DavitW

MAP03: Genome Entrance There's good variety for such a small map. We have what appear to be vents, a cavern, fancy high tech labs. Ammo can get a bit tight halfway through but there should be enough by the end to kill everything that matters. The dark maze filled with pinkie demons is just not good. It's the kind of thing you're hoping the typical mapper would realize is a horrible idea halfway through making it and completely start over. Oh well, It's a lot like eating a shit sandwich. Just gotta take it one bite at a time and keep reminding yourself there's going to be an end to it eventually. MAP04: Genome Labs In just one map, we go to over twice the number of enemies and massive rooms filled with hitscanners. They also start throwing Arachnotrons, revenants, and even a Cyberdemon at us. And there's not enough ammo to deal with all of them, even if you land every shot perfectly and conserve as much as possible. The Cyberdemon comes after a lift that I would put in the realm of patently bad design. But you know what? As soon as I dropped my 100% goals I started having a lot more fun with this. Most of it looks pretty damn good too. That huge basement facility with all the Hell Knight jar things was probably one of the coolest areas you could find back in 2001. Whoever designed this Equinox facility must have known they were doing some spooky shit. Why else would you place self-destruct switches all over the place? equinox03-04.zip

MAP01: Equinox Facility The name rang a bell, and this map definitely seems familiar. There's several new graphic and sound replacements as seemed to be the standard at the time. The pistol is now replaced by some sort of gray tube, and despite still being a glorified pea shooter sounds far more beefier. Seriously, this thing resonates like a damn cannon blast throughout the level. Can't say I'm quite onboard with the new fireball sound effect, however. Is this supposed to be a fireball from hell or a spaceship flying past our heads? Can't forget the MS Paint weather effects, either. Kids back in the day probably felt like they were playing Crysis. Anyways, the design and detail is pretty high quality so far. Gameplay is a bit lacking, though. It's practically nothing more than fighting zombiemen, shotgunners, and Imps in hallways and a few open rooms. Considering shotgun shells are a bit tight, you'll also probably end up spending a not insignificant amount of time slowly plucking through these bastards with the pistol. One of the secrets seems to open up a light switch that casts most of the level in darkness, which I guess is something you might want to happen? The stat screen midi is also replaced with a version of 'When Johnny Comes Marching Home', which I found to be an amusing choice. MAP02: Transport Hub Welcome to the first hub / transition map. Yeah, I remembered these from back in the day, too. A cute idea, but kind of hurts the flow of the club, doesn't it? I suppose I'll have to let it slide, but wad authors should have really had the foresight to realize a club might end up playing their wad one level at a time well over two decades later and design every aspect of said wad exactly to our varied tastes. Oh yeah, the map itself. Well, it's just kind of there, but not like I was expecting much else. The one secret is literally just going to the left and turning a corner. equinox01-02.zip

MAP17: Sacrilege It's the penultimate map. First part of the map involves getting past a Cyberdemon and his red key pillar, second part involves fighting a spider mastermind and her cronies. Of course there's plenty of other errands to run in between the two boss fights. Progression is a bit non-linear and exploration based here in the fact that you can find yourselves at a dead end and need to backtrack through the level before getting what you need. Combat is varied and just challenging enough you'll have to pay attention if you want to make it to the end. Unfortunately, the two bosses are placed in areas that make them feel more like a chore instead of a challenge. MAP18: Die Heuschrecke Like any good Icon of Sin map, it starts out by handing you the entire arsenal of weapons and a nearly full stockpile of ammo for them on a silver platter. Before we can get to the Icon itself, there's a more conventional level to get through first. Considering this is the final map, is Chris Harbin finally going to step up the challenge? No, not really. At least it's one of those 'floating in the void' type maps. Anybody who knows me knows I'm a big fan of those. The Icon of Sin fight isn't your conventional platforming meets timing meets luck affair. Instead you'll have to run in a criss cross pattern across a medium sized area to access the final switch that cracks open the jaw of this accursed wall texture and grants access inside. God forgive me for saying this, but I feel like this part could have done with a few more monster cube spawners so the area would actually start to fill up by the time you're reaching the final switch. As it stands, it felt like I didn't have to contend with much more than a Cacodemon floating around aimlessly and a zombieman taking occasional potshots at me. Once you're in the literal belly of the beast, it's time for Operation: Biowar Guy to bravely sacrifice himself for the greater good. I feel like most of us would take an exceedingly easy Icon of Sin map over an excessively frustrating one any day of the week, so I was completely fine with this. Even back in the day, Operation: Biowar may not have been the biggest, most grandiose wad with near impossible difficulty and the fanciest mapping tricks, but not every wad needs to serve said purpose and that's just fine. Obviously can't say this happened for sure, but I feel like a lack of playtesting led to a few easy softlocks and several moments of obtuse progression or slightly off balance here and there amongst the mostly competent design. Then again, it probably wasn't as easy finding competent play testers back in 99 than it is in current year. Considering your typical Doomer could probably get through this thing in one or two sessions these days, then I don't see much harm in playing it for yourself. bio17-18.zip

