The DWmegawad Club plays: Super Mayhem 17

[rehelekretep]

map13 fda

uv / pistol starts / no saves / glboom+

this one felt really odd - the layout is strange (maybe Mario location references?) and i ended up with no ammo to attack the cybers and viles at the end so maybe i missed some pretty mandatory secrets? still fun of course.

[rehelekretep]

map14 fda

uv / pistol starts / no saves / glboom+

what a marvellous change of pace - a nasty hunt through a labyrinth with revs and viles looking to slap and immolate you! the only things i didnt like here was the pushing steps (what is the trick here - i could barely get up them!) and the blocking lines at the end which i guess Oblivion felt were needed but i ended up blocking myself in and had to sort of watch the barons and PEs helplessly kill themselves until i could force my way back out again.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP15: Ziegenhaus

 

Goat House?  It's a name that leaves me expecting a preponderance of goat-headed nobles here.  And is that the background music to the town of Zozo from Final Fantasy VI?  It's rather fitting here, in this demented little town of devious traps and murderous monsters, lit by scourging flashes of lightning that momentarily turn the darkened sky white.

 

There's an interesting design choice made early on here to provide the player with the rocket launcher and plasma gun, along with reasonably abundant ammo for each, plus (at least on difficulities through Hurt Me Plenty) a chaingun, but no shotguns or shells, placing the focus squarely on big monsters and the big guns needed to combat them.  What this meant for me was a lot of moments when I'd be swaggering along with my rocket launcher at the ready, only to have a group of monsters unleashed in my face at far too close a range for comfort, before I eventually learned that this was the sort of map where the plasma rifle made for a better default weapon.  There are plenty of intriguing areas and encounters to be found here, and the whole of it is remarkably atmospheric considering the asset pack in use; I definitely felt this was one of the strongest maps in the WAD so far, even if I ended up hurrying to the exit without finding all the secrets and unlocking the path to the secret exit.

[tmorrow]

56 minutes ago, rehelekretep said:

utterly obnoxious map, hated it - specifically the friction and wind effects, the combo of which in the ice caverns made me lose my shit like no other map has done for quite some time.

 

I'm sorry you had so much trouble with those environmental hazards @rehelekretep. Fortunately they are used rarely throughout the wad. Only map12-14 and map22 has them. In map13-14,22 it's just slippery floors but none near fatal ledges. Map22 is the most challenging with an ice climb with enemies taking pot shots at you along the way.

[tmorrow]

map16: skyward vivarium, by Pinchy
zdoom2.8.1, uvmax, pistol start, no saves, first time played

Vivarium is an enclosed area for raising plants or animals. This place must be Pinchy's monster vivarium, an ideal environment for all kinds of enemies.

The starting room is way too hot to handle with the feeble chaingun pickup so you'll want to blast your way out either east or west where the low tier enemies can be more easily mown down. Duck into the south area and steal the archviles armor, you need it more than he does. Then head to the north to pick up your trusty super shotgun.

After the hectic start there are many viable paths. You need to pick up the red and yellow keys and perform the routine mop up all around the outside. Note that ammo is tight and you may need to leave some of the revenants writhing on their tiny ramparts while you head back to the start and then into the northern room with the twin columns of lava pouring down from the ceiling. That can't be good!

Aww look, 2 cylindrical containers of lovely plants! Knowing Pinchy's maps, those are probably baby, man eating triffids growing in there.

Pick up the blue key and take a trip downstairs to make peace among a vicious rabble of imps, chaingunners, shotgunguys and spectres before opening the door to the exit guarded by 2 archviles. Don't let those speedy critters get the drop on you and undo all your good work by rezzing the entire room.

[rehelekretep]

1 hour ago, tmorrow said:

 

I'm sorry you had so much trouble with those environmental hazards @rehelekretep. Fortunately they are used rarely throughout the wad. Only map12-14 and map22 has them. In map13-14,22 it's just slippery floors but none near fatal ledges. Map22 is the most challenging with an ice climb with enemies taking pot shots at you along the way.

[tmorrow]

I must admit @rehelekretep, my map22 runs resembled that scene for a while during the ice climb, although in my case there was more frothing at the mouth.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP15: Ziegenhaus

100% kills, 7/8 secrets

 

I admittedly had to play this one in chunks as it wore on me, not sure if the combat was really that stressful or just the combination of tough combat + puzzles using different parts of my brain? I dunno. The combat here is predicated on rocket launcher and plasma gun versus mostly the dangerous mid-tier Doom II monsters (revs, AVs, some mancs/trons) which makes combat very much do-or-die, especially since you'll be lacking armor for most of the map. Lots of tight corridors and lots of vertical parts (and moving floors) as well, which gives you plenty of opportunities to Good At Doom yourself with the rocket launcher. Ammo can also be somewhat tight (especially if you're not finding secrets) which may force you to use the RL more than you'd like.

