The /newstuff Chronicles #251

Heyho and welcome to NEWSTUFF!

Your host for today is your most beloved BastetFurry and I am pleased to present you the newest stuff that our fellow Doomers thought of.
We have some very nice releases and some bad ones, the good ones overweighting.

As Bloodshedder told me I ignored the robocop release. For the one who uploads this every week, upload it when its done, damnit!

If I missed someone, sorry, but nobody seems to clean up the newstuff dir and I was a bit puzzled at what is new and what has been rated.
Be easy with me, it's the first time I do something like this.

Yours, BastetFurry

Bloodshedder sez: Looks like he forgot Suspended in Dusk. Don't worry, we'll get this reviewed eventually.

• Cybertronic Water Closet - ToiletMaster
  doom.exe - Solo Play - 21857 bytes - (img) (img)
  Bad thing first.
  This release by "ToiletMaster" would have been acceptable in the beginnings of '94 but today it's utterly crap.
  Big room that should resemble a toilet with a big HOM that should simulate a mirror.
  
  Waste of bytes, avoid!
  
  Rating: 1 of 10
  
  
• 'Divine Malice' Weapons Mod - Mike 'Inuyasha_989' Kasten
  ZDoom - Solo Play - 580120 bytes - (img) (img) (img)
  A chainsaw that can be turnd off, a better pistol, a realistic automatic rifle with grenade launcher, icebeam and normal beam + rockets from Metroid, the Unmaker, some sort of stupid spreadshoot energy cannon, tripmines and an automatic turret for your arsenal.
  I especially liked the two weapons out of Samus Aran's arsenal, especial the ice beam. Sadly the monsters won't wake up after unfreezing but shatter to pieces, but you still can use them as stairs.
  The spread cannon just sucks and the graphics are ripped from Shadow Warrior, bleh.
  The rest ranges from acceptable to very good, i hope to see some of these in next releases as it would be a waste of work otherwise. ;)
  
  Definitely worth a look!
  
  Rating: 7 of 10
  
  
• Italian DooM - Episodio 1 - The Italian Team (Ismaele, Toranaga and Buzzbomber)
  ZDoom - Solo Play - 4452369 bytes - (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img)
  Two thumbs up! Good architecture, nice puzzles and a thorough balance, at least for me ;)
  You are in a space station that is under attack by the demons. You need to recover a vessel that has been docked to that station and get your ass to the destination of that planet, an overrun UAC base.
  So you get something you don't get often, story, not just dull Blamm-Blamm. Fine for me, more of this.
  Even if this release is named Italian Doom, all texts are in English. For reviewing it I just browsed trough this, but I will play it toroughly with more time in my back, promised!
  The only minus this map gets is that it uses ripped graphics from various games, under these one I dislike... Duke Nukehimself 3D.
  
  Download! Play! Enjoy!
  
  Rating: 7.5 of 10
  
  
• Still Kickin' - Kurt Kessler
  Limit Removing - Solo Play - 533253 bytes - (img) (img)
  The legend strikes again with a fabulous, too hard for me, release.
  It wouldn't been so great with stock textures, but Kurt gives our old beloved game a fresh look with his self-made textures. The map layout is great and there are enough suprises. As you see on the second screeny I died only some meters into the building after I survived a rather large outdoor area, six knights in a cramped room were too much ;)
  
  Play it for yourself and train your skills on this, I will do!
  
  Rating: 10 of 10
  
  
• Count of all Official Secrets in commercial Doom games - Ledmeister
  Text File/FAQ - n/a - 11629 bytes
  A list of all Doom games and the maximum secret percentage you can reach.
  Not that interesting if you ask me.
  
  Rating: 3 of 10
  
  
• Onslaught Reborn Teaser - Luke "Spike" Cama
  ZDaemon - Deathmatch - 299632 bytes - (img)
  From Spike comes this rather small deathmatch map.
  Looks nice but I am no fan of crowded places.
  And the custom sounds in this release are awful.
  And by the way, when did newstuff start to accept teasers/betas? ;)
  
  Have a look if you are interested in deathmatching over zDaemon but otherwise it would be a waste of bandwidth and your time.
  
  Rating: 5 of 10
  
  
• Scientist 2 - Scientist
  doom2.exe - Solo Play - 4275801 bytes - (img) (img) (img)
  Very nice mapset that uses the vanilla binary to its extent.
  The first 11 maps are nothing new, they are found in sci.wad too.
  The later maps are good in quality and i like them. Again I just browsed through them but this will be played too!
  