MAP31: Juggelo Funhouse An Insane Clown Posse themed Doom map... this didn't have to happen, you know. Safe to say it doesn't get much more 90's than this. I wouldn't say it feels like somebody's first map, but maybe more like a juvenile mappers third or fourth attempt from back in the day. Most everything's pretty basic to the architecture, texturing, monster placement and so on. The spider mastermind fight is pretty engaging in the sense that you can't just run up and BFG it point blank in the face. To be completely honest with you here, I may not be down with the clown, but there's no denying the fact 'Homies' is a kick ass song. MAP16: The Killing Fields Theming is a little inconsistent in these last few maps. Is it supposed to be hell, techbase, some natural setting? Who knows? Certainly nothing wrong with blending the two together, but this feels a bit too disjointed for that. Got a little bit lost in the demo. This wad's a big fan of two part secrets. Activate a hidden switch and open the actual secret up in another part of the map. There's an unmarked secret here too with a monster and item inside if you're going for 100% completion. A fair challenge and I believe our lengthiest endeavor so far. bio31.zip bio16.zip

MAP13: UAC Prison Consider this to be an episode finale of sorts. A massive monster count and malicious traps compared to everything else we've seen so far. Enjoyable at times but the flow of the level is all off. An excess of backtracking leads me to believe there wasn't a whole lot of forethought put into the design of this one and all of the elevators make a lot of the gameplay rather clunky. Don't think I'm not going to notice those Darkseed textures, either. MAP14: Absolution Sounds like somebody got their ominous drums for Christmas. It's a good introduction for what I'm going to cleverly call the Hell portion of this wad. Combat isn't as grandiose as in the last one, but still around just as challenging. Ammo distribution is tight enough you'll have to make most of your shots count while health and armor can be scarce at times. Still has that dreaded problem concerning an excess of backtracking, though. Oh, and what might be one of the easiest softlocks I've ever seen unless I'm just a massive idiot. Don't go through the yellow key door until you've already lowered the red key pillar. MAP15: Heat I thought it was pretty good, but I don't have a whole lot to say about it. There's lava, weapons laying around, monsters to fight... can't forget about the secret exit either. Pretty well hidden if I say so myself. bio13-15.zip

If somebody could let me know how you embed videos here, that would be great. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSib3cYTTD8

MAP10: Dark Woods By the time you get to Map 10, I feel like it should be standard practice to give you a shotgun within the first five seconds of the level. They don't do that here, so you'll just have to salvage it out off a dead shotgunner guerrilla style instead. Detailing is minimal in this map and the texture work is very bland. It's basically pick one texture for the floor, one texture for the walls, slap them across every surface you can and change it up every few areas. The brown valley at the beginning is like one of those optical illusions. Where does the ground end and the walls begin? At least it's not a chore to get through. MAP11: Frozen Terror The ice level, number 7 in the standard video game level set but one rarely explored in Doom. A little bit of platforming here if you want to call it that. The setting seemed like the perfect time to open up the maps a little bit, but even the outdoor areas are still close quarters engagements. Remember the Bruiser Brothers from E1M8? Turns out they spent the last 5 or so years hiding out and training in these mountains after getting there assed kicked by the Doom Guy. Did it do them any favors? Probably not. Having the Plasma gun and Super Shotgun at your disposal this time certainly doesn't help them any. MAP12: Military Center Already another one of those hub maps, this time with a bit of backtracking and keys that appear in the starting area after you do... things. Can't say I understand the science behind that one. I was hoping the wad would start to step it up at this point, but they're still taking it easy on us. Health isn't exactly in short supply and ammo of all kinds is plentiful. I had so much plasma I was just using it for fun half of the time. Now that's a luxury you're rarely afforded. bio10-12.zip

MAP07: Apparatus Not quite Dead Simple, but close-ish. Ugly as a PT Cruiser and gameplay's a bit awkward. Whether it's trying to find the blurry pixels of a spectre in a dungeon, running across an open field to BFG a spider mastermind to death or trying to shoot one of six pain elementals hiding behind their mass of last souls. It's got a style of its own though so I can respect that. MAP08: Biolabs A very old school map. You know, hallways, rooms to the sides, backtracking to open key doors... Took me a minute to realize there was even a music track playing, but it does add a nice atmosphere. I had to assume the third secret was one of those classic teleport secrets that don't register properly, but I might just be making an ass of myself. MAP09: Security Think they went a bit overboard with the 11 secrets in a map than can be beaten in 6 minutes? It's not really the number of secrets that's the problem, but the fact they throw the level balance completely out of line. Two megaspheres, two soulspheres, two BFG's... an invulnerability sphere? Honestly, just why? Nothing here calls for so many powerful items to be handed out. The maps already easy enough without them, but throwing them all in just makes it piss easy. Pretty good map otherwise. Good variety in the gameplay and flows well enough. I'm also about 90% sure I saw that grey baby texture on a death metal album cover somewhere. bio7-9.zip