 

The cyber fight drove me nuts at first because they just move around much too fast to hit for long, leading to a lot of wasted ammo. I figured something had to be done with blocking teleports, so I tried it out (expecting it to maybe let me block one cyber, locking him in place so I could kill him?) but instead what happened somehow was both cybers walked off the pads. Not sure if that was intended or not, but, it let me kill them much more easily.

 

Quite the puzzler too, and I do dig all the moving walls and stuff (with the exception of how painful they could make the combat). Also a lot of different ways to approach fights, often you can explore elsewhere to find a better vantage point to approach the baddies. Not too hard to find all the red coins once I had finally cleared everything out, though a couple of them seem to lack hints beyond looking at the automap and saying "well there has to be a secret door here somewhere because there's no other way to get in."

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP11: Aztec Ruins

21:13 | 100% Everything

This one was (mostly) some tricky fun. I dug pretty much all of the puzzles. Was definitely by the exit room; I knew it couldn't be over so soon, and sure enough it was a fakeout with a cyber demon! But after that I was expecting more (still showed I had like 90 guys left to kill!) and was shocked that the second exit switch wasn't fake. Some more poking around led me to the supershroom, then the red key. But where was the red door? Huh, well, I guess I'll check again on those health bonuses I couldn't reach earlier, and oh wait what's this? I was not expecting the large optional secret area to be a massive slaughter fight. I did terribly. Probably took me a couple dozen attempts just to not get absolutely obliterated right off the bat. Then I managed to gain a foothold, and...killed. Cue another couple dozen attempts. Another foothold. Done. And for what? Absolutely no reward. Thanks for literally nothing. 

 

MAP12: Cool Cool Shotgun

21:22 | 100% Everything

There's a lot to like in this map. Also a lot to absolutely loathe. The first time I found the blue key, I slid right down the stairs and out a window. Splat! And then realized I hadn't saved in five minutes or whatever. (Took a break for a while at that point.) The windy ledge with the waterfalls sucked. Platforming across a zigzag of icy pillars sucked. Avoiding thwomps on a windy icy ledge sucked. B-wings everywhere...didn't suck, but I had to go back and collect most of them after the fact because who really needed that much health for this map?

 

MAP13: Koopa Anomaly

19:54 | 100% Everything

The music here is great. Level's pretty fun, too. Not a whole lot else to say, though. I searched the longest time for the backpack secret, only to realize all I had to do was press the wall it was sitting on? C'mon, man.

[baja blast rd.]

Map 16: "Skyward Vivarium" by Pinchy

 

Really pleasant environment here, despite the brightness and vomit colors. Seems like it'd be fun to hang out in with -nomonsters, just running around the periphery or looking over into the sky. 

 

Played more conventionally, it's almost striking how obnoxiously tedious many of these monsters are to kill. There are seven revenants perched on the periphery. These revenants aren't much of a threat, and there is enough space for them to evade rockets, so you have to SSG them down, which is a snoozer. In the blue key room, there are two viles on the cylinders that run around freely, so if you want to kill them with rockets efficiently, you have to wait for them to start attacking. This room also has an oddly placed non-threat arachnotron and a useless pair of perched HKs and revenants that are particularly awkward to kill. The hitscan mobs and the two-vile fight at the end are fun, but much of the monster placement in this map strikes me as miscalculated. 

 

Thankfully there is often more than one way to pet a cat, and I found this map enjoyable to play speeding through it. It lends itself to that relatively well, thanks to the possibility of grabbing the yellow key from under the archvile and the light resistance elsewhere. The comedic lineup of zombies really shines this way. 

 

 

[Crusader No Regret]

Map 8: completed without saves  1/1 secret - 106/200 ending health/armor

 

     Found this approachable enough to keep trying until I beat it.  I found the tagged secret easily enough and also get a kick how there's an additional reward for those who stay observant even with all the tagged secrets found.  Spotted the distant ? black and just had to take a shot at it to see what happened.  Got a laugh from the staircase before the flagpole, how Marioesque.  Blcoks flinging out their rewards is a novel feature too and I enjoy the music choice which may have influenced a more positive impression.

 

     The key fight got me a time or two.  The pain elemental succeeds at being a pain.  If nothing else, it breaks my focus away from the chaingunners and revenants running amok.  In my winning attempt the fight drifted all around the map space as I ran from lost souls and revenant missiles.  Baited infights in the cavern before attempting the platform hopping.  Fell off many, many times trying to complete it.  Eventually made it and cleared out the few stragglers I couldn't reach from the outside.  Because of going for key first, by the time I had SSG and blue armor, there was one living enemy on the map.  200 armor, near full shells, bring it on.  The lone goomba trying to stop me is an enjoyable bit of humor.