  Download and enjoy! Skip to MAP12 if you know sci.wad.
  
  Rating: 6 of 10
  
  
• CAVES of DEAD - stricke
  Limit Removing - Deathmatch - 1215082 bytes - (img) (img) (img)
  Three deathmatch levels with an egypt motif in this release by stricke.
  A bit bland but the layout seems playable.
  
  Download if you need a new playground but otherwise leave it.
  
  Rating: 5 of 10
  
  
• Total Control - Dutch Devil
  ZDoom - Solo Play - 2275844 bytes - (img) (img)
  Nice new release by Dutch Devil, if you ever happen to be in Essen (the one in NRW) I owe you a beer for this one!
  
  No, this is not only nice, it's a great work by him and it's definitly a must play. Good usage of the scripting engine, very much eye candy, a very nice tune and well balanced. More of this!
  
  Download! Play! Enjoy! Play again!!!
  
  Rating: 10 of 10
  
  
• Wrath - Jacob H. Orloff
  ZDoom - Solo Play - 73268 bytes - (img)
  A rather bland and somewhat easy release for zDoom by Jacob.
  What does it say about the appearance of crates and the length you have to play to see them?
  
  Download if you are bored.
  
  Rating: 3 of 10
  
  
• Bloodlust - Wallace
  Skulltag - Deathmatch - 8563 bytes - (img)
  Wallace, should this be a joke or what?
  Simplest architecture, just a Y placed into an editor.
  
  Avoid!
  
  Rating: 2 of 10
  
  
• Europe - DooMknight
  Limit Removing - Solo Play - 1013234 bytes - (img) (img)
  This is huge. And I mean it!
  You have got a large complex and a large city full of monsters for your pleasure. There are 1725 monsters, according to "kill monsters" on this map.
  With more detail in all the hallways this could even been a 10 but besides the city the hallways on the first part of the map are a bit dull.
  And fix that damn maphole bug in the "bridge out" area! Try another nodebuilder.
  
  Nice release, grab it if you want to spend some hours inside this.
  Kudos to the one who tries a 100% speedrun.
  
  Rating: 7 of 10
  
  
• Mountain Base - PunchyFox
  No Engine Stated - Solo Play - 130144 bytes - (img) (img)
  Nice release if this is supposed to be a beginner release, could use some less grid usage but otherwise its playable. A bit short for my taste.
  And next time use a better sky texture.
  
  Download if you are bored.
  
  Rating: 5 of 10
  
  

This concludes this weeks newstuff.
Enough for you all to play the whole week till next newstuff.

Bastet off playing Total Control!

fp bitches
cool beans. should be a good week.
edit: dude... divine malice is win.

SP!

Decent lot this week bar the bog standard wad, though missing SID is disappointing.

I recommend playing everything rated above 4.

Here I'll review sid: Best wad ever created. 4 maps with amazing layouts and some great texture and gameplay workage. Not too challenging, not too easy. A must play for all doomers, and the vanillaocity gives you no excuse but to load it up in your favorite port and give the 4 maps a go. Wad of the year material. If you liked this, also try this wad's lost level, ruma.wad.

Epyo said:

Here I'll review sid: Best wad ever created.

Am I really the only one who didn't like it? :?

Ops, did i forgot it?
Ash over me, wasnt by intention :-(
As said, someone should clean the newstuff dir -.-

Graf Zahl said:

Am I really the only one who didn't like it? :?

probably

Graf Zahl said:

Am I really the only one who didn't like it? :?

It's possible not to like SID??

Also, it looks like the Weapons Resource Wad was forgotten as well. :/

DomRem said:

It's possible not to like SID??

Hmm... SID.... its coming out of my C128D, attached to my Yamaha Amplifier, right now with a MMC64 full of them ^.^

DomRem said:
Also, it looks like the Weapons Resource Wad was forgotten as well. :/ [/B]

I did a weapon wad o.O
Or do you mean another one?

Bastet Furry said:

I did a weapon wad o.O
Or do you mean another one?

Yes, I mean wrw.zip.

Europe getting almost the same rating as Italian Doom is weak, really weak. Have you even played Europe for real? That is the most unbalanced map I have seen recently. Health is at an all time low and hitscan enemies are everywhere. Tedious and boring.

Italian Doom gets minus points for using GFX from games i dont like.

I like Europe, its slow because of these Hitscan Monsters but remeber, you can provoke infights ;)

And as always, everybody has a different taste and all reviews are subjective.
I remember a test about a wargame, ASM gave it a 1.2 of 10 and PowerPlay gave it 82%. Go figure.