MAP04: The Arrival Doom (Quake?) Guy seemed to have found himself some sort of flying contraption in between levels. I do have to question the safety of it being open cockpit though. The first level that felt closer to being an actual place rather than a bunch of random geometry thrown together. There's some sort of lab here where they seem to be doing exams on shotgunners if the custom textures are anything to go off of. Not too difficult as long as you put a wall between you and the hitscanners whenever necessary. MAP05: Skybase Might as well call it Pong, because this one has you bouncing back and forth between both sides of the level constantly. Not helped by the fact that most of the elevators in this map felt longer than they needed to be. I'm no Doom architect, though. Maybe there's a good reason they're the way that they are. They give you a rocket launcher and a few bigger monsters like Barons and revenants, but they don't add much to the experience. Not bad, but not something worth going back to anytime soon. MAP06: Last Call Sense of scale might be a little off for my personal tastes. The hallways in this map are so tight you can barely move left to right in them, and that starts to become a problem when 90% of the map is comprised of hallways. You do get a plasma gun. though, so that's nice. Skipped a fair portion of the level first time through when I dumbassed my way out of a raising bar trap before I was supposed to. Couldn't find the soulsphere secret on my own, either, so thanks to Pseudonaut for showing me the way on that one. bio4-6.zip

The year is 1999. In some ways the world is completely different and in others it's remarkably similar. As far as I'm concerned, it was so long ago it might as well have been a different life. The only thing I can remember about the year is my brothers parrot destroying out brand new copy of Twisted Metal 4. Don't worry, we got another one. Another copy of Twisted Metal 4, that is. Not another parrot. MAP01: The End You'll have to get a lot of mileage out of your pistol on this one. You'll also have to do some secret hunting if you want to get your hands on a shotgun. Other than that, not much too say. It's basically three rooms and two hallways. Trying my best not to overanalyze the fact this is from 1999 and just enjoy it for what it is instead. MAP02: Terror Core Already one of those maps where you have to travel down three separate branching paths to collect all three keys to open the exit. I typically enjoy maps like this. Gives a bit of replay value and opens up some more strategy on how you handle the level. Although this map's so short there's not much strategy to be had. The rooms are cramped enough where's there's a bit of danger at least. Especially when they drop two chaingunners on you with no cover to be had. Hope you didn't miss that secret at the beginning! Nice of them to put a secret down there and not a lava pit instead. MAP03: Onslaught You have a shotgun, a chaingun, a linear path, and a number of demons to slaughter. It doesn't get much simpler than this. All secrets can also easily be found along the way. One of the new sounds in this mod sounds like a demon biting you in the back and it's already freaked me out about five times by this point. bio1-3.zip

Could be this one. It's from 2007 (Holy cow!), He has a rather strong accent (Canadian?), and he shows off the nightmare portal secret. No "Sexy Demoness" from what I watched, however. Below that is ErikTehDestroyer's "New" channel where most of his old let's plays were rerecorded if you want to check it out for yourself. Fairly certain it's not going to be him, though. I can't recall him playing Portal of Praevus and he sounds American to me. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3qvat

MAP04: Legacy of Blood A large crate maze makes up a fair portion of this map. I'm assuming most of the 22 secrets are found in there as well, but it's a lot of wandering around and blindly mashing your face against walls. It's a bit too Wolfenstein 3D for my liking. The rest of the map has some pretty interesting ideas though. I liked the bloodfalls that forced you to get in close so you could see the enemies to effectively fight them. And it looked like there were optional areas you could open with the white key presumably found in a secret somewhere, though I can't say for sure. Just in case you haven't had enough of mazes yet, there's another one towards the end of the map. Though this one is far less visually appealing and dynamic than the last one. This might be as low as it gets in my humble opinion. At least I found a secret computer map in my aimless wondering earlier that helped out a bit. I noticed a few switches at the end of the map that lowered pillars in the starting area. Instead of backtracking through this sphinx of a map, I decided to just idclip there instead and see what they had to offer. Mostly just a few armor and health bonused behind teleporters. Nothing really worth your time. MAP05: Blood and Chaos After a short warm up, you're dropped into a large arena that serves as the core of the map, then it's off through several teleporters that take you through the rest of the map. This one mostly seems to have a focus on bringing the action first, and it does a satisfactory job of that. My only problem is it felt like they might have gone to the arena well one too many times with that archvile trap at the end, mostly because it felt like a chore having to go through all those teleporters once again. It's basically just holding forward down for 20 or so seconds while nothing interesting happens. MAP06: The Abyss A classic bit of map design right here. Give the player the option between several useful items and block the rest of them off. I went with the white key as it seemed the most intriguing. I can't say for sure how useful it was compared to the rest, but it did allow me to skip a rather tedious crusher trap for the red keycard, so I'd say it was a good choice. There's a good bit to digest with this map. Most of it good, but it's also a bit like a rollercoaster. Exciting while I was riding it, but I couldn't give you a vivid description of every twist and drop after it was over. The music for this map was nice and melodic. A bit dramatic without trying too hard to be epic. it really added to the fact this map was a dramatic step up in scale for the wad.

