The DWmegawad Club plays: Doom 2 Reloaded

Sorry for the lateness of my posts for the Club this month; my PC's power supply blew up last Tuesday and I only got it fixed two days ago. So I'm catching up asap!

http://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/c/6633959 = part 2a.
http://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/c/6633968 = part 2b. (UV, pistol starts)

Visually this megawad continues to impress. Gameplay-wise, it continues to be hit and miss for me.

I didn't really bother with map 32, although the idea was amusing.
Map 18 was surprisingly alright with the "stealth", considering I was expecting it to be poorly executed. A nice idea.

Here's hoping the "Hell" part of Doom 2 Reloaded perhaps throws up some interesting gameplay encounters, because average remains the word for me on this megawad.....

Level 25

Another "non linear but actually linear" level. If the player doesn't go upstairs and tries to fight the baddies down below, they get taunted by a dead marine surrounded by shells with no shotgun. Once you go upstairs, you can in practically complete the level in a clockwise motion. I returned to the revenant/soulsphere trap at the bottom left of the level at the end of the video since I wanted to fight them with a BFG. Otherwise it would have been a pain.

Edit: Oh yeah my favorite bit was exploiting the torch shield in the beginning of the level with the cybie.

Oh and this was beyond stupid. The lion head texture here is NOT a switch. So you're trapped in this hole with the lava if you don't see the skull switch on the right here.

http://imgur.com/UqEjoI2

The archvile behind a "switch" trap was interesting too I suppose. Easy to kill when you know the secret.

22

A sedate level with no real twists or turns but has a decide layout and good atmosphere. There were no boring parts but nothing to get excited about either. Slightly above the curve in this megawad but not a highlight. The little boat at the end was a nice touch.

23

Some sort of mausoleum with more green marble but less lava than styx as you might well imagine. There's a dark corridor that springs a demon ambush that could get hairy if you lose control of it but otherwise the combat remains unchallenging.

24

This is like an archive of bad ideas. I'm intrigued to see the speed record though.

25

A big marble castle that feels like a city map because of it's vericallity, snipers and sandbox progression. Three keys are needed in any order and the whole of the map is left open apart from the locked room which contains the switch to the exit. I resorted to filthy cheating on this level as I saved at 1% thinking I was tough due to the placid previous levels but then ran into a medikit drought and progression ground to a halt. Other than going on too long this is quite a good level.

Level 26

WHY!?

This level is awful for pistol start, worse than map23. The player has to pry a weapon from a zombie and do so in the right order. If they b-line to the blue key, they will not only have no weapon to work with, but even if they had weapons there would be no ammo to work with! Also, near the end of the video I booted up GZDB to figure out how to actually get that last secret. I accidentally opened up the door during my practice run not knowing that you have to shoot above a darkened wall. Seriously, how is the player supposed to catch this? Again, if the player doesn't go mostly clockwise, they're probably going to have a bad time.

Is it really that hard to place a shotgun in the beginning of the map? Is it really that hard to give adequate weapons and/or ammo for all encounters in a non linear level?



Level 27

Oh poopie, I recorded using my twitch settings. Sorry for the lower quality.

This level is actually the most standard level this megawad offers. You'll get visible shotgun, ssg, and plasma rifle placements in places that are needed, unlike many previous levels. I wonder which level in order this one was actually made, because it's probably the most playable map of the bunch!

I got a little sloppy at the end. Oh well.

26

A welcome change up in texture selection. Green marble finally gives way for blood and brown hell base theme, which works pretty well. Like the previous level this also requires you to find all 3 keys in any order - a good design choice to give a map nonlinearity but it does feel a little like fetch if the same trick is repeated too often so let's hope the next one brings a fresh idea for progression. There were some fun moments in this one and I appreciated the tighter layout used here than in 25.

27

Loved this one. I was expecting a concept map, maybe because of the unusual name, but it's actually just a really solid interconnected layout with area meeting each other at various angles and heights, more non linear key hunting but this time I think it's in order to raise step stones to the last area which is less on the nose than three locked gates in a row. I think I was supposed to telefrag the cyb but he was easy enough to kill anyway. Best level in a while this one.

28

This one doesn't seem to want to end! After a normal sized level where the object seems to be to storm a heavily guarded fortress we're suddenly dropped into the Living End. While the tribute seems tacked on in order to elongate it's at least not a slog.

