Phml
Senior Member
Posts: 1823
Registered: 06-09 |
KDiZD had no gameplay to speak of, and I say this as someone who voted 5/5 for it (the ambiance was spectacular and worth it in my opinion) and missed the hype about it. I'd bet not a single author out of all of those who contributed to this project could come out with a detailed explanation of his map, explaining how each encounter works, how the layout flows, and so on, though I sure wish one of them would prove me wrong so I could finally understand what the hell were they thinking.
I can only imagine what went on during team discussions if they *did* care about gameplay :
"Hey guys, I've got a cool idea. Let's make E1 maps, except bigger, with tons of detail, lots of custom monsters, and the SSG !
- So, techbases for Doom 2 ?
- Nooo, 'cause it's totally like E1, see ? There's that room near the green armor that looks like the one in E1M1, and we're going to put a neat intro and all.
- Okay, so what about the gameplay ? What about the custom monsters you mentioned ?
- I've got this covered ! First, you know how the demon can be such an interesting monster and all ? Well, let's color an imp gray and give it roughly the same stats except movement, and call it stone imp !
- Wouldn't that end up with a monster that lack one of the greatest things about demons, that is, restricting player movement thanks to its own speed ?
- Are you kidding me ? It's an imp ! In gray ! A stone imp ! It's awesome ! But anyway listen me out, now I've got this guy, it's like a hell knight, sort of, except with a lion head and a shield, and he can totally block your attacks.
- So is there like a pattern to its blocking ? Can you shoot through somehow ?
- No, it's completely random, and you can't do anything even with rockets ! That makes it more fun, right ? Because it's challenging or something. That's what all the kids love with their stupid HR - ha ! that shit has no gameplay, it's just monsters randomly thrown around ! Now hear me out, we'll also put a new imp in it that'll be really cool. He'll shoot homing fireballs kind of like the revenant except it'll track the player better.
- How much better are we talking about ?
- It'll be so good at it you'll pretty much have to backtrack and hug a wall to avoid it ! Now isn't that cool or what. So much interesting tactical options : see a freakish imp, hide behind a wall. See a stone imp, shoot it until it dies. See a lion hell knight, waste your ammo or wait for it to lower its shield.
- ... Alright.
- There won't be just custom monsters ! I've got this awesome idea for a new kind of item. It'll be a bomb you pick up on the ground and then place to explode in a very specific spot so you can get through it.
- Kind of like a key.
- No 'cause it's a bomb and not a key, and there's scripting, so that makes it all different ! Anyway, there's nothing wrong with keys, in fact I think we should use more keys so there'll be an indigo key, a green key, a cyan key and a mauve key !
- Aren't you afraid we might confuse the player with so many keys ?
- I tell you, players love keys ! Another thing they love is pressing switches that do stuff like open a door in the other side of the map ; you know, like in Eternal Doom.
- I suppose Eternal Doom is popular.
- So we'll put plenty of switches and locked doors and... We need something better than a door. Oh ! I know : instakill forcefields. You can shoot through while monsters can't come out so that's super cool and then we can put a switch at the other side of the map to disable the forcefields.
- Behind a locked door, with the corresponding key that is on the other... Other side.
- You get my drift !
- Ok, that is quite a list of new features so far. Any ideas to wrap it up ?
- Why, of course. Let's add Quake stuff everywhere ! Underwater areas, bouncing grenades, sequences of switches and even our own very Chthon !
- Quake is cool. What about balancing ? Got any names for playtesting ?
- Who needs playtesters ? I've got this cool script (remember, scripting is good) that tells you how much ammo you need based on the number of monsters in the map, it'll work just fine ! As for health, we can just drop medipacks where it makes sense thematically, I'm sure it'll work out just fine.
- Hmm, alright. I think we have everything we need to make a super awesome project."
There might be factual inaccuracies in this little satire ; there might have been less factual inaccuracies if this mapset was actually worth playing more than once...
Seriously though, looking at the finished product, to believe the KDiZD team considered gameplay would be insulting their intelligence, especially in light of the remarkable work they did with ambiance. It seems pretty obvious this is your standard ZDoom "good looks and new features over gameplay" project, only on a greater scale and overall better quality, and taken as such it is an enjoyable mapset. It's very polished and many of its aspects are reminescent of many commercial shooters - good and bad ; that includes the poor gameplay. Claiming it has actual gameplay value is, frankly, ludicrous, or maybe misguided, making an unjustified logical leap from "I enjoyed this" to "this must mean it has good gameplay".
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02-07-10 08:49 
