in the latter half of the megawad, but most of the gameplay consist of adventure-style maps with a good number of sprawling ones.

+++ Alien Vendetta

[Demon of the Well]

^^ It is an IoS, but you don't have to do a timing trick to hit it. No, hitting it is made very difficult in other ways....

[Aquanet]

MAP29: Sheol

Lots of revenants, a pretty cool layout with cave sections flowing into little buildings, which draws on Foodles' strengths. I did feel the distinct lack of a megasphere. This megawad hasn't had that many spheres.

MAP30: Chimes at Midnight

The opening one-third isn't sure if it wants you to stop and fight or barrel on ahead, which I did, and that seemed to work better. MAP30 feels like a jazzier MAP28, and this time, the projectiles are a bit more predictable. The legally required cacoswarm followed me around the map and was actually delayed enough by the remoteness of the west and east buildings that it showed up at about the right time to add tension. There's some platforming, and the drops are into inescapable lava, unless you're lucky or have some haz suit left, so I think I no-clipped once. The icon of sin takes place in a small area, where there's already crossfire from arachs and mancubuses (and viles that force you forward into the crossfire'd area) plus a cyber stomping about. So, the arena gets crowded very quickly. I ended up death-exiting after a lucky beeline to the platform.

Thanks Foodles, this was fun.

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP26: Valley of Defilement
1:13:39 | 100% Kills | 100% Items | 80% Secrets

Whoa, this thing was massive! I knew from the monster count going in that it would be big, but I wasn't quite expecting that! (1012 monsters, when all was said and done.) Strangely, the early goings around either side of the underground lake was probably the easiest part. I was a little frustrated when I did eventually get to the end realized there was no one way back to get all the stuff I missed, but then I thought, "Well, why don't I check over here just in case..." Heh. That was a heckuva jolt to get sent all the way back! The second time I took the lefthand path (which I had previously taken out to the large outdoor fence before running back in and taking the righthand path.) Man, the left felt tons easier, but I can only assume that's because I had already cleared out everything from the right. Fantastic level; I love the one-man-taking-on-Hell vibe (Deus Vult I is the benchmark) and this had it all: great architecture, detailing, and lots of (not too difficult) slaughter. Cool stuff.

[Spectre01]

Map 30: Chimes at Midnight

[Major Salt]

Yeah, any hope I had for the finale and the wad after map 29 is gone here. This is one of the worst map 30's I've played. Extremely obnoxious platforming, Cacoswarms that take forever to get in range and just repeatedly shoot shit across the map and all the other annoying sniper crap imaginable. That, plus forced running across damaging floors, still sitting at max 100HP/AR for 90% of the map and all the other grievances I've had with the wad combined. And don't get me started on the Icon of Shit. I don't know if it was bad RNG or not but I kept getting a stream of respawning Arachnotrons that made riding the TINY AS ALL HELL lift a nightmare. Not to mention that after you jump down to hit the switch, the newly spawned stuff gathers around the spot where the teleporter shits you out and blocks your path.

Final Thoughts: Ugh... No sir, I did not like this at all. There were a few good maps like 05 and 29, as sea of forgettable mediocrity and some absolute vomit. This is not a good megawad by 90's standards, 00's standards and sure as hell not modern standards of mapping and gameplay. There was almost no fun to be had here. The difficulty was either piss-easy or only remotely hard due to the fact Foodles has a raging hardon at keeping the player at 100HP and green armour levels all the time in every fucking map and shitting up the place with snipers. I'm having a hard time justifying a 1/5 here since wads I've rated 2/5 were magnitudes more enjoyable than this. 1/5 for being compatible with the HD texture mod and a few good maps. [/Major Salt]

[Demon of the Well]

Map 28 -- Astral Plane - 99% Kills / 50% Secrets - Another badly-played FDA.
Thematically, this is presumably intended as a parallel-universe take on Doom II's map 28 ("The Spirit World"); conceptually, it's a little bit "Gotcha!" and a little bit "The Living End", posing a series of self-contained fortresses suspended in a floating lake of astral flame, to be navigated in hopscotch fashion, protecting a final marble pavilion where the twin princes of the realm watch over the plug to the whole tub. To the eye, there's a distinct impression that the fortresses can be visited at will from the outset (provided one can endure the flames), but this is mostly illusory--like so many other Estranged maps, the progression here appears to be almost entirely linear in nature, although there's an early fork to pick from early on (which presumably results in a dead end eventually if you go the wrong way first). That being said, presenting linearity in a way that cosmetically appears/feels different is oftentimes perfectly sufficient to maintain interest, and I do think the framing is mostly effective here--the level feels different from its predecessors, even though it's very similar to so many of them when boiled down to basics. Additionally, even though the sequence needed to complete the level seems more or less set in stone, once again I missed a lot of the secrets here, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the key to a lot of them involves poking around down in the flames, which would add at least a minor element of exploration to the proceedings.