Almost done now. I'll hopefully finish off tomorrow and get started on Valiant.

purist said:

26
I think I was supposed to telefrag the cyb but he was easy enough to kill anyway. Best level in a while this one.

Agreed about the level quality. The cybie didn't want to step on top of the teleporter, and there was a plasma rifle with 200 extra cells in the room. I figured the purpose was to kill the cybie with the plasma sitting there.

http://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/c/6643995 = part 3 of my playthrough, covering maps 21-30. (UV, pistol starts)

Episode 3 of this is the best E3 I've seen in a while, being much better gameplay-wise than the previous two episodes.

Too bad the Icon of Sin fight sucked. The two Archviles were the most annoying part.

3 out of 5 this gets from me in total. Good visuals throughout, gameplay hit and miss at times but generally acceptable, some good ideas present. Was above average overall and certainly not another "Vile Flesh" for me.

Level 28

RINOA MY LOVE, THE END IS COMING! HOLD MY HAND AND WE'LL GET THROUGH THIS TOGETHER!!!

I meant to do some silly comment regarding map25's midi but I totally forgot about it. Since we're talking about FF8, this is vaguely relevant.

This one wasn't terrible and actually quite enjoyable. However, your only chance to get the SSG is in the beginning of the level. If you miss it, you'll be like my practice run 15 minutes (game time) into the level realizing you haven't picked one up! It's easy to forget about since the rocket launcher and plasma do a lot of the work here, thankfully.

As I got delayed I wasn't going to post about the last two maps, but given that I'm not the only late finisher here, here goes:

Map29 - “Cocytus”
When first playing this I thought it's The Spirit World writ large, as opposed to the previous map which aped the Living End. This map is big and is epic in a way that trivialises my use of the word on the previous map. In fact it's exhausting, particularly if you have serial accidents with the cybs. As many others mentioned, it's great to finally see an organic layout and a pity Eschdoom didn't try this earlier. There's so much map to explore and so much early opposition to contend with that it's easy to miss important forks in the route and I did end up wandering quite a lot in this. The BFG trap was indeed surprisingly ferocious and I made it harder for myself by investigating and getting caught in the secret just at the worst possible time. Ultimately this is a very vast and impressive hell/cavern level which if I were a better player I would have enjoyed more.

Map30 - “The Final Conflict”
The author deserves some applause for making something more substantive out of the IoS concept although I am a bit surprised that for all the author's previous creativity, the obvious way to win in this one continues to be a raising platform rocket timing trope. There's a not-inconsiderable level of opposition to get through in the cross-area and then the Sin room before you get your chance to fire on the icon itself, though (in common with much of D2R) the areas are simply, but competently decorated with symmetry and good lighting. I appreciated the 'designed in' ways to get past the cybs, this being both the secret invuln and the ledge beneath to trigger infighting, which I exploited. It fits in with the megawad's ethos of difficult situations which are beatable in principle using the direct route, but are significantly eased by secrets and/or subtle gameplay gimmicks.

Final Thoughts
This brings me on to my thoughts on the wad on the whole. D2R has a pretty good hell episode, but the first two episodes are less enjoyable and a bit too similar. I kind of respect the realistic style for a change and I think that in this wad it's mostly executed well, but I generally prefer the more abstract designs of other levels which can be more purely about interesting layouts. I agree that the monster placement does actually show quite a bit of cunning in several places, with the start of map06 being the poster child, but also probably the archie on the tower after the blue door in map 28. In fact D2R as a whole is very much about gimmicky, designed tricks, secets and gameplay methods. It's so deliberate and intentional that the randomness and organic nature that comes with more conventional maps and adds replay value tends to be absent here, at least in the earlier levels. As the wad progressed this issue did start to ameliorate and the author began to reach out of his linear comfort zone. I do think it's more than just experience however as I think the base themed maps tended to lend themselves too easily to the linear, rote gameplay. A case in point here would be Map 13, whose more free-flowing and overlapping design illustrates what might have been if Eschdoom had liberated himself the need to create rational, mundane base layouts.

Highpoints of this wad would be the secrets, the clean appearance & lighting and the hell episode. Particularly the hell episode as this is where all my criticisms evaporate. All in all I think that with this wad's emphasis on secrets and gimmicks and it's concept levels, it is almost worth thinking of the entire megawad as a kind of soft concept wad. You certainly benefit by approaching it in a different fashion to normal. I generally don't care for the explicit concept maps so much in this mapset (Map 18 is an exception) but I do find it interesting to experience them and understand the idea behind them. And the secret hunting in this wad is rewarding. I don't think I've gotten quite so bothered about secret hunting and so conscious of my per level secrets tally before. But then again once you find them that's that. And really this is partly why the mapset seems to attract less interest in replay from the club members here. Once you've learned a concept wads' tricks and know the solution, then it's a one-trick pony and you don't look forwards to seeing the same trick twice. Combine this with many of the earlier maps linear, quite prescriptive gameplay and there seems little reason to return.

