The New Oldstuff Chronicles #6

After to great review threads from Black Void it's time for me to post new part to TNOC. This time I have 23 new reviews for you.

Warcade5 Sam Ketner 85 %

Good looking quite open map. Good ammo placement and some good challenge too. Uh, what can I say anymore, go play it if you haven't already.

Warcade4 Sam Ketner 75 %

This map looks quite good too but I din't like the ammo placement. I had really hard time beating that final archvile because I ran out of ammo. If you have enough ammo it's pretty easy though because there's plenty of health, even too much maybe. My brother here says that it was easy even on UV and there was enough ammo for him. I played on HMP. Well, try out and make up your own opinion.

Warcade3 Sam Ketner 68 %

This one is far too easy if the previous was quite hard. There are invisibilities put everywhere to annoy you when fighting agains projectile-firing monsters. The problem is that there are too few monsters and in too easy places. It doesn't look as good as the previous two of warcade series but quite nice still. Texturing is good but architecture is a bit simple.

Warcade2 Sam Ketner 70 %

Looking good just as the rest of the warcade series, maybe the best architecture in my opinion but again too easy. In many areas there are just a few monsters in very easy places. I had some problems with the final elevator too: I went up with it and accidentally came down again. After coming down I couldn't get up and I had to take load game.

Warcade1 Sam Ketner 58 %

Well, this wasn't too easy but it certainly wasn't fun either. Lots of imps and revenants firing from all sides and oftern there is no cover. Architecture didn't look very good either with huge areas and only little detail. Sometimes you have to search the effect after activating a switch.

Waotd Joseph J. Pecoraro 0 %

I never finished this, the reason was that it includes my number one of most hated newbie-things: the teleport maze! >:-( And it even has another that goes very high on the charts: A huge area with darkness 0. These to make it almost unplayable. The most annoying part is that in the place where the teleport maze is you could walk around it but the author has made the linedefs impassable. If those two would be fixed this could get maybe 20 % from me because it wasn't too easy.

Walzhaus ? 10 %

A normal house level. This time you start inside the house from the second floor and teleport as usually to the first floor. The house doesn't look good but at least it has some furniture inside. The house itself is kinda useless because there are no monsters inside it and once you get outside to kill the massive hoard of monsters there's no need to get back inside. The new textures are ugly by the way. You get a plasma rifle and plenty of ammo to it as usual.

Walk Alex Welikanov & Ilya Britvich 70 %

This map has great potential, but it fails in some areas. Most of the map looks pretty good and is well detailed and that was no problem, but it did have some problems with monster placement. There are often few monsters but placed annoyngly. For example one cacodemon was placed in the bottom of a small and deep hole. There was no way but to wait for it to come up. Nazis are nearly always a sign of a newbie and they dont fit in this level either, and the map has some keens too, though they have an important role in it. There are some neat graphical tricks and for example invisible floors are often used, in one part they were not used in a good way though: there was a maze built of invisible stairs. It wasn't very hard to find the way but it was still annoying. Difficulty was good at the start but it got too easy when you got the plasma rifle. Good level worth a try still even with the few mistakes. Oh, and it had a moody music replacement too.

Wahwah Robert Dutton 80 %

This level is good. According to the text file it is the authors first release, but it certainly doesn't look like it. It's not overdetailed or anything but looks nonetheless: textures are well chosen and there are no too big arenas. What I most liked about the wad was the challenge and monster placement. Some of the pain elementals were annoying though, but not that bad. There was maybe a little too much ammo but it was nothing serious.

Wads_2 Michael Hafen 5 %

Hmm, two wads in one zip. Anyway, the other wad has... uh, I don't remember anymore, well a few levels and the other one three one being the same as in the other wad. Most of the levels are different kind of mazes mainly pistol guys and shotgun guys thrown in. They are easy, the areas are huge and you can complete them in a matter of seconds if you are lucky, which I lyckily was in most of the levels ;) The points come from the fact that the author spared me from teleport maze :)

Wad04 Robert Dudley 40 %

The level is quite simple looking but there are some good looking places too. Even lightning effects has been made to some parts of the map. What I din't like is the amount of monsters: it just looks stupid to me if a long hallway is full of monsters, even worse if they are all same type of monsters like in this one. It was quite easy too, but there wasn't too much ammo.

Wacky Chad Raeside 10 %

Just another newbie wad with simple architecture and lots of weird texture choises. It wasn't as easy as they usually are, but not hard either. The starting room looked especially ugly because it was way too tall.

W7 Albert Lam 45 %

This pretty much explains the gameplay of these to levels:
1. Kill all the monsters firing you from the sides and the center of the arena
2. Then explain the effect of the switches (and find a keycard)
3. Find a teleport and proceed to the next arena
Starts to get boring fast I think. Not very well detailed and texturing is quite unintresting. Not too easy though.

Vs2 SillySft 35 %

An easy small and boring level. I spent quite a lot of time trying to find a way and found it by opening a door that had no door texture, I wish they would stop doing that.