I'll be taking it easy this month, playing through continuously on Ultra-Violence. I probably won't be busting my ass trying to 100% saveless on too many maps either. MAP01: Rooms and Shadow The first map has that void type of design to it which I really like. Fragments of landscape and buildings floating in the void gives it that abstract kind of feeling. But this map is so incredibly 'Map 01' and doesn't try to be anything else, if you know what I mean. That's not automatically a bad thing, but it's just so underwhelming and it's not a great first impression when your opening map feels like filler. MAP02: The Loudest Silence These maps have a bit of that uncanny, dream like quality to them so far. The outside of the map looks pretty good with some fairly sophisticated geometry, though the inside looks like something right out of 1995. Combat here is also really unremarkable without a single encounter of any real significance. It looked like there was going to be a trap behind the bottom red key door, but it only turned out to be nothing more than a bit of spooky writing on the floor. Speaking of red keys, there's a switch outside you can backtrack to for a few armor and health bonuses, though I'm not sure how many players are going to bother remembering or if it's really worth it. MAP03: Dark Lantern I'm not a mapper, so I can't tell you how many fancy boom tricks are on display here, but there sure are a lot of silent teleporters. The map can get pretty repetitive and easy to get lost in after a while. It's mostly open caves filled with enemies and connected by these strange pitch black hallways. The silent teleporters mean the automap won't be of too much use here. My typical strategy I employ whenever I get lost of going to the right until I find something new wasn't working too well either. Once again, silent teleporters. Having only the chaingun and shotgun to deal with all these enemies didn't exactly help to make things any more interesting. Gameplay here isn't too demanding, but you can't afford to get careless. There's plenty of ammo around, though health is a bit scarce, so each point you lose early on could come back to haunt you by the end.

MAP16: Afueras Don't have a whole lot to say about this one. I liked the cliffside area with the yellow key, but you'll definitely want the rocket launcher before going down there. It's in a secret but not too hard to find. And to deal with the ambush in the rocket launcher room, you'll probably want the plasma rifle that's found in another easy to find secret in the opposite corner. Isn't it funny how that works out? Don't let the horde of Cacodemons at the end distract you from the 2 archviles that spawn on the other end of the map. I have to give the demons some credit, that's some good strategy right there. D2ISO16.zip

MAP14: Los antros más íntimos This is probably the most non-linear map you're going to see in a while. Really, it's just too damn confusing for a small mind such as my own. Would probably make for a great deathmatch map if you could find enough players to fill it up, though. There's weapons just lying around all over the place, and if you ever run out of ammo, running away and coming back another day is usually a viable option. Once you get past the first few minutes your main obstacle in this map is likely going to be getting lost more so than the monsters. MAP15: Zona de la industria If I had to say something to put this map in a positive light, I would say it certainly seems rather ambitious and there's a number of unique design choices along the way, though some of them are the kinds of choices that makes you wonder if the mapper knew what the hell they were doing. Fighting off a horde of pain elements rising out of a lava pit with a BFG in close quarters isn't exactly my definition of fun, but at least it was an experience I can't say I've often experienced before, if ever. But making max damage hurt floors an integral part of the maps design and not giving out a single rad suit is just bad design. The fight with the cyberdemon is where I decided the bullshit line was crossed. How exactly are we expected to deal with the cyberdemon and the copious amounts of splash damage inevitably bouncing off the wall behind us? I'll tell you one thing. That blur sphere sure as hell isn't going to help any. The secret exit seems quite absurd as well. It seems you have to take at least 40 hurt floor damage to shoot the switch within a secret within a secret within a secret. I might come back and try another 100% demo later in the month if I figure something out, but I'm not exactly holding my breath for it. D2ISO14.zip D2ISO15.zip