Italian Doom gets minus points for using GFX from games i dont like.

Wow. Just wow.

Guess I'll have to get used to /newstuff reviews.

SiD probably needs no review... it's easily one of the top 5 levels made this year. Best EVER... probably not, but good none the less.

I'm pretty fine with most of your reviews, but yea, Italian Doom doesn't get justice here.

Not only was a great amount of detail and work put into this particular wad, and good enough scripting to make it interesting for a virtually burnt out Doom player, but it featured a decent amount of levels with an actual story connecting the two. 8.5-9.5 only seems fair to me.

Europe, I played it for a little, but huge maps coupled with the insane number of monsters listed just didn't do it for me, would have preferred a RTC-like approach where the level was divided up (maybe 3-5 separate maps), but it was very well designed and layed out for the 5 minutes i played it so...whatever, personal preference in play there.

Anyway, I like how you put the ratings at the bottom, notice a lot of reviewers don't do that, and I was satisfied with the majority of the wads, so keep up the good work blood.

I really have to play this SiD...

Bastet Furry said:

Italian Doom gets minus points for using GFX from games i dont like.

I like Europe, its slow because of these Hitscan Monsters but remeber, you can provoke infights ;)

And as always, everybody has a different taste and all reviews are subjective.
I remember a test about a wargame, ASM gave it a 1.2 of 10 and PowerPlay gave it 82%. Go figure.

ASM had some very strange ratings on occasion. Their review of DOOM 2 was not exactly glowing, either - they complained that there was pretty much nothing new and interesting that wasn't already in DOOM 1, but failed to realise that the things that *were* new in DOOM 2 did round out DOOM in a way that I think contributed significantly to its popularity and long-term play value (would we still be here on doomworld today if all that had been released was DOOM 1? Maybe, but I doubt it).

On a side note, BTW, "overweighting" is not an English word. What you probably mean is "the good maps are outweighing the bad ones". :)

U R CRZY to give Europe a higher score than Mountain Base. Think about it.

Just forget the ratings, there's a reason they aren't normally used.

No Venom?

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=13860


This is the second time one of my WADs was left out of /newstuff but still put in the archive.

Any chance of this being reviewed for /newstuff?

Sorry for Wrath. I thought it was good, I guess I should have tossed it.

--SlatheDoomer

Bastet Furry said:

As said, someone should clean the newstuff dir -.-

Yeah, that was a bit of a problem because they were uploaded all through September but just got reviewed, but I figured you would just look at #250 for your list of what not to do.

The thing is, everything in there was first reviewed last week, so if I'd cleaned it out within the "correct" 10 days since upload, it all would have been gone already when the reviews went up.

Now that you've done #251, I'll remove the ones from last week and put the automatic deletion process back in next week. Since next week is all "classic" wads, and I'm re-dating them to a current date, everything will/should start being normal again after that.

Finally.

What the bloody fuck. Does every reviewer ignore my wads? They've been in there for almost three weeks now.

Scientist 2 is outstanding. A must-play wad, and one of the best this year so far. Not too tough on UV, but plenty of interesting and varied battles and challenges. The only thing I don't like is the fact that several of the weapon graphics are off-centre.

no doomuc?

and i love the cybertronic water closet

Bloodshedder said:

Europe - DooMknight
Limit Removing - Solo Play - 1013234 bytes - [
With more detail in all the hallways this could even been a 10

Rating: 7 of 10

You really are CRZY. If you think the answer to every shoot-em-up map ever created is more detail then I'm seriously worried.

Aaah. It is so very good to see the regular newstuff back again. Must cuddle with my new WAD files now. Mmmmhm.

Why are those screenshots always so fucking black. Is the Gamma Correction button so hard to find on your photopaintshopwhateveryouusepro?

PaintShopPro, if you mind, and they are very good on my LCD.
Only drawback, they where created from 1280x1024 shoots and then downgraded to 640x512.
Even if this LCD displays good pictures, the problems he has with small resolutions wants me to trow him outside the window sometimes. (acer AL1713, if someone wants to know what beast to avoid) I regret that buy :-/
Interetinlgy he only makes these problems when using softwarerenders.....

gargoylol said:

and i love the cybertronic water closet

You are strange o.o
But as said by myself, everyone has his own taste ;)

Now he knows till next time.

Some very good stuff this week. Best /newstuff in ages!

Anyone notice the Europe link is broken? :O