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dobu gabu maru

The DWmegawad Club plays: Realm of Chaos

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Demon of the Well said:

Out of curiosity, what's your playstyle, Obsidian?


ZDoom most of the time, keyboard and nothing else. :P

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MAP02: While I complemented Berkowitz on his minimal use of health pickups, the same does not apply to Chan. Two green armors and a host of medikits supplied to the player ensures their eventual victory here, especially since the close-quarters nature of the map practically demands sniping from doorways. It’s still a charming, compact experience where the player moves around a small area hoping to find entry into the central courtyard, bumping elbow-to-elbow with some of hell’s nobles. It’s easily dispatched of in the end, but very much a Doom map at heart.

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Map 02 -- Outpost 27 - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
It's Cell, but in 1996! This is a tiny little pillbox of a base, packed full of bloodthirsty cretins. Of course, 50 is hardly an imposing monstercount, even by classic IWAD standards, but Outpost 27 is just that tiny--it only takes 2-3 bodies to crowd a room.

Texture alignment is generally pretty good (although not spotless, ala those green metal pillars in the second room) considering the diminutive scale of most of the environment. I'm not so sure I'm sold on it aesthetically, though....the choice of that green/white lacquered tiling for the outer wall is a strange one (although I like that texture as a generality, and so I guess I don't really mind), and the way each of the tiny little rooms is covered in a different texture seems rather haphazard. I suppose this might've been intended to vaguely communicate that different rooms in the base have different functions, but they're so small and pragmatically-shaped that I couldn't really surmise what was being implied, other than that the computer room is a....computer room. On the upside, I can leave my usual complaints about lighting at the door here: while the lighting is pretty flat/uniform throughout, given the nature of the structure (e.g. a pillbox-shaped structure with a roofless hub and a bunch of open windows all along its perimeter), it makes sense that one light level generally dominates throughout.

Gameplay has little recourse but to conform to the tiny, cramped environs, and so opposition consists mostly of zombies and imps in small groups. There are a few hell knights, but only one of them (the one who descends on one of the aforementioned green metal pillars) has an opportunity to create any real pressure, and then only if you wuss out/panic. The central hub can be seen at a few points suggesting some crossfire potential, but as it is staffed only by imps, this doesn't pan out.

As Memfis mentioned, the best part about the gameplay here is that it's very berserk-friendly; given my earlier determination that this particular marine is melee-happy, I naturally went wild with this, only using the shotgun on a couple of ledge snipers after picking up the pack. On the downside, the featured reward in both secrets is the blur artifact. Now, I'm not given to the opinion that the blursphere is a categorically useless powerup, but in both cases here, it's inconsequential at best, and a powerdown at worst--the combat spaces in the map are so small that hitscanners are liable not to miss even with the sphere in effect (reckon it's not that hard to hit a guy with a machine gun at point blank range as long as you wave the damned thing around, even if he is invisible), and the small amount of dodge space makes avoiding thrown projectiles a real crapshoot. At least accessing the second secret is entertaining--just find some elevation and hop right out the window.

It's only bitesized, and thus can hardly be accused of overstaying its welcome, but this didn't really suit my taste, all the same.

Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention that I encountered a mild bug at one point: in the tiny silver metal/blue light room with the chaingunners, if you rub against the window, at one point you can pass partway through the 'sill' and get bogged down, until you figure out the right direction to move in to break free.

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Hope you don't mind me joining in :)

MAP01 - “Dropoff” by Rob Berkowitz Demo
The map was pretty bland but otherwise an ok map

MAP02 - “Outpost 27” by Antoni Chan Demo

Very cramped map and because of this the Hell Knights were a pain in the ass to fight. I also died a few times because of that.

Edit: Reuploaded the demos because I was using -complevel 0 and certain things weren't working

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@sgt dopey

Welcome aboard! I'm getting the following error when I double-click on the demos in PRBoom -- "G_ReadDemoHeader : Unknown demo format 32"

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Memfis said:

By the way, what's the point of PWADINFO lumps in the wad, some important data for Hellmaker?


That's a good question, but I don't have the answer. Esselfortium might know. He was one of the people to most recently use Hellmaker, albeit several years ago.

Hellmaker had its quirks. Put these maps into DB2 and you can tell the difference between Demon and Hellmaker maps, because if you click on a line, the Hellmaker maps have every texture slot filled, even on one-sided lines that only need a middle texture.

