Heroes' Tales

Это вообще хороший мегавад. Есть некоторые мапс , которые плохи как 03, 17, 31 и 19, и другие, которые очень хороши как 10, 11, 21, 28, 29 и некоторые другие. Это стоит скачать.

Done with these settings:

- Crispy Doom 4.2.

- Ultra-Violence

- Continuous combined with pistol start mindset.

- Saves every 10 minutes or so.

A nice entertaining mapset. It's a mixed bag consisting by different styles of action to spend a weekend or two, using the resources from TNT. This gets you to travel through different landscapes like ruined cities, egyptian catacombs, the inner of a spaceship, well-known sewers and some caves here and there, mostly resembling the aesthetics of the iwad but not acting like a sequel to it. The first map might not leave a great impression, suffice to say it's the most vaguely detailed of the mapset, but the second and forward maps show a progress in the way to create more natural, realistic environments, whether grand scale red fortresses, cramped tunnels of lava, or castles built with brown bricks. The music selection consists of several tracks from the iwads, which all casually fit very well, along with multiple tracks I'm pretty sure I've heard before, like the one in map 17, that's an amazing slow track for a dark cave.  

Being a speedmapping community project the results are uneven, not to understand it as a lack of quality control. There's an atypical flow we often don't see in megawads, like when certain species of monsters are introduced and their context, which also go in line with the maps slots, but difficult gradually raises in a similar way most megawads do, in general above the iwad-level. Also, the styles of the authors aren't that different from each other, nor the size of the maps is a determiner of what they're going to be like. There're shorter maps where the core of the gameplay is concentrated in an arena where you're demanded to slaughter big numbers of enemies (not as high as in natural macro-slaughter wads) before you're able to exit, such are the cases of Archi's map 22 and Shadowman's map 27, or in other levels apply your skills to survive several nasty ambushes in more claustrophobic areas and call it a day, like most maps in the first and second episodes. You'll get breather maps in between too, which some share a bit of TNT's classic aesthetics and incidental combat, and I had fun with them too. What larger maps have is that sense of exploration reminiscent from older megawads, such as map 28 having the premise of a large epic adventure in a massive hellish landscape a la Alien Vendetta, or a city in ruins after an earthquake in map 10, depending on how you interpret scenarios, and you build progression bit by bit. However, there're also a couple large maps devoted directly to slaughter setups, as is Shadowman's map 21. My only gripe with him is the archvile usage, it seems like he wanted to enforce meticulous approaches to deal with them, except in certain situations these can target you while out of your FOV, and there's nothing you can do about it. But this and a blind drop on damage floor type 16 are about the only bits of "unfair" design I found, the mapset counts with so many distinct scenarios to test your abilities that a mishap with an archvile or two didn't stop my enjoyment. 

Secret-wise, nothing hard to peak or miss, but you'll definitely want important weapons and resources if you play on pistol start, like that juicy BFG in map 21. For maxers, the secret SSG in map 03 becomes unavailable if you don't take the lift. My favourite maps are 03, 10, 11, 15, 16, 23, and 27, mainly stuff from the second and third episode, but the first one is a solid introduction too. The final map is, fortunately, short and kinda easy. The bonus map requires you to make decisions, and it's better to have a certain degree of foreknowledge. Still a good map imo. 

Overall, this might be my second experience in megawads by the Russian community, and I'm certainly hyped to try something else from them in the future. Heroes' Tales should be on your list too, it's worth the try, there's material for every taste here. My rate is 7/10.

I don't think I've ever played a wad made by the Russian community that I didn't like. This is no exception. This is 32 levels of quality, ranging from small-scale fights to epic set pieces. Worth playing and highly recommended. <3