Once again, not a difficult map, really, with most of the actual fights plain and simple in execution. The major wrinkle to the proceedings comes in the form a new way of framing the 'snipers on the horizon' idea that Estranged has relied on so heavily, that being that the creatures staffing the battlements of distant buildings will be firing at you from the outset, and in many cases it will be quite a while before you can bring them into autoaim range to make them knock it off already (which of course is most troublesome where a choice revenant or two is concerned). This adds a bit of an edge to the otherwise fairly rote fights, and generally speaking I didn't find it to be too overpronounced or omnipresent to markedly stifle the level's sense of 'breathability', owing mostly to the battlements of the redstone fortress in the center of the map being slightly higher than everything else, felt like. Like a lot of Estranged's maps, the finale feels a mite uninspired (though I suppose it deserves an ounce of credit for at least being identifiable as a finale), though perhaps having the BFG at the end trivializes it. Also, what the hell is the deal with that red herring potion? I swear I've lost more health on account of that thing than to most of the game's monsters, and you can bet I stayed the hell away when it showed up again in map 30.

I suspect part of the reason I didn't really feel the stress in this map is that it's aesthetically very....non-threatening? Very little light variation at play here, and lots of different colors juxtaposed in true old-fashioned "Inferno" style, along with a fairly laid-back nightclub sort of midi make for an experience that's too dreamlike to be really oppressive, sort of put me in mind of some of the E3 levels from Kama Sutra in that regard. More than a couple like this and the proceedings would probably begin to feel underworked (especially as far as the lighting goes), but in context and as a one-off (which it turns out it isn't!) I think it's fine.

Map 29 -- Sheol - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA
Something like the Godzilla to map 08's "Reptile", this. Same basic concept--three distinct paths, each freely accessible from the simple hub at the start, each tied to one of the three keys needed to open the final area. Apart from the slight oddity of the blue skull appearing in the hub itself with little fanfare at some point (not sure what actually triggers it to become available there, honestly, though it presumably has something to do with the middle/central path), and the final battle being understandably more pronounced than map 08's was, the similarities are quite striking, to the point where I would likely think that said similarities are an intentional thematic idea where it not for the fact that the mapset has tended to repeat itself so frequently up to this point.

On a gameplay level, combat once again leans heavily towards the incidental end of the scale. There is a fairly substantial (if rather heavily telegraphed) trap protecting the yellow skull, and the final battle is a simplistic drop-in arena setpiece, but for the most part the monsters are placed directly in your path to meet you in straightforward battles with little in the way of misdirection or multi-layered choreography in evidence. That being said, since Foodles has here exercised a free hand with both scale and scope, the map generally has enough room and enough topographical variety for the fights to vary naturally as well, ranging from extremely simplistic corridor scuffles to more open areas which play more with crossfire, ala the drop down into the 'tron nest midway through combing the blood-tunnels of the RK path, or even multiple tiers and fronts of action, ala the huge mountainside cavern near the YK path, which may or may not be an entirely optional area. Much of the interest elides from how the player's kit and resources stack up against each encounter in a given case, which can presumably vary significantly from game to game given the free choice of routes at the beginning as well as the fact that the routes connect to each other at a few points (though never in so close-knit a way as for monsters in one area to be able to move into or otherwise influence combat in another area, mind), making for a reasonably replayable experience. The overall monster composition skews markedly towards tougher foes, and density is high enough that the pace of action (at least during conventional play) is never particularly brisk, but in a way the mostly unstructured/unelaborated encounters in concert with the generally spacious surroundings keep the level from feeling too dictated or overbearing despite its long length and mostly rote action, not unlike map 15 in that regard, I suppose.

I too thought to bring the V-sphere into the last arena fight, incidentally, probably its best use, though I doubt it was really planned as an option (or maybe I'm being too cynical about the design/playtesting here, dunno). I'd almost have rather had a BFG in its place, I think.....I reckon I've been compelled to use the plasma rifle to kill more cyberdemons in this mapset than I have in the last several we've played combined, even the somewhat weapon-bogarting Bloodstain.