Nice demos! I look forward to more, and in the near term, I especially look forward to your Map04 demo. I sucked on that map. ;D

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@Membrain, @Obsidian

Welcome, and pleased to see that you're both keyboard players. I'm not alone anymore! ;D

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SteveD said:

@sgt dopey

Welcome aboard! I'm getting the following error when I double-click on the demos in PRBoom -- "G_ReadDemoHeader : Unknown demo format 32"


I recorded them in PRBoom+ if that helps at all.

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SteveD said:

@Membrain, @Obsidian

Welcome, and pleased to see that you're both keyboard players. I'm not alone anymore! ;D


Heheh, the only other people I can think of are Blue Shadow and possibly CyRaptor because of his title. The only time I ever tried using the mouse was when I was on MAP28 of Scythe and I was even worse with it than with just the keyboard. :P

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SteveD said:

Welcome, and pleased to see that you're both keyboard players. I'm not alone anymore! ;D


HEY I'M RIGHT HERE! I'm an OG keyboarder, only used a mouse once or twice back in the 90s but felt that it was too weird.

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dobugabumaru said:

HEY I'M RIGHT HERE! I'm an OG keyboarder, only used a mouse once or twice back in the 90s but felt that it was too weird.


Sorry we missed ya! *Hugs*

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dobugabumaru said:

HEY I'M RIGHT HERE! I'm an OG keyboarder, only used a mouse once or twice back in the 90s but felt that it was too weird.


OK, that makes 4 of us. I think we can take over this joint . . . :D

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We'll thwart you by just standing behind you all of the time. ;)

Seriously, though, credit where it's due for you keyboard-y types. I know how to play DooM on just a keyboard, and I can do so fairly well in IWAD-difficulty settings, but getting through something like Stardate 20X6 on just a keyboard? Maybe if there were 72 hours in a day.....

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Map02
I liked some parts of this. For instance, there are a couple of nice fights with HKs, especially the red key one. On the other hand, there's a lot of "open door, shoot all the monsters, repeat", which is a tad on the pedestrian side, all up. The use of multi-stage bridge building as the map's ending is also a bit humdrum, having been done in map01 as well.

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MAP02 - OUTPOST 27
by Antoni Chan

A flat-and-cramped trek back and forth around a nexus of windowed areas which look onto walkways that will be raised throughout this level. There are Hell Knights here, which serve as little other than ammo sinks despite the cramped quarters; chaingunners pose more of a problem, but not but much. Space is used pretty efficiently, but not in a particularly exciting manner.

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MAP02 - “Outpost 27” by Antoni Chan

That was a cute little map. Had a more creative layout than the previous, if a little awkward to navigate in places - even the monsters were bumping into the scenery. Nice circular interlocking design. Also I died a couple of times thanks to random hitscanner damage with no armour and not much maneuverability in those tight corridors. Texturing was a lot more interesting too, despite shonky alignment here and there. Interesting to meet hellknights this early in the wad.

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Greetings! I'm joining in for this one. Looking forward to it as I'm a sucker for oldschool dooming.

I play with PrBoom-plus and the proper compatibility level, the usual way: every map from scratch, on UV, no saves, no cheats. If I reach the exit I check the HUD for missing monsters and/or secrets and go hunt them down, if I can't find them I check what I missed in a map editor and replay the map.

Here we go!

Map 1 -- Dropoff
Simple and nonoffensive start to the WAD places you in a small installation which gave me some "Icarus" vibes. The red key trap and switch trap were nicely done, and unexpected. As for reaching the soulsphere secret, there should be something on those crates to entice the player to go up there. I agree with previous reviewers about the relative dullness of the last bit with the rising floor. It is quite easy and tempting to break the mechanism but as long as you can reach all the switches with strafe jumps (you can) it's no problem. The progression after hitting that switch up high was unclear and should have been indicated; it's not a big map so it didn't take me long to find the exit area, but still. Maybe if it had been textured as a door, or textured differently it would make more sense to me. Pretty good start to the WAD. --3/5

Map 2 -- Outpost 27
Small cramped techbase which gave me some "Evilution" vibes. Monsters seem to have been added after the rooms were designed, as they tend to get stuck in places and do not pose any particular threat to you other than appearing from odd angles. There are only two staged fights, the first one (the imp trap) was nicely done, the second (HK in lowering pillar) was just a waste of time, and ammo as has been mentioned. The two secrets were all right, as DotW notes they aren't super helpful -- you get tons of health and ammo everywhere else and the invisibility helps mostly against long range attacks. Not really my cup of tea, but short and simple enough to never cause any problems or annoyances. --3/5

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After a couple of months out (well one month and a couple of weeks), time to get back into things. Let's see now, usual old nonsense setup of ZDoom using Doom (strict) compatibility mode, with the exception of allowing true NSEW movement (lol), and telling the old hitscan code to fuck off.

