The DWmegawad Club plays: Scythe 2

Map29 - “Dust to Dust”

This is ridiculous from pistol start. The lack of any weaponry beyond a shotgun and chaingun means either tedious dying and saving over and over til you get a lucky break, or fathoming ways to just avoid fighting stuff, but with all the damaging floor around just playing the map will eventually kill you. After a lengthy grind to finally get the SSG I found I still didn't have the ammo or the patience to deal with everything, so I ended up running to the exit leaving as many monsters behind as I could squeeze past. The design itself is quite interesting, its just a shame the map doesn't seem to want you to play it.

MAP30 Haunting Dreams:

I was actually pleasantly surprised with this one. This map is the most fun I had with Scythe 2. It throws you at the face of danger right off the bat; 8 Cybers, 8 Barons, 8 or so Arch-viles and probably 400 Imps. This was crazy but doable and hell of a lot of fun! This map is the comparable fun slaughter map to map26 of Scythe 1: Fear. You are given more than enough ammo to take care of everything in the map and I love the theme of going back to earlier episodes of the wad and fight a shit load of enemies from each one. This map also has 3 Invulnerability spheres which really is great for taking down my only complaints of this map; The damn Afrits. Other than that this map is easily the best map in the wad and it makes me look forward to playing Scythe 2 again. It's how Scythe 1 should of ended and not that Fire and Ice crap.

Overall Scythe 2 was surprisingly good. I love the challenge it presents on every map. There are a few levels I hate but the overall quality is simply fantastic. The music choice in the levels were also great. The difficulty sure did spike in the last 10 maps but with trial and error they aren't that bad. I had fun I give it a 4.5/5 awesomeness!

Episode Rankings Best to worst:

6
4
1
2
5
3

Top 5 best maps:

MAP30
MAP17
MAP20
MAP23
MAP28

Top 5 Worst maps:

MAP31
MAP14
MAP15
MAP25
MAP08

MAP30 Haunting Dreams

the final FINAL finale of Scythe II is something I have not very much memory of. but I tried it. the cybersnipers and afrit snipers proved to be the most annoying thing in the hub area. revisiting former areas in MAP05, MAP08, MAP12, MAP18, and I think MAP24 seemed cool, it was the enemies that reappear in the hub area that provided most of the trouble, although when the snipers are gone, things are always easier. I mostly had problems with the revenant wave, the archie's resurrecting other monsters, as well as those red marines who guard one exit (but they were there already). the starting area has more than enough ammo to compensate for every weapon bar the chaingun. as always, fighting the new monsters proved to be the most of the difficulty. gotta say, there's a lot of epicness here.

MAP30: For as difficult as the rest of the set was, this sure was a pushover. There’s an overload of ammo and health at the start to ensure you always have a steady footing when you venture out into the baddie beyond, and besides the mass archvile warp-in, nothing else in the map is that stressful. Even when you take some nasty damage you can always run home to patch up that wound, as opposed to MAP29’s relentless attrition or MAP28’s sparse powerups. It’s definitely a bombastic finale, but not quite the closer I was expecting from Alm.

Overall, I don’t know how much I enjoyed Scythe 2. It started off too tame and ended too cruel, the goldilocks zone being somewhere in the middle. Alm is a masterful mapper—undoubtedly—but I find the mappers that he’s inspired to be closer to my style of play, and I actually think they make more engaging and fun stuff. That said, I do have to respect the pioneers, and Alm deserves a standing ovation for this set. To hell with the plasma marine and Afrit though.

Favorites: MAP10, MAP18, MAP29 (of course I had to pick this one)

Least favorites: MAP01, MAP31, MAP23

Overall, Scythe 2 is a set that changes its themes and gives us some fun in the levels. It's a fun set to play for small levels that later become challenging and a bit more tedious. The new monsters are not very well done, the red marines are trolls and the afrits have too much health. MAP31's secret exit has a horrible trigger closing it.