Certainly a decent map, possessed of the sense of scope and spectacle one often wants in a map 29, but I can't help but feel that I'd have felt at least a little more genuinely enthused about it if it hadn't felt like yet more of what Estranged has been showing us all along at this point. Does that make any sense?

[Nine Inch Heels]

Well, I've stopped voicing my opinion past map05 which was one the most enjoyable ones in the entire set for me. After that map I couldn't help but play through some more maps and ended up looking at every single one of them ahead of time, in a matter of hours more or less.

Perhaps I shouldn't have done so, but then again it wouldn't help the fact that Foodles' ever returning concepts of low armour supplies, hitscans aplenty, Lost souls all over the place, tighter ammo than enjoyable, and green armour for the majority of time, are not my cup of tea.

I can definitely see why people would enjoy this particular design-flavour. The WAD has strong moments going for it, and the amount of incidental combat at times is fairly outstanding and refreshing.

I won't rate this WAD with an overall score or something similar, I clearly was not part of the target audience, and that is perfectly fine with me.

+++Alien vendetta

[baja blast rd.]

Demo of map29. The cybers at the end are scary. The teleporters in this mapset lack monster block lines, which can lead to silliness.

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP27: Flame Peak
36:35 | 100% Kills | 92% Items | 0% Secrets

Man, I wanted to like this map. In theory, the idea is really cool, scaling the mountain peak. But holy crap after the first three or four times cacos-and-PEs-attacking-from-50-feet-over-your-head and spiders-blasting-you-from-a-mile-and-a-half-away just loses its luster, you know? Throw in the ridiculous vile-spam at the end, and this is easily the most un-fun level yet. A shame, too, because the design was great, aside from one or two mandatory nukage runs and the fact that it's almost entirely linear. (And I was expecting some cool platforming secrets, but explore as I might all I found was me having to trek back through the whole thing over again.)

[baja blast rd.]

map30

I would have liked this map if not for the final IoS battle, which is pretty awful owing to a combination of RNG, infinite height, and the very real possibility of being warped straight into a clusterfuck of monsters newly spawned by the aggressive boss spawner while you are down triggering the lift. Spawner spots at unmarked spots in the middle of the playing field are fundamentally crass, even if it's easy to avoid being telefragged. The rest of the action is fun enough after the irritations of the start (PE/soul spam is eww when you have to battle it so close with the SSG or CG). The cybers can be skipped or cheesed (useful for saving cells!); the pestilent cacos can be dealt with safely from the HK platform; and the revs are an enjoyable match-up whenever they appear.

I thought the secret region was very cute.



There are silver doors in previous maps that could be interpreted as being the actual door you see in this secret. Oh yeah, and the invisible teleporter at the drop to the IoS region didn't fool me. Textures clearly twitched.

***

The mapset is alright, I guess. I knew it was aiming for an oldschool feel, but to my surprise, the problem with the aesthetics was the same as that of many modern megawads: a predominance of abstractness and a prevailing homogeneity, leaving the visuals largely unmemorable except in broad strokes. There are several good maps and plenty of good ideas scattered around, so I can't call the experience a waste, but I don't think I'll revisit the set outside of a few stand-outs.

The major thing is it could have benefited a lot from playtesting in the proper ports. Looking through what was the beta release thread on Doomworld, the most through testing was done in (G)ZDoom, Zandronum, and ZDaemon. The author tested it in prBoom+ as well as ZDoom, but too often when prBoom+ is used as a secondary testing port, the author simply goes through the mapset with -nomonsters/IDDQD/etc. to make sure triggers work and that the maps can be completed. Testing of the gameplay -- which can differ across ports in both subtle ways that make maps annoying and significant ways that make maps borderline unplayable -- is often left to other players. Unfortunately there weren't enough.

Highlights: map05, map06, map07, map08, map09, map16, map25, map29.

