Hellbent
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Posts: 3772
Registered: 06-00 |
I thought Kirby's review of Palace of Skorn was fair except for the ultimate conclusion he arrives at about the wad: avoid. This wad has too much going for it not to temper such bold advice without at least some warning to the player of all the good stuff they will be missing out on, and all that works about the map.
1. I thought the layout was very solid. Navigating the map was relatively easy with some nice little challenges that weren't irritatingly obscure. It has nice atmospheric areas and a strong sense of place and the heretic textures are implemented seamlessly. I like how the map somehow manages to evoke the feeling of levels from the late episodes of Wolfesntein 3D (and I'm talking about the first half of the map before meeting Uzi dudes and to some extent the revenant area). I thought the atmosphere and texturing overall were nice, certainly better than 'to be avoided'.
2. The overall gameplay balance is fine. Nothing at all wrong with it. It took a little to get used to, but this is the nature of anything new one is exposed to, but the new imps work fine. At first I thought it was a little tedious to pot shot groups of imps on ledges, and more so the two hell knights, but the need for a little strategy brought about by tougher imps to secure the main lower courtyard was fun. The uzi guys really are not that much of a problem. As pointed out they are a little bit like the white garbed officers or mutants from Wolfenstein 3D in that it's important to beat them to the shot. They are less frustrating than either of these enemies since they are so easy to fell. I found the uzi and shotgun to be the most effective against them. Overall the ammo balance was very good.
3. The new sounds for the imps are fitting and not jarring and the music, for my tastes, was welcomed (which is not usually the case with me and custom music). It very fitting and added to the feeling of throwback to Wolf3D and the level's 8-bit charm.
Suggestions/criticisms:
1. Some of the stairs in the first half of the map are a bit awkward.
2. The pillar at the end of the level was way to strong to be hit repeatedly by rockets. It was a little bit bland to just shoot through the pillar at the cyberdemon, but moreover, the pillar didn't look like it could withstand repeated punishment like that from the cyb's rockets.
3. It would have been cool if the author had made blood pools from squished monsters slimy green so that when all the imps got squished on the rising door-lift there wasn't all these pools of bright red blood which doesn't make sense.
Overall I liked the NES-Zelda era atmospherics and overall 8-bit feel the map had. It would have been nice if some of the above nitpicks had been addressed to help the overall product to feel slightly less hackneyed.
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02-09-12 17:33 