Favorites from each theme: MAP04, MAP08, MAP13, pretty much all of E4 except MAP16, MAP24, and MAP30.

Trying to finish this up...

MAP27: Afterlife II
DNF

Yeah, fuck this map. I really wanted to like it - it looks great (really dig the lighting effects on the outside of the western area), and seems like it would be a fun epic map... but nope. It's just the grindiest of all grindfests, with too little weaponry/ammunition and too much demonmeat. The start provides nothing more than a super shotgun to slowly whittle away huge groups of mancubuses with, which requires lots of ducking around corners, firing one shot, reload, repeat. At 4 shots per mancubus this gets old really fast. I went into the west (rocket launcher) wing first, and after finally getting past the first main fight, had to leave the Afrit alone because there just wasn't enough ammo to deal with him. So try going into the next area, abusing the door trick, but even with that it was still a pain pulling everything out and, again, avoiding another Afrit. That got me to the part with the cyberdemon and the blue armor and nowhere to escape and fuck it, I already sunk too much time into this map and it just isn't fun.

MAP28: Nightmare
82% kills, 1/1 secret

This is much better, thankfully, since it's more of the type of slaughtermap that provides a crap ton of ammo and plenty of room to run around screaming from missiles in. The BFG is the only weapon of choice here, and you'll be spamming that trigger, but it's just about the right length without being too long (though I did run from the last battle). Thankfully the plasma marines actually aren't too big of a deal here (since the BFG + large area to move helps) but the Afrits continue to be a royal pain in the ass due to their monster HP and tendency to fly away, making it difficult to hit them with the full effect of a BFG blast.

Bit funny how we're allowed to walk around on literal lava without problem in the last few maps, but walking on the glowing cracks here is harmful. Also, man, nothing says 2005 like a Nightwish soundtrack...

MAP29: Dust to Dust
80% kills, 0/6 secrets

A good example of how to make a challenging map without just throwing closets of 50 revenants at the player. Weaponry is pretty sparse here with only the regular shotgun and chaingun for the first part of the level, and only later on the SSG (there's a RL and plasma gun too, but not much ammo for either). Health is extremely sparse as well, and I often found myself running around at sub-20 health for the last half of the map. I ended up leaving behind the cyberdemon and Afrit, as well as everything in the final exit room, and probably died about 10 times to the lone plasma marine, but when the challenge is in the form of one or two enemies it feels more like a challenge to out-think or out-maneuver as opposed to just a grind to work through. Maybe someday I'll figure out those secrets...

Also trying to finish on time...

Map 29 -- Dust to Dust - 103% Kills / 100% Secrets
Man, this map is a killing machine. I think I've mentioned at a few other points in the playthrough that 'map x is a popular candidate for hardest in the WAD' (22, 23, 26, 27 being common picks), if you asked me for my opinion, I think this one just might be it, I must've died more times in the first 3 minutes of this level than in the rest of the mapset combined. Mr. X returns again (yeah, we already killed him in Hell, but when you kill him in Hell where do you think he's going to end up? Des Moines?) and murders me over and over because I've no opportunity for either a chivalrous OR an unabashedly exploit-ridden fight with him, the afrit by the first BFG murders me several times because he gets around better than I was giving him credit for--once he flew over the cliffs beyond the yellow skull bars and destroyed me while I was dancing with Mr. X, another time he followed me all the way down into the darkened lava sewer and cornered me in the Baron trap chamber, etc.--and I don't even want to think about how many times I lost my life to a combination of white-hot lava crust and one or more perched, distant chaingunners. And those shotgun guys and cacos at the start! Dastardly, I tell you.

