Lunatic

Very fun and fair mapset with an excellent ending. I was grinning like an idiot while mowing down the imps and waiting for the rocket to be ready to launch!

love the aesthetic of this wad

My fave Skillsaw wad. Quite short, not extra difficult and gorgeous. 

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nice

This is and will always be my favorite map, awesome levels, textures, music and two new monsters!

It really makes you think you're in the moon.

since this came out, the moon look has been explored with more ornament and grandeur to it. (examples are Valiant by the same author and the single level Man on the Moon by Yugiboy85.) it's easy to write off Lunatic as slightly dated, with its sparkly clean CC4-tex look feeling like a design relic of the time.

imo that would be a mistake. Lunatic has a great trick that the secret mysterious Doominati wants to charge you recurring payments of $19.99 for. throughout, there are a lot of cool, memorable "events" that I'd describe as cinematic. they are kind of like cutscenes, telling a ministory through motion and change, without of course stealing the controls away. their periodic appearances give Lunatic the vibe of a lived-in movie -- which, as an incidental bonus, meshes super snugly with the "action caper" pitch of the combat. "The Final Countdown" is basically a cinematic event from start to finish, along with being arguably the most iconic arena map ever and a preciously rare musical gimmick/pun map. 

I think it's telling that Valiant's "Rocket Zone 2" would have been highly recognizable as a remake of Lunatic's "Rocket Zone" even if it had a completely different theme and gave the architecture a substantial overhaul. the sense of identity transcends the things that most commonly produce identity. combine that with essentially the perfect musical fit -- the cheesy, synthy jams of '90s arcade games and of course...that other one -- and a great skybox and props.

Lunatic's combat is defined by its unification of "challenge" and "fun" (not the way I classify things, but I've seen it often and it works here, so I'm rolling with it). basically, the parts where you plow down lots of fodder with powerful weapons -- in a way that might read as comic relief -- are also arranged to be the most dangerous fights, instead of serving as pure low-stress interludes. that danger comes from a wider range of powerful attacks (no surprise that both new monsters are zombies with hard-hitting non-hitscan attacks) and from the constant worry of the weakling mobs infiltrating your space. the result is a sort of hedging against either part not translating to a given player: if a fight is too easy to be exciting purely based on its threat-resolution arc or if it's frustratingly hard (not that the latter is likely in Lunatic), it can still redeem itself with raw components that are inherently satisfying. 

skillsaw is also dogmatic about placing the needed parts of your progression goals in convenient sight -- a key might be hoisted on an unreachable platform, reached from somewhere else, with the matching key door adjoined in the same room. that both makes it hard to get lost and gives the action an undercurrent of psychological momentum. it is a pageturner in Doom format, in a way. having a clear picture of what's next encourages you to see it through, to tie the loose ends you've been handed. nothing's wrong with intentionally cryptic maps that refuse easy progress, but provided one wants super smooth flow, wads like Lunatic make a great study for avoiding the occasional hitches that often surface in maps that are 95% of the way there. 

9/10 or so. improved on (nominally) but still indispensable. 

/still not a reviewer. I don't do it often enough to count!

A neat lunar-themed minisode from skillsaw, with a lot of nice space/rocketry visual touches. The soundtrack fits very well to the theme. 

Difficulty is fairly consistent throughout (save for the easier first level), enough going on to keep you satisfied but significantly easier than Valiant or Ancient Aliens. The mapset's custom monsters are introduced very well, even if they are quite simple to kill.

The final map was the highlight for me, a very fun slaughter-lite map. Overall, four stars, enjoyable stuff, though I do think skillsaw's meatier more recent works are an improvement over this.

Nicely challenging wad with a consistent Moon base and spaceflight theme. Gameplay is straightforward Plutonia combat, with a lot of dangerous ambushes requiring good reflexes and escape plans.

Stylistically, even though it made little difference while inside the techbases that you're on the Moon or anywhere else, the outside areas reminded you constantly where you are. The Earth may have been drawn too close in the sky, but the story explains why. The music however felt too arcade-like, and the Moon crater surface textures could have been better.

a funny wad, some hard but recommended, the arquitechture is very good, the style good, and the music is nice

5/5

Gaia74

This project remembered to me by a simple and at the same time very impressive architecture, which hides a well-thought-out layout, giving excellent expirience from the gameplay. I was play most of the maps running through the locations from cover to cover, leaving behind the fighting monsters. New opponents here perfectly complement the classic and they are good to create problems. These maps give a very dynamic and at the same time free gameplay, which can be called exemplary. Even the last map, with a high count of enemies, is flown in the same breath. Thanks to the good tracks, which give a vigorous rhythm to the gameplay, this whole not-so-big project gives a bunch of positive impressions that you cannot collect in many “full-sized” megawads. 5/5 in my collection. I think in the near future I will dig deeper into other Skillsaw's works.

And thus Lunatic was finished, rather quickly too, played through GlBoom+ 2.5.1.5 on UV.

So this would basically be the predecessor to Valiant considering that the theme and gameplay style would end up in skillsaw's later work Valiant. It features only 5 levels taking place exclusively on the moon both inside and outside of various bases. The wad features a new background menu, music, new enemies, namely variations of the Shotgun Guy and Chaingunner who use Plasma rifles and Rocket Launchers respectively, new textures, but no new status bar, weapon/enemy sounds, or ENDOOM screen.

Compared to skillsaw's other 2 projects that I have played, namely Ancient Aliens and the previously mentioned Valiant, the biggest difference would probably be the difficulty. Lunatic is an easy-to-medium wad with low enemy counts, whereas the other 2 megawads are hard with high enemy counts that are targeted primarily at veterans or very skilled players, AA fitting especially well in this category. The maps are pretty short, compact, and straightforward with a few secrets that are generally easy to find, with the final level being a surprisingly short slaughter map with little over 300 enemies, which also features a MIDI rendition of Europe's "The Final Countdown" and is named after the track. Indeed, a very nice conclusion to the short expedition.

Considering that there's so few levels and there's nothing really making any of them stand out of the crowd (don't misunderstand, I don't think this is a problem in this case) with the possible exception of MAP05 which changes the style to slaughter, there's not much else to add, so in short, although skillsaw would later proceed to create 2 masterpieces, Lunatic lays the foundation on which Valiant will rise. It anticipates an epic journey while settings the standards high, delivering 5 action packed, beautiful, atmospheric, short and straight-to-the-point levels that are real fun to play. It only took me one hour to finish it so time really shouldn't be an issue. As it was the case of CS2 it was so fun I kinda wish it was longer, but this makes it perfect for those times when you just want to play some Doom but investing considerable amounts of time isn't exactly possible as it can easily be beaten in one sitting. Would highly recommend this to anyone, one hour of quality.