What are you playing now?

I'm doing a Scoredoom run on Hell Revealed yet again, and I'm not dying as much on it this time around seeing how I played the hell (no pun intended, of course) out of that megawad.

I am STILL trying to beat "Hell Awakended..." - I'm on MAP21 at last, with something like 10 hours of gameplay behind me. MAP20 being an Icon of Sin definitely didn't help, but it's mostly the huge, non-linear maps with linear progression that take over 40 minutes each with all the monsters to beat that make up the majority of the the "teen" maps that have taken me so long. Now that I'm in warped techbases again the population has jumped up to 700 for MAP21, so I'm hoping that's got a lot of zombies in it, as this really is taking forever!

On the plus side, the maps are playing well (in a ball-busting way) and have been looking great as of late.

Phobus said:

On the plus side, the maps are playing well (in a ball-busting way) and have been looking great as of late.

Cool, I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Phobus said:

I am STILL trying to beat "Hell Awakended..." - I'm on MAP21 at last, with something like 10 hours of gameplay behind me. MAP20 being an Icon of Sin definitely didn't help, but it's mostly the huge, non-linear maps with linear progression that take over 40 minutes each with all the monsters to beat that make up the majority of the the "teen" maps that have taken me so long. Now that I'm in warped techbases again the population has jumped up to 700 for MAP21, so I'm hoping that's got a lot of zombies in it, as this really is taking forever!

On the plus side, the maps are playing well (in a ball-busting way) and have been looking great as of late.

Whats this? Link?

edit: nvrmnd, found it

Phobus said:

I am STILL trying to beat "Hell Awakended..." - I'm on MAP21 at last, with something like 10 hours of gameplay behind me. MAP20 being an Icon of Sin definitely didn't help, but it's mostly the huge, non-linear maps with linear progression that take over 40 minutes each with all the monsters to beat that make up the majority of the the "teen" maps that have taken me so long. Now that I'm in warped techbases again the population has jumped up to 700 for MAP21, so I'm hoping that's got a lot of zombies in it, as this really is taking forever!

On the plus side, the maps are playing well (in a ball-busting way) and have been looking great as of late.

/salute

Doom Vacation was an amusing trip back to Duke Caribbean but I can't help but wish he'd done more with the assets than a straight conversion, though what he's done to emulate the features are quite admirable. Also MAP03 was a ballbuster.

Star Wars: Chibi Rebellion is fantastic, a lot of fun to play around with. Not nearly as demanding as some of the past works I've played as of late but every little map is different, some with great puzzles. The biggest tip I can give is to turn the autoaim off or the engineering minigames and big wampa fights are incredibly tough. I'm just continually amazed at it.

Soldiering on... kind of wish I'd decided to play on a lower difficulty, as these last 10 levels seem to be all set to just swamp me with enemies and teleported-in reinforcements in dark or strobing rooms most of the time. I'll definitely have to sample a couple of levels on HMP or something when I'm done on UV, just to see if I can recommend dropping a difficulty level. Fuck knows how I'm to write a review that's any more concise than a book, but I'll do my best when (or if?) I'm (ever) done playing.

@kmxexii: I loved Doom Vacation! Saying that, I never got to play Duke Caribbean, so that may have been why it seemed so fresh and cool to me.

Just started playing Plutonia Revisited Community Project. Really cool. So many chaingunners....:-/

Phobus said:

@kmxexii: I loved Doom Vacation! Saying that, I never got to play Duke Caribbean, so that may have been why it seemed so fresh and cool to me.

The fidelity of layouts and map flow is outstanding and I like that the bikini babes are more durable (I am a goody goody). Some of the encounters play out so vastly different because of different arsenals and monster replacements. I just wish he'd taken more liberties than adding jokes like the coke orgy, but I suppose that's left for the enterprising author who wants to make Doom Vacation II.

As I understand it the bikini babes are immortal... and very annoying with their constant stream of 2-3 quotes :P

As for my chronicled reviewing attempt: I got to a situation in MAP23 where I had to cheat to keep going, even with save/load. As a result I beat that map and from MAP24 onwards I'm playing on Hurt Me Plenty rather than UV. I've done a bit of checking and the monster counts drop by around one third on average throughout the mapset, so the author has clearly put some work into these lower difficulties. I'm anticipating much faster progress now and I may even be finished by the end of today!

Phobus said:

As I understand it the bikini babes are immortal... and very annoying with their constant stream of 2-3 quotes :P

No, they're definitely eraseable, they just don't run around screaming if they get knicked and they vanish when they take lethal damage. But yeah, they're a bit more annoying as far as clogging up tight hallways like the dance club. I had to climb on top of them to get out!