The mapset really hit its stride in e2, with a lot of in-your-face combat. After that, the prickly gameplay of the earliest levels came back for longer stretches, culminating in the pure essence of prickliness: the infinite height indifference of map27.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 30 -- Chimes at Midnight - 62% Kills / 0% Secrets - FDA, 6 deaths I think?
Had quite a bit of fun running around in the pre-IoS portion of this one, though it quickly becomes apparent that the level is highly prone to dysfunction of various sorts (broken encounter triggers, bizarre equip balance, etc.) if you don't play it 'just so', which again is presumably a result of inadequate or improper playtesting. A nocturnal or 'dark world' version of the sea of flame theme first seen in map 28, "Chimes at Midnight" plays quite a bit like that level, being designed as a linear hop-skip-jump tour across a sequence of islands, flotillas and fortresses, culminating in a massive marble castle which is little more than a blind disguising the IoS arena. Even though you can see 90% of the playable area from the outset, it's perhaps a little more tricky to get a mental handle on than map 28 before it, since a number of the structures which look like they might contain gameplay exist only as visual elements, and likewise a number of the more modest bits of geometry which appear to exist primarily as practical visual filler will actually be traversed at some point. The actual route is also more difficult to map/plan out ahead of time; as said, the (intended) sequence is quite linear, but liberally uses teleporter pads to zip you around all over the place, so there's no real telling when you'll actually end up at that huge castle on the horizon. The early part of the progression also uses a few little dead-end paths (in the sense that they're one way trips to islands where the only back is to take a dip in the lava and remount the path at some other/earlier point) which are theoretically optional to add an extra bit of depth to the setup, though in actuality these are quasi-mandatory for pistol-starters since they contain key weapons, and missing them can seriously hamper your efficiency later on down the road. Apart from all of the logistic wrinkles, though, I reckon the one thing that will stick with most players here is the projectile-hell aspect of the early going, which has monsters firing at you interminably from a loooooooooong way away for a goodly stretch of the proceedings, with the occasional pain elemental and more-than-occasional lost soul cropping up here and there to salt the wound.

My first instinct was to treat the layout like a racetrack and not directly engage many of the monsters (I had misjudged the level's length, expecting an Ios much sooner, in other words), which works fairly well once you've learned a good route but probably makes things far more complicated than they need to be otherwise; the level is pretty clearly designed to be fought conventionally (i.e. methodically moving from island to island and clearing out each group of enemies as it appears or comes into range), and tackled that way I doubt it's particularly dangerous, since you will never be truly subject to total exposure in that scenario. I was having a good time bounding about under pressure like a dimbulb, though, and so chose to persist until I eventually got a route down. You can skip quite a lot of the action by using teleporters in the flames to beam up to later islands in the sequence, which appears to be primarily a player concession (i.e. so you don't have to run the whole path from the start again to get back to where you were if you fall/leap off, ala map 22) rather than a design wrinkle to drive actual non-linearity or flexibility; skipping early parts of the route leads to some pretty marked supply imbalances, and should you happen to beam onto the track at its midpoint and then move along it 'backwards' you'll see a number of things break or simply fail to engage. Sloppy, very sloppy.

The farther you get into the route the more the action simmers down (chiefly because you're exposed to less and less sniper fire, even if a lot of the monsters are still alive), with a basic dual-cyb fight in one of the towers being the most notable encounter to be found indoors. The level does eventually culminate in the expected IoS fight, which is very simple/traditional in aspect--you ride a lift and throw rockets into the Icon's brain, the usual. There's not much of a real twist or gimmick to the battle; not having to make a timed shot is here offset by the relative smallness of the arena coupled with a fairly high spawn rate, meaning the boss's spawns are more effective than normal at running intereference. More crudity in the design is evident here in that some of the spawn spots are down in the pit with the switch to actuate the lift, and so the infinitely-tall issue once again rears its head in short order (since you need to jump down there every time you need to actuate the lift), though in fairness I suppose this particular IoS is pretty patently designed to be beaten either very quickly or not at all, so if you're struggling with getting into the pit you're probably already more or less screwed anyway. Other points of note....it's possible to throw the cyberdemon into the pit, and the topside spawn spots are right in the thick of things, and so being telefragged is well within the realm of possibility here (happened to me at least once, IIRC). All in all, for how simple it is it's a decently challenging IoS fight, but I'd have liked to see something with either a little more imagination to its concept or a little more aesthetic pizzazz (or, ideally, both).