It's brilliant! All of this lavish death and opulent suffering is partially the product of unfamiliarity on my part (generally speaking I don't know the ins and outs of these last three maps nearly as well as I do the 27 preceding levels, which were of course out for several years longer), but that's the rub, really: 'Dust to Dust' is perhaps the most exacting of all of Scythe II's 'killer puzzle' levels, and fittingly enough, once again the heart of the difficulty lies in establishing a foothold in the level. Monster placement, item placement, and geography are in perfect sadistic harmony such that most of the more obvious 'cunning plans' one might concoct on the fly are fated to come crashing down, all of the usual austerity/anti-oppression strategies of continuous evasion and rabble-rousing and trying to laboriously wear down key targets with basic armament snapped in two like the neck of a condemned man at the end of the hangman's noose.

I've not really watched any demos of these last three maps (again, mainly due to their relative age in comparison with the rest), and it's put together cleverly enough that I imagine there's more than one way to successfully go about setting things in motion, but in the end what worked for me was a minutely detailed strategy involving a combination of different austerity and guerrilla techniques--shotgun hitscanners + key snipers in the main area, wake the afrit, wake Mr. X, haul ass back to the start, flail around near the portal until Mr. X and afrit start scuffling. Mr. X is killed as a result, but the afrit is severely weakened in the process, such that I can finish him off with my shotgun and limited ammo (<--which could be taken as being as good an argument as any that the plasma marines really are a bit OP from a balance perspective, I suppose), which nets me the BFG and more importantly the freedom to proceed slowly from that point. I use the BFG on the Baron trap in the lava tunnels, return topside, and am able to beat the arch-vile + reinforcements by repeatedly using the terrain to outflank them, gradually wearing the sorcerer down with buckshot. From that point, the western part of the map opens, and it's there that I started getting ahead of the ammo/supply curve (munitions become more and more common later in the map, and I was really in my 'internecine warfare' groove at that point), and from that point I skated pretty easily to the finish, the only real bump in the road being the claustrophobic red key shrine fight, where I took a few lumps but still came out on top. Not a difficult bit, but I also want to give mention to the drop into the constricted subterranean lava tunnels bit near the last building--I'm sure I've seen a similar setup elsewhere, but it's been a long time, and something about that segment felt really fresh and original to me, not every day you see an arrangement where SSGing a linear sequence of hell knights comes off as soundly fun/cinematic.

The elephant in the room, I guess, is that I did eventually finish with 100% secrets, but over half of these I didn't find until recombing the different areas for them after I'd already essentially cleared each one (which helped me gain more and more momentum/surplus in the later stages, as well). Extra satisfaction here, because I was able to see how knowing these secrets would tip the scales back in the player's favor and greatly expand the selection of viable strategies, particularly in the early areas (SSG well-drop secret in particular is a real game-changer); a sign of well thought-out game flow indeed. Really good map, oddly my only real complaint about it is aesthetic: I feel like it looks somehow blander and shallower than most of the other maps in the last couple of episodes, probably a function of what seems to be a much flatter lighting scheme throughout--a neutral-bright default scheme is not uncommon, of course, particularly in largely outdoor maps such as this one, but it is uncommonly lazy for Alm, who usually emphasizes this kind of thing much more in even his smallest/most structurally simple maps. Ah, well, hardly spoils the experience, all told.

Map 30 -- Haunting Dreams - 139% Kills / 33% Secrets
Again a bit of a surprise for me, in a way. Of the final three maps, this is the one I remembered most clearly, credit for that no doubt due to its central concept, that being the sequential revisiting of notable/memorable areas from each of the previous five episodes, each fielding a more pressing, nightmare-ized version of the encounter originally found in each. Scythe II is a very action-oriented mapset, of course, and gains most of its sense of overall game progression from its difficulty curve and the stark (and wholly baldfaced/unheralded) thematic changes in setting every five maps or so, but it is cool to see this slight nod at narrative continuity here at the very end, satisfying diegetically, and gives that sense of closure you want (or I want, anyway) in a map 30.