I browsed through the WAD to see what these new sprites were, and ended up getting rid of most of them. The meat cleaver in the lump of flesh is pretty cool, the blue candle will make a nice change, and the Stimpack/Meditkit things were so corny I had to leave them in. Everything else though just went in the trash. Now that it's all said and done...

REALM OF CHAOS

MAP01:
Jesus Christ it's COMPSPAN City.

Blandness aside (which can be forgiven considering the age of this thing and the inexperience of the authors involved), it does at least play pretty well with the opening. The new textures (clearly used straight away to show them off!) work, and some are delightfully cheesy to look at while still managing to fit in just well enough with the stock resources. And everything's actually aligned too; that's some serious shit for 1996, given how mundane a task it was to have to manually align everything with no visual help whatsoever outside of testing the map over and over again.

Fighting did feel a bit laboured in places (the 'big reveal' of a huge sector and only seven Imps after activating Linedef 260 was more of a 'bleh' encounter than anything), and the ending was a bit tedious (I wanted to just SR50 everywhere and hit the switches ASAP, but held back for what turned out to be a very valid fear of breaking the platform raising triggers). Not at all horrible for MAP01, but nothing special.

SteveD said:
This is a nice, solid Map01 without any notable mistakes, though one could quibble about the Soulsphere secret.[/B]


Too fuckin' right one could. We go from the goofy Arrow o' Crates clearly pointing out a secret for the most worthless Powerup ever (typically I was immediately hit by the next Sergeant to show his ugly bald mug, so these things always fucking suck as far as I am concerned), to this obscure nonsense that relies purely on the chance that someone would want to go leaping around trying to get a footing on the crates. Ehhhh.


I'm aiming for something under three hours total for this one. I know it ain't happening though.



MAP02:
AntoniChanHasNoSenseOfScale.wad

Seriously, this one is awful for manoeuvrability. While it's not featuring anything difficult to get by, constantly getting snagged on non-orthogonal doorways and walls serves to do nothing but piss me off. And Autoaim proves its shittiness as usual:

When I aim slightly to the left to try and snipe that distant Imp, the bastard Autoaim doesn't kick in. Lazy, Carmack. LAZY.

A genuinely surprising Hellknight attempts to act like a fearsome obstacle, and only gets its head caved in while struggling to fit through the doorway. I told you this map was horribad for movement. Even the enemies are getting fucked over now.

Oh no.

Once I saw this it was Game Over for MAP02. It all turned into one of those 'punch the shit out of everything' events. With the exception of two Imps (which met their demise via Shotgun blasts), everything encountered after the acquisition of this box o' death got my fist rammed through its face or stomach, depending on size.

The secrets are pretty pointless and only contain shitty things of no value outside of 100%'ing the map.

A Partial Invisibility next to a Hellknight. Really?

The outside could have done with a 'Block Monster' flag being applied to the windowspaces, it looks clumsy to see this 8ft monster step up and appear to make its way in, only to find that it can't and swiftly turn back around again.

Hurrr, durr hur hur.

The central hub thing was a nice visual touch amidst some of the most haphazard texture theming this side of the Shitty Map Contest, but as pointed out already it didn't really allow any crossfire and infighting. I don't know, I guess it's an alright map in concept, but it almost feels unfinished, as though Chan lost interest after realising just how horribly cramped things are.



MAP03:
I hate it when monsters are looking at the playerstarts, regardless of how laughable the threat may be. Always reminds me of those times at school when you'd be having a race, only for the other kid to shout "GO!" after he'd started running. In other words, at least let me raise my fucking gun before stuff can take potshots at me, eh?

Not much to say about this one. It was a nice step up from the 'target practice' of the previous maps, with some hints of ferocity thanks to having attacks coming from multiple angles and some fine cases of low-grade crowd control, but the inclusion of the SSG reduces any real chances of a surprise fight for life later on to nothing but 'get out of my way' inconvenience. Ah well, it is only MAP03.