I've done it! Now to condense all of the Dooming I've done in the last two weeks down to a review...

Hmm...

@kmxexii: Ah yes, now I remember. The seated ones don't disappear in Doom Vacation though, right?

Phobus said:

I've done it! Now to condense all of the Dooming I've done in the last two weeks down to a review...

Hmm...

@kmxexii: Ah yes, now I remember. The seated ones don't disappear in Doom Vacation though, right?

Looking forward to the Hell Awakened review! It's on my list of things for 2011 before hitting 1998 and then odds 'n' sods.

As for the chair girls, probably not; I don't recall any accidental crossfire with them either way, though. They aren't quite as ubiquitous.

Scythe Map29 has been constantly kicking my ass, so I'm taking a break and doing some zdoom wads. Yesterday I played Ed's Valhalla, now I'm doing KDIZD.

Processingcontrol said:

Scythe Map29 has been constantly kicking my ass, so I'm taking a break and doing some zdoom wads. Yesterday I played Ed's Valhalla, now I'm doing KDIZD.

Scythe MAP29 is the best citylike level I've seen. Amazing stuff.

I'm now up to map21 in my Hell Revealed Scoredoom run. I'm not gonna bother switching to Pistol-Start mode, as that's just plain suicide.

40oz's happy birthday to pavera.wad. Not bad at all. There is a missing texture in the 4 imp box of shotgun shells cubby. It would have been nice if a door opened or light turned on after each window you jump through (near where you get the yellow key) and then after all 4 successfully jumped through a secret is revealed.

Processingcontrol said:

Scythe Map29 has been constantly kicking my ass, so I'm taking a break and doing some zdoom wads. Yesterday I played Ed's Valhalla, now I'm doing KDIZD.

I started up Scythe again today. I gave up at level 7, but a good city level is something to persevere forward for. Last time I played through Scythe I gave up somewhere along the way--don't remember where tho.

Eternally Yours by Valkiri

Did a playthrough of XXXI Cybersky again, damn epic stuff.

Sick as a dog the past week; I couldn't even muster the energy to complete the review for Chibi Rebellion. I'm done, though, and it's a must play for Star Wars fans (Lucasarts too). The action gets a bit samey when it's not broken up with the arcade-style boss fights and puzzles, but I highly recommend it, especially in chibi-size doses.

Played Dark Deity's Bastion, which is a nice single map for Heretic. It seems like a more mature offering than Apostate as far as fights go; I'm happy to not be circle-strafing packs of enemies or get violated by hordes of Disciples. Instead the number of moving parts makes things a mite bit trickier. The puzzles were rudimentary but added a lot of character to the second half. That War fight can get pretty nuts!

Gonna finish Voodoo Guns and then move on to Jenesis.

Played through Espi's Back to Basic wad. Really good E2 replacement, despite all the levels being so big. Some of the secrets are hard to reach without straferunning, including completing E2M5. I'm not good at performing straferun jumps, so I had to either rocket launch myself to reach certain areas which takes practice so I save beforehand, or if it's still impossible, resort to using the noclip cheat. Otherwise, I love this wad. Shame Espi passed away back in 2009, may he rest in peace, and may his Doom maps be enjoyed by everyone.

I'll be undertaking Reverie for my next /newstuff review, as it's gone untouched for quite a while. Probably start that this evening.

Phobus said:

I'll be undertaking Reverie for my next /newstuff review, as it's gone untouched for quite a while. Probably start that this evening.

If you enjoyed Doom Core at all, you'll have a great time.

I've played Reverie before, so I know I like it. It's just that I don't remember it well enough (or have the screenshots) to write a decent review.

Phobus said:

I've played Reverie before, so I know I like it. It's just that I don't remember it well enough (or have the screenshots) to write a decent review.

Ooh, I completely forgot. I remember seeing your comments in the dev thread.

Did a complete run through of Kama Sutra in co-op again last night. It just has to be my fav wad to co-op. So fun!

I don’t know, there are plenty of nice new megaWADs.

I started playing The Talosian Incident, and it was all good until map03. Can't find any keys... Some reviews indicate a key is stashed away behind two secrets (wtf!) Well I gave up after like an hour of retracing my steps and searching all over that bigass empty level.

hex11 said:

I started playing The Talosian Incident, and it was all good until map03. Can't find any keys... Some reviews indicate a key is stashed away behind two secrets (wtf!) Well I gave up after like an hour of retracing my steps and searching all over that bigass empty level.

Yeah, I think I banged my head on that particular wall for a good while.

You could watch a demo to see how to find the key(s) then press on with the rest of the maps if you are actually curious.

The DSDA has some.
http://doomedsda.us/wad851.html

I think that I’m going to play NDCP.