It helps that the setpiece battles in the 'haunting dream' areas are generally entertaining, of course, although I did feel that the mastermind/PE fleet in the E3 flashback was a bit of a lame duck (fitting in a way, I guess, since E3 is far and away the weakest episode). Most of these you can steamroll with confidence and aggressive play, and that's what's kind of surprising about the map as a whole, I guess--it's really not particularly hard, at least in comparison to several of the earlier maps. Half of the 800+ enemies die in the first 120 seconds of combat as Hell tries and fails to budge you and your BFG from your position in the initial yard (that it's lousy with a proper embarrassment of ammo and powerups surely helps your cause), and the later repopulations of the nexial-dimension housing the portals that occur as you wake from each successive 'dream' tend to fall just as decisively to your all-crushing might. There are a couple of stingers lurking later on--the final repopulation wave can bite you in the ass a bit if you've been playing the clever dick all map long, constantly leaving each wave 'for later', and the E5 flashback differs from the others in being almost comically lethal to the unprepared, since you'll find yourself grossly out-DPS'd every way you turn in there unless you handle things just so (or unless you know about the secret there, I guess ;) )--but generally speaking, for all of its legions of monsters, this really feels more like a victory lap than anything, your reward for persevering all this way.

And you know, I don't really have a problem with that....I always say that it's more important to me that a map 30 supply catharsis or pathos than actual complex/nuanced/novel/demanding gameplay (although if I can have my cake and eat it too you certainly won't see me turning that down either, I suppose), and this one does so. I will say one thing, though, for all of the sideways-glancing bellyaching I've been doing about the plasma marines feeling slightly imbalanced, I feel like a big tide of those guys teleporting/pouring out of the exit chamber to chase you all the way back to the beginning while you frantically BFG-spam trying to keep them at bay would've been a more satisfying conclusion than playing ring-around-the-threshold with the last oversized/underpowered afrit cluster, but alas, 'twas not to be. Worthy final chapter nonetheless.

*********

I've personally never been given to the mindset that we should feel honor-bound to treat iconic mapsets with a special unquestioning reverence simply because they have gone down as 'classics' in the annals of PWAD history, but no degree of armchair iconoclasm can diminish that Scythe II is easily one of the most influential mapsets of the past decade--so many tropes of modern PWAD design, on both gameplay and aesthetic levels, are enshrined here, and in some cases born here. As an easy example, we of course just finished the widely-acclaimed (and rightfully so, IMO) Valiant last month, and if you can't see the many different layers of analogy between the two, well....I don't know what to say to that, I guess. The aesthetic 'zone' concept shamelessly enforced via death exits, the juxtaposition of brutal, small maps fielding modest monster complements with full-on slaughters, the principled interpolation of 'regular' maps with heavily conceptual ones, and on and on....hell, even the whole 'final episode begins with a nasty Tyson-map' trope that we see in so many major projects is popularized here (well, really, that started with the original Scythe of course, but Scythe II ups the ante by pulling the card out in the 'expected' and self-referential map 21 slot before doing its REAL take on it in map 26, the first Hell map)! Whether a fan of more modern-styled PWADs realizes it or not, there is in all likelihood something in his/her favorite projects that hearkens back to Scythe II in some way, and that says it all, really. It's certainly not something I'd call perfect--it has something of a lull right in the middle of the batting order, with an episode full of maps that mostly seem a mite half-baked--but on the whole it's consistently well-realized, satisfying both as an overall journey and as a series of individual maps or segments, a set that is both internally cohesive yet highly varied (in style, in theme, in size, in scale, in concept), something of an (un)holy grail for WADmakers past and present. If you look back at all the DWMC comments this month, you'll see that pretty much everybody found at least a few maps in it they feel really enthusiastic about, often alongside a handful that really aggravate the hell out of them...and almost everybody finished this month. That's really rare, and if it doesn't suggest there's something special about this WAD, I don't know what does. Definitely one for the history books, and it's a shame we'll probably never see its younger sibling Scythe X come of age, though I somehow doubt it could ever make the impact this did even if it were finished.