*****************

The biggest impression Estranged has left on me, I think, is that it hasn't left much of a strong impression on me. The great majority of the maps here I found to be quite palatable and playable, but few of them strike me as something that I'm going to be able to recall very well at this same time next month. To the set's credit, of those few maps which did stand out, most stood out in a positive way (with only map 27 asserting itself as an actively aggravating experience), but on the whole I think I'd say that the proceedings here are a little too consistently understated or even piecemeal unambitious for their own good. It's funny.....comparing it to Bloodstain from last month, I'd say without hesitation that Estranged plays more smoothly pound for pound, and yet it seldom captured my imagination with its setting or my taste for battle with its action, whereas Bloodstain regularly did both in spite of its gameplay/design issues. Part of the matter is surely that Estranged repeats itself a whole helluva lot, for one thing....there could be many explanations for this (including a number where this regular rephrasing of itself is an active/intentional part of its artistic design), but to me the overriding impression was that the megaWAD had more mapslots than Foodles had really fleshed-out ideas for maps. I was also repeatedly struck by the impression that the mapset as it currently stands is essentially a beta-stage product, with various mechanical/functionality/playability kinks still very much in evidence (in 'target' spec especially), and a number of levels that seem like rough drafts, placeholders, or even mere fragments on the roster. All that aside, though, the linear adventure style and consistently fresh-linen-clean visuals surely have their charms, and I reckon this is very much the sort of PWAD that serves best as 'comfort food', something to be taken in when one craves simpler, less demanding fare.

Top 5 maps of the set, in no particular order:
Map 25 -- The Depths
Map 15 -- Floating Fortress
Map 16 -- Battle Room
Map 13 -- Dark Heart
Map 26 -- Valley of Defilement

I did quite like the main part of map 30 as well, as aforesaid--it was some of the best action in the WAD, in fact--but I felt the level as a whole was a little too untested (and thus prone to breakage and other shenanigans) to make the top 5.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP28: Astral Plane
81% kills, 2/6 secrets

A sort of Downtown with the buildings set in lava and connected with teleporters. Many of the "buildings" have very little cover (hello, useless waist-high walls!) and there's a ton of revenants and mancubuses scattered all over. I'm not really a fan of Bullet Hell type maps; I can take it in small doses if there's plenty of room to run around, but the design here of the buildings above lava means the player doesn't get a ton of room to dodge. So lots of running past everything for me, which worked great until the last building, where I took the time to clear everything out so I could corner-cheese the Masterminds. The end is also very anti-climatic... I was able to figure out where the exit was thanks to ZDoom's map (which outlines the exit teleporter in a special color) and figured I had to go around the whole level until I lowered the teleporter, but this seems like something that might be hard to figure out normally. Lowering a waist-high teleporter to floor height on a tower in a corner of the map is also pretty obscure. Needs a lot more fanfare there, I think. Also screw those insta-pop revenants right after the dual Cyberdemon section.

[Salt-Man Z]

Magnusblitz said:

The end is also very anti-climatic... I was able to figure out where the exit was thanks to ZDoom's map (which outlines the exit teleporter in a special color) and figured I had to go around the whole level until I lowered the teleporter, but this seems like something that might be hard to figure out normally. Lowering a waist-high teleporter to floor height on a tower in a corner of the map is also pretty obscure. Needs a lot more fanfare there, I think.

If you follow the teleporter-chain from island to island throughout the level, the final teleporter takes you right to the foot of the exit tower, so it's not at all obscure.

I played this one last night; figured I should finish the WAD off and realized I only had 3 maps left. Man, that start was just the opposite of fun, what with mancs and revvies and spiders instantly firing on you from all corners of the map. It certainly didn't help that I started at ~30% (?) health from the previous level. One of the first things I was able to do (after a number of tries) was make it to the building off to the right, where I killed everything through the windows and stuck around in its shadow as a safe zone. (Only a little later did I realize I could platform over to the other side and get inside the building properly.) Then I was able to figure out that I could just fire 3-4 rockets in the direction of each turret manc, since they were all at the same height as the starting walkway, yay. Other than that (very) rough start, the most taxing battle was the one through the first teleporter, on the lava-submerged path, against the horde of nobles and PEs with mancs and revvies providing fire from the second island. Not terribly difficult, or it shouldn't have been, but all those lost souls made things worse than they otherwise would have been.

All told, took me just under an hour, and I missed I think 1 secret and 2 items. I didn't bother with that dumb health bonus, as I had already cleared the map out and got tired of trying to hunt down radsuits and backtracking through the all the teleporters. Really neat map, but that beginning smackdown almost soured me on the entire thing.

[Lingyan203]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgS1ZoidySwOclp8MNyNkeHXL-T8vLoTc

My Estranged playthrough! Sorry it's late!