The secret door was probably more obvious than it should have been, thanks to misaligned texture work.

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MAP02 Outpost 21

Again, followed Heretic's route (like there's any other route to follow on this map anyways). Another level that's not too hard, but I get really pissed off when even at point blank range a shotgun blast couldn't kill an imp in one shot. As for how I handled combat, I didn't berserk the hellknights like Heretic did, don't have the good enough skill for that, just shotgun/chaingun them. Never was fond of the central area with the imps either. The invisibilitys only "partially" helped. So this wasn't really too good of a level, and depending on how you play it, either easier or harder than MAP01. Final Time 2:10.

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BaronOfStuff said:

After a couple of months out (well one month and a couple of weeks), time to get back into things.


My prayers have been answered! The Baron is back! I'm in deep shit now! ;D

BaronOfStuff said:

I hate it when monsters are looking at the playerstarts, regardless of how laughable the threat may be.


Heh heh heh. I'll be waiting . . .

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Demon of the Well said:

We'll thwart you by just standing behind you all of the time. ;)


ROFLMAO!!!!!

Demon of the Well said:

Seriously, though, credit where it's due for you keyboard-y types. I know how to play DooM on just a keyboard, and I can do so fairly well in IWAD-difficulty settings, but getting through something like Stardate 20X6 on just a keyboard? Maybe if there were 72 hours in a day.....


Well, I was playing in ITYTD, but honestly having very little problem in Stardate. Half-damage was a huge help, but if I'd gone to HMP I'm guessing I would've only doubled my death counts unless I got totally ammo-starved. UV was out of the question. ;D I only stopped playing on Map06 because, after going through a time-consuming nightmare of video format conflicts with a new client, I came back to the map after like 2 weeks and couldn't figure out how to open the bars to get the red key. Everything I'd encountered up to that point was dead, and I'd been enjoying the hell out of it, but where was the switch to open those damned bars? I could see the damned key from 2 sides, first the gray area with the big purple pool, and then the wood area where two columns go next to its platform from the opposite side. I finally did the Happy Ammo cheat and went through the red door into that big fight in the sky, had beaten that sucker and teleported around, but got killed by some Baron or HK and discovered I hadn't saved my game after the first huge fight. So I asked myself if I wanted to do it again and wander around aimlessly in this map the size of China, or do I want to go and playtest Concerned like I said I would do eons ago? I chose Concerned. ;D

BTW, I got killed 20 times in E2M5 of Concerned. Badass fucking map! Most kills I suffered in Stardate was 9 in Map03. ;)

Edit
And let's not forget, Dobu The Keyboard God played Stardate on UV!!!!!

And I do seem to recall that SAV88 is a keyboarder. His RoC speedruns are awesome. My problem, I guess, is that I suck compared to those guys. All I've got on my side is sheer masochism. ;D

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03 - demo - very strong map with satisfying non-stop SSG action and some fantastic designs. I particularly like all the red details: a weirdly shaped bloody ceiling, a cross in the blue key area and an interesting installation with pillars before the exit room. Really great stuff, just a little bit short for map03 perhaps, but still definitely the best level so far.

SteveD said:

The justification for using previously released maps in RoC was that time was of the essence, and Escape had never been officially released at CD-ROM.com, and is still not at idgames to this day. I probably have this mapset on a currently inaccessible Mac HD.

If you ever get your hands on it, please share! :)

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I'm back, time to play Steve D's baby :P
Playing with pr-boom plus, default complevel and settings

MAP01 - “Dropoff” by Rob Berkowitz
Computer textures as the major wall texture, interesting. The architecture was bland but reasonably functional and served a purpose. The red key trap was nice. The rest of the map, not so keen, the going back to the start part was a little irritating but the map is small enough so it's not much of an issue, it could have been marked at the start though. The final part was a little boring and one of the platforms did not work for some reason. No bother though.

MAP02 - “Outpost 27” by Antoni Chan
Cramped and small circular map with a central area with located exit. The cramped conditions at least make the hell knights a threat. I died once in the room with 3 chaingunners because I got caught out and then autoaim thought a wall was higher priority than the chaingunner in my face :P
Yet again it's an all right map.