Top 5 maps, in no particular order:
Map 10 -- Pharaos' Tomb
Map 24 -- Gaia's Temple
Map 23 -- Whispering Winds
Map 26 -- Death
Map 29 -- Dust to Dust

I didn't even realise that the 'portals' on map 30 led to areas from the other maps. I thought Erik was just using the themes from episodes past, as opposed to using adjusted versions of levels past!

Quick final thoughts before moving on to NOVA II:

MAP30: Haunting Dreams
86% kills, 1/3 secrets

As others have said, despite the monster count, this one isn't nearly as intimidatingly difficult as some of the other maps in this WAD. Unlimited ammo at the start, plenty of health/armor goodies, the whole shebang. Takes a little bit of patience at first to clear out all the Arch-Viles (who are basically the only real threat on this map) from afar, then begin the process of travelling through a piece of each episode, which is a nice idea. Unfortunately, the actual setpiece in each one is pretty forgettable, as I basically just ran through each one (with the exception of the E3/Spider/Pain Elemental one, which I approached carefully to clear out the AV wall). The last couple areas unleash enough new hellspawn at the start that are difficult to avoid, thankfully I found the secret invuln for one and used that to push through to the end.

Final Thoughts

Actually... somewhat negative, on the whole. Going episode by episode:

Episode 1 (Gothic) is pretty forgettable, mainly by dint of being so short and easy. Looking through my comments, there were a couple of decent battles - the teleporting AV in MAP04 and the AV/PE setup in MAP05 - but that's about it. The looks aren't that great either, to be honest I feel like the gothic textures were wasted a bit with the greenish marble (both IWAD and added) textures used along side.

Episode 2 (Egyptian) is much stronger. The first couple maps are relatively weak, but Scythe II finally gets going with 8 through 10, which are up there among the best maps in the WAD. Everything looks nice (Egypt might be overdone in Doom, but there's a reason for that I think) and the fights finally start to get interesting.

Episode 3 (base) are very meh. Nothing great, nothing to terrible though either (aside from maybe the use of revenants in the first half of MAP14). Some of the setups are just failures, such as the repeated uses of monsters in pits of which they can't shoot the player out of and just serve as meat.

Episode 4 ("waste" according to the wiki) is better. Mr. X (MAP16) is a great concept map, and while MAP17 had some bad issues, the other three maps played well. MAP20 was a great finale map with the exception of poor monster placement as turrets.

Episode 5 (jungle) is where Scythe finally starts to ramp up. Two small Tysony maps, then all hell breaks loose with MAP23. I liked both MAP23's "locked in a phone booth" and MAP24's "run around screaming" style, good variation in slaughtermap type gameplay.

Episode 6 (hell) was definitely a split for me... some good slaughtery maps, and some terrible ones. MAP27 was a terribly unfun grind to the point I didn't even finish it, whereas MAP28 provides a nice BFG-spam breather and MAP26 and 29 show ways to make a map really difficult without just throwing a hundred revenants at the player.

So, lots of decent maps, though many of them had me laying out some criticisms, feeling as though "if only..." There's also a few terrible clunkers in the bunch - MAP07 is just uninspiringly bad, MAP17 has enough bad design points it feels like a rough draft, MAP27 is grindy borefest... (hmm, maybe Alm just doesn't like the number 7?) There's a few problems that crop up repeatedly, such as pointless cyberdemon encounters, monsters in pits they can't threaten from, etc. Also, both monster additions are big fat failures for me - the plasma marine is waaay too fast and frustrating to fight since it turns into "you kill him instantly or he kills you instantly" in most battles. The Afrit is just far too bulky at 2500 HP, especially for a flying creature. It's quite interesting to see after Valiant, which I thought had extremely well-designed new monsters which thoughtfully fit into Doom's bestiary, whereas these are the exact opposite.

The best maps are definitely at the end, though, when the author finally stops messing around and throws challenge after challenge at the player. This is also where his skill as a mapmaker shows, since at first glance they might just seem like slaughtermap after slaughtermap, but in reality they all play very differently and require different approaches.

