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Astican - Chris Wright
Limit Removing - Solo Play - 115170 bytes
Reviewed by: Mr. Freeze
Astican is a recent map by the controversial CJWright. I have not played any of his other maps, so there is nothing to compare this to.
Upon downloading the .zip, I always take a look at the attached .txt file to prepare myself for the WAD. The very first thing I saw upon bringing the .txt file up was this gem:
"1. There are no secrets
2. This is a linear level
3. Yes, I am comfortable with this"
Oh JOY.
Right off the bat, something is very wrong. The very first room contains a Baron, two Cacodemons, shotgun guys, Chaingunners, and several Imps. On a pistol start. Any difficulty above ITYTD resulted in sandpaper-covered-dildo-buttfucking aggravation, and I wasn't even out of the first room! I've beaten both Hell Revealeds on UV, but starting the player off like this just screams idiocy.
The rest of the level is a jumbled mess. The rooms range from rock/stone to techbase in the span of one room, the entire level is crammed full of powerful monsters without much health, and the whole WAD feels like a beta. The first room has a door that does not open and has no tag. A staircase near the end switches textures from STEP1 to BRICK12 without any hint of transition. Techbase and wood themes both used at once, resulting in laughably clashing sights. This entire WAD reeks not only of laziness, but of ineptitude.
I have no idea what CJ was trying to get across with this WAD, but it backfired badly. The best advice I can give him is to shut up, man up, and try harder.
Much the same way people think CJWright shouldn't be posting on the forums, you shouldn't be reviewing wads.
How many well reviewed wads are there that have really hard beginnings? There was one awhile back that was ridiculously hard, but everyone liked it (incomparable to this in difficulty, as in this is a cakewalk). The beginning of this wad isn't even that hard, it just requires different tactics.. which is, omg, refreshing: ie, get the hell out of the first room, and rely on infighting. How can you not appreciate the arrangement of the first two rooms? Doesn't mean you sit back and watch the infighting, but you let the infighting take some of the heat off you. It's actually very intelligent game design and Cjwright's designs are very original and refreshing, appropriately detailed (generally not beautiful) with gameplay at the forefront (the way it should be) as compared to really polished MONOTONOUS themed maps with mostly repetitive gameplay... Then again, Citizen Kane is the greatest movie of all time, so what do I know....
This wad at least has interesting and creative, original rooms/areas and gameplay implementations that have you 'playing outside the box'. And the "clashing" of themes is refreshing. Breaks up the monotony nicely and contrasts the dark, interesting design of the wood areas with the tech areas. Yeah, it's not polished, but not polished does not a bad wad make. The non-linearity is done well enough.
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03-14-10 14:54 
