Creaphis
I will deliberately take a contrary position just for the sake of writing incredibly long arguments
Posts: 1059
Registered: 10-05 |
I loved it.
I can understand why some people will dislike a map like this. It's sparse on ammo, its monster placement makes it difficult and slow-paced, it puts a lot of effort into creating atmosphere and telling a story, and you have to stay mentally focused if you don't want to get completely lost. Essentially, it's the complete opposite of Doom. That makes the Doom community a strange place to release a project like this, but at least there's a few people here (like me) who appreciate it. Thanks for keeping at it, Torm!
Personally, I enjoyed every aspect that I mentioned in the above paragraph. Yes, it's low on ammo, but I've always been a big fan of melee combat in Doom wads, and I had a lot of fun throwing that pitchfork. Besides, the fork quickly became unnecessary - as long as you don't waste your ammo. (I played on skill 4, by the way.) I liked how this map made me fear for my safety; it had me peering carefully around every corner instead of barging into battle. The difficult hitscan monsters are an excellent part of this map. I wouldn't say that this pistol is underpowered, but that the standard hitscan monsters in Doom are underpowered - this wad gave me the first well-matched gun fights I've had in a Doom level. I enjoyed the letters scattered throughout the game; they're well-written, enhance the story, and they're definitely not too long to read. I found the atmosphere to be powerful and genuinely scary, and I never feel that way when playing standard Doom wads. (Ghoul wads don't even startle me anymore.) I paid attention to the letters and other hints throughout the level, and I never got stuck (except that I somehow missed a door in plain sight in the hospital).
I'm not a Torm fan-boy. To attribute my compliments to a reason like that is absurd; if I enjoy a level it's never because of who it was made by. It would be equally fair if I accused everyone who didn't like the wad of being Torm-haters.
For the sake of balance and critique, I'll tell the two complaints I had:
1. The siren should be triggered a finite number of times at certain scripted moments, instead of going off on a timer. It has a tendency of going off at the most inconvenient times, and it's especially annoying if you get killed by a nightmare while you're already in the moon cellar and the door is closing. As someone else already mentioned, the timer makes it an annoyance instead of a fright - like running to the toilet every five minutes with a bad case of diarrhea.
2. I got to the hint-tiles in the NW corner of the map before I got into the church, and I also got to the bookcase in the knife key house before I was able to take a particular book there. In both cases I felt frustrated, because it seemed like there was something important there but I couldn't get anything to happen. Some hint along the lines of "maybe this will be important later" would have been reassuring.
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11-12-07 17:22 