Still, while it's obvious how much of an impact Scythe II had on modern mappers, a lot of these levels are quite forgettable or flawed. I suppose that could be said for a lot of things, though... something which is groundbreaking and inspiring isn't necessarily the best, and the inspired works which follow can take what works and modify what doesn't. Much like how Tolkien inspired a whole genre of literature but can be quite boring to read, perhaps.

Top 5 maps: MAP08, MAP18, MAP23, MAP24, MAP29

It will be to late for this thread once I'm further on, so I'm going to comment up to where I'm at while I still can.I am now pistol starting every map no matter what (still on UV). I redid the whole wad from the start by the way. I had to save scum after the lift goes down to finish Paharaoh's Tomb. Oh well, at least I made it.

So then. The techbase setting is the most clichéd one in Doom, but Erik gives it a vibe of its own here, some sort of grimy industrial hypercomplex. I like it.

MAP11: UAC BASE X

The name says it all, a very straightforward industrial base level with a very vanilla flavor. Pretty darn good. The Archvile at the end is really clever.

MAP12: Battlegrounds

Again, a very fitting name. The flow of this one reminds me of "Homecoming" from Resurgence, so obviously I loved it. It's a feeling that I find hard to put into words though.

MAP13: Mining Project

Much less symbiose between the name and contents of the map this time around. Some people have pointed out that this plays out in a very similar way to MAP12, but beyond the visuals and maybe some artificial resemblance, I don't agree. Mining Project has a flow of its own, and one that I like. My favourite part was the Cacodemon wave, great for BFG practice.

MAP14: The Haunted Mine

Yay, an undergound labyrith! The Super Metroid music makes it feel less "haunted" and more... underground labyrinth. A step up in challenge, but not a huge one. Cyberdemon got me, but I'll be back. Good pacing so far.

MagnusBlitz, when was the last time you dived into Tolkien's works ? I revisited them fairly recently found them much less boring than I thought, except maybe for The Hobbit.

I strongly recommend watching Alfonzo's streams while they're still around, by the way. He pretty much blazes through the whole thing. he also credibly defends the Plasma Troopers, I have to agree with him, they work well enough. I fought them on MAP31 multiple times for pure practice and they really aren't that bad.

Map30 - “Haunting Dreams”

Finally got around to the epic finale. For sheer spectacle this map is one of my all time favourites. The first time I played it years ago I didn't even know how to begin, but today I pretty much breezed through it with only one death. Thats largely thanks to the knowledge that you only need to enter each zone and exit as soon as you like, and with bfg spammage the only battles that can cause trouble involve afrits, archviles or cybers in small spaces. Cybers can mostly be run past and left behind, likewise the afrits who only really appear near the end. And as for archviles, the main trouble they cause is alongside the baron warp-in. I haven't really played this map enough to have any kind of strategy, so by that point I wasn't entirely sure what would happen, but defending near the cell ammo stash seems to be reliable. This is a map that I'm not fussy about leaving with monsters unkilled, especially with so many afrits who are just a pain in the arse to finish off, so a bit of a cowardly end to the adventure.

Final words on this megawad... yeah this is something special, though its mainly for the last few episodes that I remember it. There are tough maps that I've learned to cope with, and other tough maps that I don't think I ever will, relying as they do on the random kindness of monsters. One thing I really like about this wad is the way it uses consistent but varied visual themes in all its episodes, so you get that sense of travelling in an overall adventure without the scenery ever overstaying its welcome. I think in future plays I will stick to continuous as some maps are a little painful from pistol start.

woah :D

so much for the dwmc eliciting author comments. that's cool.

*drops jaw*
The passage of fucking Jesus wouldn't have been that surprising!

where is scythe x. where is it. where

By the same token, Erik, thanks for Scythe, Scythe II, and Scythe X, and all of the other stuff one doesn't hear about as often (I myself am partial to One Bloody Night). The community's gotten a lot of mileage and more than a little inspiration out of these WADs over the years, not half bad for a labor of love.