Level 29

This level easily could have been the best level of the bunch if it weren't for the cybies. There's too many of them and not much ammo and health to nix them with since you're also focusing on the other 440+ enemies in the map. I almost lost the recording after reaching the exit and deciding to deal with the cybs. Despite going the preferred route (blue key to bfg room, then yellow and red), the player still ends up going through save scrub hell thanks to wrong turns.

Another example of a nice architecture design of a level ruined by lack of testing.

If by "lack of testing" you mean "lack of balance", I think that's more than a bit off-base. There's plenty enough ammo in that map to decisively kill its entire population (cyberdemons included) and then some, no fisting/chainsawing/heavy infight exploitation required, including the hearty amount of arch-vile resurrections likely to result from the sneaky way in which the teleporter hall area is repopulated at one point. Ditto the thing about save-scumming, the thing there is that past a certain point save-scumming tends to become a self-perpetuating phenomenon, particularly in a map founded on the principle of picking one's battles wisely. ;)

I can certainly see a reasonable argument being made that it's enough of a shift in the style and challenge of the action that it doesn't seem like it quite belongs with the rest of the mapset, though. First time I played it I remember being taken aback that something like that appeared in the mapset, although upon reflection its theme of wringing danger out of a scenario where the player is too initially under-equipped to simply handle everything in a straight fight isn't really so uncommon an approach in the mapset, even if the obstacle to doing so is usually expressed in some way other than than sheer monster/HP density, as it is here.

Okay, I might have been wrong about the ammo (I had 320 cells and I think I handled the cybie situation at the end a bit wrong. I think I was frustrated if anything), but the health still stands.

And yeah, it was a change it terms of the pacing. I did actually like it, but the cybies thing was still obnoxious since it sort of coursed you into doing a specific route.

edit: Don't get my wrong. This is definitely one of the stronger maps.

I finished this up yesterday

29

The rocky cavern theme and battle of attrition idea are both fine but the level is too long and windy and progression is too obscure. I found all the keys before finding the customary E3 tri-colour skull bars so the level stayed a little past it's welcome. I can imagine the cybs are a chore to deal with when pistol starting.

30

An IOS map that does not try too hard to reinvent the wheel. Just a cinematic bolted onto the start, that can be quite simply ran through, a minor additional layer of complexity in building the plinth used to rocket the boss brain and some additional boss monsters that are not overly difficult to either deal with or ignore. A quite tasteful but not certainly not innovative reboot of the original MAP30.

Doom 2: Reloaded

This WAD reimagines Doom 2 as a bigger and more realistic game. It's clear that a lot of care has been put into this and it succeeds in it's base aims- however, this is at times at the expense of the gameplay, which is a little lacklustre, particularly in the first episode. Layout-wise the levels improve in E2 and E3 and the worst you have to put up with is the mundane.

There is nothing here (MAP24 a possible exception) that is offensively bad and there a few cool surprises.

MAP30: So did anyone figure out how to get to the spider mastermind platform that allows the player to get to the secret "exit"? I've tried SR50 and AV jumping to no avail.

The SMM platform is reachable from the Cyberdemon platform by running over the pillars. That said, I have no idea how exactly is the secret exit accessed.

scifista42 said:

The SMM platform is reachable from the Cyberdemon platform by running over the pillars. That said, I have no idea how exactly is the secret exit accessed.

I can't seem to get enough momentum (at least in Zdoom) to accomplish that. Each jump is 144 units!

Edit: I managed to get an SR50 going. How to do it with the monsters about is another story!

Accourding to doom builder, the player gets to the SMM platform somehow. They then hit a switch, then a teleporter, in which they run over a bunch of platforms to get to another switch. The player uses the platform they raised to run into a hole which leads to a teleport that has a switch to crush the romero head.

Edit: Uploading video now. Pain in the ass but I got it.

!!

9:21 is when the epic SR50 happens. It takes a while to feel comfortable doing it since you're most likely going to be doing a mad dash tanking mastermind damage.

What irks me about these threads is that almost no-one bothers to check DSDA demos (thanks Pirx for being the one of the few who do it) and then something is "impossible", "not tested properly", etc. Eschdoom's own NM Speed demo shows the secret way.