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Looks like it's July 3rd on the other side of the IDL. ;)

Map03 – Mars Base Alpha by Clint Sago and Rob Berkowitz – Kills – 100, Items – 0, Secret – 100. Time 10:37. End Health 50, Armor 22. Death Count - Zero

Mapper History

I’ve already discussed Rob Berkowitz, and sadly, I have almost zero knowledge about Clint Sago. I think I got one or two emails from him, the first acknowledging that I made the team, and then a word or two about what became Map09. He liked it. ;D But on the basis of this map – and I have no idea which parts he made and which were made by Rob – and all the other graphics work he did for the project, the guy had some talent.

Map Commentary

What a sweet map. The difficulty is ramped up a bit thanks to all the crossfires, with plenty of Brnsmal1 and Brnsmalc textures to obscure your enemies. I find it a really fun romp since you have to keep turning around, shooting like crazy – at least if you play kamikaze-style like I do. This is a map where you can get killed if you’re not careful, and word to the wise for continuous players, keep your health up towards the end, because you want to exit this map in good shape. Seriously. I didn’t, alas. ;D

I like the bloody ceiling work and the overall metal look, and the teleporter pit looks really cool with its Dooryel2 columns. I always liked the thick Doorblu columns in the blue key area, too, but on this play, I kept accidentally stepping onto the teleporter, which slowed me down a bit.

The Chaingunner in the pit by the key doors was a nice touch. You can lose a chunk of health if you don’t see him in time.

The one thing I objected to was the columns at the end which fenced off the Pinkies and Hell Knights so they can’t come right at you. I don’t remember if they were always there or added later to keep the difficulty curve within bounds. There’s no need to even fight them unless you want 100% Kills.

Overall, I think this is a very nice-looking map with fun gameplay and the type of logical design I always expect from Rob Berkowitz.

BTW, the reason I exited at 50% health was because I made a mistake near the end and got blasted by a hitscanner. And there wasn't any health left. I decided not to replay the map, and just face the music in Map04, because I figured it might be fun to start that one at low health. Yeah, masochism! ;D

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Map02 - Outpost 27 100% Kills|100% Items|100% Secret - 05:02
Health 100 - Armor 96 | 0 Deaths

This map starts out with a much more unique aesthetic than the last. The tight, strangely shaped rooms make the map immediately more interesting, and the mid-tier monsters pump up the difficulty a bit, too. I liked the trap in the spectre room where the imps come out at you from all around. It forces the player to think fast and keep moving, rather than limiting them to door-centric peek-a-boo. That brings me to one of the better points of this map: the fights were well choreographed, keeping the action moving throughout. I have to criticize the overabundance of health and armor, however. There's just too damn much!

The trek through the various rooms felt more like a journey than the last map, despite being in a much smaller space, as each room had character and a sense of place to it. Most of the battles were a tad lackluster, but they were at least unique. I would, however, have preferred a little less texture schizophrenia as, while it helped keep that sense of location, it felt disjointed. The architecture and layout would have sufficed in that department.

All in all, I liked this map better than the last, flaws and all.

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Map 02: Outpost 27

Short and small map. A weird mess of textures visually, every room is stylized differently. Still, I like it better than the uniform grayness of Map 01. Layout's more interesting as well although at certain points the lack of room gets a bit annoying. Agree that the secrets are really pointless in this map, there's enough health and ammo in the non-secret areas to go by handily even if you take a beating or two along the way and the invisibilities are more like hindrances than aids with HK's and imps around so there's really no incentive to pick them. Imp ambush is probably the highlight of the map, did not expect it and ended up cornered and burned in my initial playthrough. After that it was pretty smooth sailing. The berserk fist got it's fair share of the kills and I even tried to do a Tyson run for the laughs after a few max finishes. Didn't manage to finish though since the start is pretty merciless if playing aggressively and the one time I got through the tough parts I died stupidly just before the central area. The fastest of the handful of maxed finishes was 2:01. I'd say it's an alright map all in all, nothing very memorable but nothing offensive either. 3/5 is probably a fitting rating.

Edit: Well I managed to Tyson this in 3:34 just now :p

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@Memfis

Thanks for another nice demo, very aggressive play. I'll have to try playing that map fast sometime. 5 minutes should be achievable.

Memfis said:

If you ever get your hands on it, please share! :)


Will do. My current plan is to look for a SCSI to USB adapter. That or a SCSI card, though SCSI termination issues might be a pain. I'll also need an app like MacDrive, or even a really cheap Mac with a CD or DVD burner. The drive from my old PowerMac clone is only 1 GB. That was the shit in '95! ;D

BTW, I looked at all of Antoni's maps in DB2, and only Map 17, "No Escape" [heh!] is from Escape.wad.