Scythe X is my favorite in the series, pound for pound. The music of map 9 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T8VSPRcaY4&index=10&list=PLrkMTISrC0njzJZyJpTHuxJ7ujK8NwZXF) is particularly gorgeous. Great choice, although it might fit map 10 even better.

Hey Erik,
Thanks for making the Scythe series. Scythe 1 was the first megaWAD I ever played.

Started back on this today. UV-Max on 15, 31, 32, 16, 17, and 18. No more tonight. 15 is one bitch of a level. The last area is a bitch and it took me several days of perfecting that one to UV-Max it. The rest were a breeze compared to 15. I'm still a little miffed about the super secret exit on 31. That's a cheap way of doing business, but I guess it's kind of an ode to Scythe's Run From It. I'd still love to see a vid of someone getting to the super secret exit. Somebody here posted a link to some archive where someone did it, but my cpu won't read those files.

Map 19 earlier today on UV-Max. Nice level but there is a lack of health and I had to conserve ammo and let a lot of infighting go on. Probably took me 20 tries to get it right. Maps 16-18 were a lot easier...but I was tired from working. Getting ready to do map 20(The Gates) and I'm quite familiar with this one. The chain gunners are quite annoying at first. Actually it's one of my favorite maps from S2. Cybies no longer intimidate me, but you've got to hit those plasma soldiers at the end with the BFG right away or you're screwed. Makes for a frustrating UV-Max run, but here we go. 12:23 AM, but here we go. I'm no Armane and I started UV-Maxing only about 6 months ago. It is really improving my skills, but I've got a long ways to go.

Edit: Forgot how some of the secrets worked. Didn't do too bad, but it's gonna take another day for 20. Gotta give it up tonight.

Map 20: Nice map. I really like this one. I save the megasphere till the very end to BFG the plasma marines. Almost got killed by them. Went from 200 health down to 35 on my playthrough.

Map 21: Not my favorite map, but really saved a lot of ammo throughout. Tons of punching and let a lot of infighting go on. Had plenty of rockets to finish off the Hell Knights and Revenents at the end.

Sorry I didn't have a chance to finish this play along with you guys, but I feel UV-Maxing this is my next step in improving to harder wads like Combat Shock, Deus Vult, etc.

Map 22 UV-Max- Everything had to go right in this map. Probably took me about 30-40 deaths to finally beat it. I didn't realize I was hitting the cross to unleash the archie until many deaths due to no ammo. Finally I aimed far enough to the right from the window to kill all the plasma marines and no problem. I could've beat it in half the deaths or less if I hadn't kept releasing that archvile.

I fooled around with map 23 for different strategies, but it looks like j4rio has all routes covered with his amazing time. I get pretty close to big groups of monsters, just not as close as he does with the BFG. I tried unleashing all the open area monsters on the board but that is definitely not quicker, plus you have a zillion monsters running around blocking your path. I made it to the blue skull key area a few of times and got beaten down from being too agressive most of the time. If you lay back a little, they will infight and you can pick them off. I lost too much health there. I'll report back when I beat this one, but it's gonna take several more days to get it right.

I'm pretty sure I'm quite disadvantaged on timed max runs because I use keyboard only....can't turn as quick.

Well, beat map 23 on UV-Max/pistol start. Took me about 1000+ starts, but I did it. Map 24 was rather easy. Map 25 is tough as fuck. I'll get it, but it ain't easy/

I just beat map26, but i will rank the episodes and maps that i've played so far:

I go from best to worst, which is from top to the bottom.

1.Episode 4

2.Episode 5

3.Episode 2

4.Episode 3

5.Episode 1

I won't say the hardest episode and map, because i didn't finish the last 4 maps of E6 yet.

Top 3 best maps so far:

1.MAP20

2.MAP24

3.MAP13

Top 3 worst maps so far:

1.Pretty much all of E1, except map01 and 03

2.dunno

3.MAP31 (fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck this map)

So, when i'll finish episode 6, i will edit this comment