Voyager Christian Hansen 80 %

Very good looking spaceship level though some of the textures could have been better chosen. There's no single bullet too much to waste so you gotta be really careful when using ammo. I was about to run out of ammo when fighting with the pain elementals, but lyckily survived. I don' t think it's very nice if you have to fight them with your fists... Cool level that would need just a few more work on ammo placement and texturing.

Voyage1 Christian Hansen 87 %

This is a modified version of the voyager wad. Most of the changes are to the better: there is now more ammo, so there is no need to leave a bigger monster alive and pain elementals aren't annoying anymore, the starting location is different, and new rooms has been added. I didn't, however, find the adding of ashwall textures a good idea. It took a long time for me to realize that they are supposed to make the ship feel wreched. Well, improving the gameplay should be the main target when doing changes to a level and in this wad it really is better.

Voodoo Patrick Davey 20 %

This wad features the voodoo effect. It's just a reqular newbie level with huge rooms, and megaspheres and soulspheres that make the gameplay too easy. It has some orginality though because of the voodoo players in it. Most of the voodoo players are placed in cages to the sides or the center of the rooms, but there is actually quite poor chances that the monsters or you yourself would hit them. And when most of the monsters are pistol guys there isn't much danger in it anyway... The only well placed voodoo player was placed to the end of the level. I must say that i'm happy that most of the newbies don't know about this feature :)

Volcano Nik Pilkington 0 %

The idea of volcano isn't that bad, unfortunately this wad sucks and it couldn't be much worse. The volcano is huge, there is just a few monsters, one mancubus and a few pistol guys, and enough ammo to kill thousand times more monsters. And there are couple of elevators that don't look like elevators.

Volatile Broderick Arneson 80 %

It's funny how you can usually tell from the starting room if the wad is worth playing :) This level is well detailed and has lightning effects too. It's also fun to play, though you can easily run out of ammo, 100 % kills would be really hard, unless I left a secret somewhere. I especially liked the textures chosen for each area. They fit very well together.

Voidshp2 Kevin McGrail 35 %

Well, in this wad you can't tell from the starting room if it's a good level. When I first saw it, I was thinking about a score of 70 %, but when I played futher the score was gradually dropping. Most of the level looks quite good, though the texture choises were too colorful and dirty for my eyes. The problem is that there are many annoying parts in the level and few good. There's a maze made from 64*64 floortiles that are different heights, and so little that you can't see if you can walk on the next tile or not. There are some doors that has same kind of texture as the wall around, and the monster placement is mostly annoying. In one part you have to fight agains pain elemental, revenant, archvile and cacodemon and that are in the next room you yourself being in a small tunnel leading to the room with no room to dodge. Not fun.

Vista ? 23 %

This is supposed to have maps 1-8. but there was 9 too, and I couldn't get the first map work. The levels are quite unlinear and in most of the maps you don't even need to go to over half of the map. Some parts of the maps look quite good but mostly they look ugly. I was going to say that ammo placement was tight but I noticed in the map09 that I had gotten plasma rifle in some of the maps and I had 600 bullets in it, so I don't know about that anymore...

Visor1 John Rosencutter 15 %

This level was torture! It reminded me from the chasm in Doom2 a lot, so if you liked that level you could like this too ;) There is a huge room and tiny walkway going through it. The worst thing is that there are a couple of pain elementals and a few cacodemons in the room and no ammo to kill them, so you have to just ignore them. When I finally reach the other end and got the blue key I though it was finally over, but found out that you need to go back the same way! I still gave some points, but I don't remember the reason anymore :)

Virgin Brian James Clever 69 %

Again a map that has potential to be much better. The level looks good, I liked the monster placement and the traps, and it had originality too. Unfortunately it is too hard to find the way again. After half and hour trying to find a way to lower the floor of the sector where the red key was I finally gave up and cheated. After that came an annoying part that had monsters firing through the wall, and exit was in a place you could have never known for it to be. There was a little too much ammo too, mainly for pulse rifle, and too much health.

And the one who gets today's TNOC award is... Voyage1 by Christian Hansen, Concrats!

Nice Reviews that's all I have to say

Were you in a good mood today or are these good wads?

Several of them are Christian Hansen's, and his maps a usually pretty neat.

Contrary to popular belief there are, in fact, good wads to find in /idgames.

Yep, that's certainly true. I trawled through the DooM 1 wads on /idgames a few years ago and found tons of good ones, all of which I still have today.

(I've also done this with Heretic and Hexen, but not DooM 2 for some reason)

good work

Jolly good time Ol' Chap, bring in the cheerios well, no?

Good job Doomer, expect me to be releasing more levels very soon - until then, keep up the good work - you people should have pity for us, it's a harder job than you think... :-P

Heh, nice job, keep up the good work :)

Keep up the good reviewing there, D4e.


Hmmm, that volcano map, suddenly gives me an idea. Time to rip some heretic wallls... :)

DOOM Anomaly said:

Jolly good time Ol' Chap, bring in the cheerios well, no?

No. Make it Cap'n Crunch, and you'll have a friend for life.