There's another old Mac wad I haven't released yet. It's Thy Wrath Unleashed!, a 3-map set by Matthew Phillips, which he created in 1997. I playtested it for him and complained that in the Hell maps every floor was damaging, even wood. He replied that, logically, in Hell everything would burn you. I was not swayed by his argument, and asked if I could release a version where damaging floors were limited to the traditional ones. He said I could, but I never got around to it because I kept correcting some of his map errors in Hellmaker. Long story short, I plan to ask Ty about it real soon, to see if I can upload both versions of the WAD in one file. I think the maps are worth the trouble, with some very cool Hell architecture for the time, and a lot of enemies.

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MAP03 - “Mars Base Alpha” by Clint Sago and Rob Berkowitz Demo

Nice map, good for pistol starting. The rooms behind the red and blue key doors were cramped. but other than that a fairly decent map.

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Demon of the Well said:

but getting through something like Stardate 20X6 on just a keyboard?


The best advantage the mouse has is its turning speed, which actually factors in as essential in only a few areas IMO (specifically, firing at archviles and turning around to look for cover). Most of the fights had similar progression to them, although I'll admit I can't pull them off with as much finesse as some of you guys. Also, revenants are more dangerous to us 'boarders since we're far less nimble at dodging the homing rockets, actually strafing & turning in a similar arc to the rockets themselves.

Steve should be commended however as he's the only player I know that chooses to walk in Doom. I couldn't imagine not moving like a fighter jet at al times.

MAP03: The third map has a lot of opportunities to be fierce but plays it relatively safe. On the whole it feels unfortunately unremarkable for me, as I’m struggling to come up with things to say about it… I really liked the look of the final room as the white ZIMMER texture being used at unexpected times is always delightful, but thanks to pillars the hell knights could barely fight me which led to a disappointing finale. That’s about it for my thoughts.

SteveD said:

I playtested it for him and complained that in the Hell maps every floor was damaging, even wood. He replied that, logically, in Hell everything would burn you.


lmao now there's a clever mapper

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Steve: To get into the big purple-floored red key arena in Stardate's map 06, look for a switch in an alcove near the winding spire with armor at the top (in the room in the southeast corner of the main structure, ignoring the outlying blue key towers). This switch opens some monster closets at ground level--inside the closet that is nearest to you when you flip the switch is another switch, which lowers the bars blocking off the red key battleground.

Map 03 -- Mars Base Alpha - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Things get a bit more violent here--and I ain't complaining! After some more first round zombiepunching, I get tooled up with some standard armament and a pile of ammo, and jump down into the first of several scrappy gunfights.

Actually, it occurs to me that saying it's the 'first of several' isn't quite right--most of the level is rather fast-paced (at least it is the way I play), and so that initial skirmish is more like the first section of a single running gunbattle that continues through the main hall and the nukage holding tank, up 'til the point where the red keycard is acquired (those clumsy UAC interns are always losing these things in the most inconvenient of places). Unlike Memfis, I used the chaingun quite a lot here, but either of the two shotguns would've been fine as well--there are plenty of both shells and bullets, so you can take your pick, which is cool. After getting that first key things slow down quite a bit: the theme of the second half of the map seems to be monsters that can't get at you--imps in cages, hell knights in cages, demons and knights behind some strangely out of place rock formations that essentially function as cages--which is much less exciting. I do like the opportunity to use a casually-placed chainsaw on some demons, though.

The map does the job on the aesthetic front, I guess. The usage of a lot of dark, grimy, gritty textures in combination with more dark/shadowy light contrast than either of the previous two maps gives the installation a decidedly dilapidated feel, like it's a purely practical structure, as opposed to one the UAC brass would ever be liable to tour. It does commit a minor peeve of mine in its usage of the colored skull keymarkers in an otherwise non-Hellified earthly setting, but this is more a personal neurosis than a real criticism, I suppose--not like I even batted an eyelash at the arcane torches in the main hall. Actually, I guess some of the extraneous red detailing Memfis mentioned might be taken as an argument that the base IS a bit Hellified, although when I saw it struck as more 'they just felt like using that texture' than 'they were trying to depict Hell's affect on the place.'

While the main part of the map is a fun, unpretentious fight, the later parts let it down a bit. Still, hardly an unpalatable experience.

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