I didn't say it was impossible. I merely said I couldn't figure it out. :P Yesterday I did learn you can in fact SR50 over 144 unit gaps.

BlackFish said:

MAP30: So did anyone figure out how to get to the spider mastermind platform that allows the player to get to the secret "exit"? I've tried SR50 and AV jumping to no avail.

You can strafe across, though it is very hard to achieve, my biggest grievance is that you can easily be blocked by monsters below. I managed it with my terrible keyboard skills :P

SR40 is required I think, not too taxing but as I said above infinitely tall monsters and general pressure makes this very tough to do.

BlackFish said:

Yesterday I did learn you can in fact SR50 over 144 unit gaps.

Up to 192 unit gaps, actually.

vdgg said:

What irks me about these threads is that almost no-one bothers to check DSDA demos (thanks Pirx for being the one of the few who do it) and then something is "impossible", "not tested properly", etc. Eschdoom's own NM Speed demo shows the secret way.

Demo-challenged people have no choice: they either discover America and invent the bicycle on their own or declare them non-existent and impossible. Stop spamming them with that demo nonsense and leave them be — God forbid they learn something new through that subversive site.

Most people in these playthrough threads like to write blog-style posts about their own experiences, feelings and opinions. Less so we like caring about additional stuff than what is needed to have this kind of fun. The only directive of DWMC is to play through the megawad and share personal thoughts, which naturally leads people to the blog-style approach and not the scientifically correct / educational one. I don't think it's something to take even a mild offense about. People do what they feel like doing.

Ignorance is not an offensive quality in itself. It's only when it's taken up as a lifestyle that things get ugly.

I donno why demos aren't popular on Doomworld. I think in most gaming communities competitive playing is respected a lot. Maybe "Doom Speed Demos" shouldn't be in "Special Interest", which means something nerdy.

@Memfis: Well, speedrunning is a special interest in the sense that it's obviously not for everybody. Speedrunning reminds me of racing games, which I've personally never liked very much. I don't see satisfaction in breaking a speed record after a lot of repetitive exhausting effort. Instead, I see satisfaction in training my reflexes during a casual action game. Demo recording doesn't improve this experience, that's why I'm little interested in it. I record FDAs as a form of feedback to mappers, but I prefer to play without recording.

Scifista42 is right about the blogging thing. DWMC is about casually playing a megawad and describing their experience.

There were times were I wanted to watch some kind of demo regarding a level, but I opted to find YT videos instead. One day, I'll attempt to actually figure out how to run demos if I really feel the need to. Running Boom based ports on my computer have been somewhat of a pain lately since the midi driver goes a little bonkers, while ZDoom doesn't.

tl;dr : If demos were a bit more accessible such as a YT video, I'd probably be more likely to watch it. Right now, I'd have to figure out how complevel works etc. A bit lazy I know, sorry.

1. Install PrBoom-plus
2. Associate .lmp file suffix with PrBoom-plus
3. Put a .lmp demo into the same folder as the wad it was recorded on
4. Double click the .lmp demo and watch

To view another demo, only repeat steps 3 and 4. You will no longer need to do anything more than steps 3 and 4.

Thanks! Didn't know it was as easy as file association (and the bit about putting things in the same directory).

scifista42 said:

2. Associate .lmp file suffix with PrBoom-plus

The easiest way to do it is with the built-in launcher. You need to choose the -auto option.

scifista42 said:

3. Put a .lmp demo into the same folder as the wad it was recorded on

Messy and not necessary. The WAD should be in $DOOMWADDIR, the LMP can stay in its ZIP.

scifista42 said:

4. Double click the .lmp demo and watch

Will not work if the demo has no demo footer and its filename is not covered by the patterns in the .cfg. You can add new patterns to the list, although that requires a basic understanding of RegEx.

scifista42 said:

To view another demo, only repeat steps 3 and 4. You will no longer need to do anything more than steps 3 and 4.

Provided the demo has a demo footer or its filename is covered by the patterns.

Memfis said:

I donno why demos aren't popular on Doomworld. I think in most gaming communities competitive playing is respected a lot. Maybe "Doom Speed Demos" shouldn't be in "Special Interest", which means something nerdy.

I bet it's precisely the "speed" and "competitive" parts that always made the demo scene a niche.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgS1ZoidySwO1l0Bj6v4t0LTL3LpeOmeU

Here's my playthrough of Doom 2 Reloaded. Am I late to post this?