Kingdom of Death

A couple of oddball Doom maps from July of 1994.

 

E3M1 is just a badly texture hallway hell map with a mandatory yellow key secret.

 

E3M2 is a slightly better map where you only need the red and yellow(also a mandatory secret) keys to exit while the blue key leads you a switch hunt throughout the map til you're rewarded with a BFG9000. One section of the map I like was the room full of nearly 100 Lost souls which can easily dispatch by shooting the barrels surrounding them creating an amusing chain reaction massacre. 

 

Not really the worst 1994 maps I've played but there are many others better than these maps.

Combination of two WADs, Annex of Death and DEVIL.WAD, both levels taking the E3M1 and E3M2 slots respectively. Regardless if they're intended to be played separately or together, both are poor levels with equally as poor design choices.

 

E3M1 is a short and basic level, there's really nothing to explore besides bumping into walls hoping which one will lead to where you need to go. In fact, the red key is hidden behind a wall that is a mandatory secret, though thankfully at least has a different texture to give you an idea. Even so, there's not much to it really.

 

E3M2 is odd, you can beat it pretty quickly if you figure out that you only need two keys to finish the level, both being the red and yellow keys. The yellow key is yet another mandatory wall secret, only this time without a different texture to help you figure it out, and to tell you it's near the blue key. The blue key is only used to access a lift that takes forever to go down and go up. You have a big drop that leads to tight hallways packed with monsters, only as a means to go switch hunting. The reward for doing that is a BFG but by that point you are practically done with the map.

 

Strange WAD, but nothing interesting.

Two small maps with idiotic layouts, texturing that makes your eyes bleed, and annoyances like having to push every fucking wall in the map to find important rooms and keys. This falls somewhere between "awful" and the dubious grade "vomit" (which I usually reserve for the *really* brain-dead maps). At least there're no outright bugs, except for one HOM, so I'll be generous. --1/5