 

Map 9: DNF

 

     Cruised through the main portion only running into danger because of trying to fight two revenants where the appeared instead of retreating.  Froze up at the teleporting archvile and was so discouraged, I'm unwilling to bring myself to attempt this again.  The full brightness of the map didn't bother me when playing through but now that I'm aware of it... yeah this could be much better with some light variation.  Even indoor and cavern areas being darker would do much to improve the atmosphere here.  Was using uniform lighting some sort of challenge?

[Poncho]

Map15: Ziegenhaus

Xaser's maps always polarise me; some can be good (Enigma Helix and Beneath a Festering Moon are pretty neat) and some are, honestly, rubbish (Abyss from D2TWID). This map can fall under the decent category. There are LOADS of Revenants, who are typically joined by Mancubi and Arch-Viles, so a lot of the combat can be challenging, especially with snipers in the town's higher stories. The secrets are very "Xaser-ish," which means you have to have a hawk's eye to find them. It's not too bad, actually. The Cyberdemon fight is much easier than the way I did it (you're supposed to stand on one of the teleporters at the back and "release" them, but I just BFG-ed them when they were close, and it seemed to work out). To get the secret exit, if I recall, you have to acquire all the red coins, get the blue key and go down a precarious-looking staircase to the exit portal. Not bad! In an additional note, there are actually only 2 areas that really told me this was a Xaser map: the triple Revenant pillars (that raise up before the Cyberdemon fortress) and the weird area where the floor lowers constantly.

 

Map31: Sinkysand Switchland

Not a difficult map in terms of combat, per se (there are only 28 Imps, all in easy-to-kill places), but the real difficulty comes in figuring out this monster. This took me a good 40 minutes to crack. I'll just say this: read tmorrow's description right here:

 

The overall map progression is something like this:

Open up the starting and middle areas.

Reach the pswitch.

Reach the red/blue teleporter paths.

Complete red/blue teleporter paths.

Find all the secrets.

Pass through the pyramid.

Reach the exit(s).

Optional, find the non official soul sphere secret.

 

Some basic but important observations:

There are 3 stairway puzzles to solve along the way, 2 via switches and one by actioning 3 blocks to raise to suitable heights.

There are 4 switches that identically toggle the raising/lowering of the red and blue walls that grant and deny you access to various areas.

There are 13 golden blocks that can be lowered, some of these are critical to progression.

 

Finding all 3 secrets does involve some backtracking.

As far as I know you can't get stuck, there's always a way to get back on course.

 

(Copied and pasted)

 

My personal opinion for this map is that, while I like the calm music and more relaxed style of gameplay, it's a tad too complicated. Though, I'll admit, figuring SOMETHING out in this map feels like finding the Holy bloody Grail. For what it's worth, an alright map.

Edited April 17, 2018 by Poncho

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP16: Skyward Vivarium

 

So, this one's pretty funky, with its symmetrical and largely rectilinear layout standing in contrast to the quirkier angles and environmental design of the preceding map just as its vibrant colours and lush atmosphere provide a breath of fresh air after the somewhat gloomy feel of the storm-lashed city streets and spooky mansion/castle interiors that have come before; you can almost smell the grass and trees here.  Silent teleporters create a nice room-under-room illusion too, but I feel this is a map that's more about its combat encounters, the flow of its gameplay, and in particular the delivery of weapons and supplies, which creates some interesting tactical problems with target prioritisation and picking the right tool for the job at hand.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP32 Return to the Birabuto Kingdom

 

That moment when despite its SML theme, the map past the nasty ass puzzle map turns out to be fairly normal. This one doesn't pull a lot of punches, but why should it? We can handle a straightforward, boring map after something that made me miserable. There's much more combat variety, with hitscanners coming back and mid-tiers in full season. And while linear, it proves to be an embracing map. Not much else to note here.

[Spectre01]

MAP08 - “The Oasis” by Eris Falling

Did you skip the YK, do all the platforming and get the SSG? Cool! Did you grab the key first and then jump off, triggering the trap? Hope you've got enough ammo to handle the Vile and PE with the shit guns you have! (I did, but it was not a fun experience the first time playing this map.) Otherwise it looks nice and that midi is always good.

[Spectre01]

MAP09 - “Curse of the Mummy’s Sister’s Something-Or-Other” by Impie

This was fun. I liked the shortcuts and coming back to the shoot-switch area to open various doors. Ammo seemed kind of tight, so I actually skipped killing the ledge enemies until having to fight them later. Probably punched out a 3rd of the map due to the above paranoia. The AV "boss fight" was neat.

[Spectre01]

MAP10 - “Shifting Sands” by Crunchynut44

Too much crap early on to simply clear with the shitgun/chaingun. I do wish these maps included a Plasma Rifle, which hasn't been seen since map05(?) at this point. Rockets are pretty damn sparse, which leads to way too much SSG'ing for my taste. For instance, you have nowhere near enough rockets to deal with the Rev/HK trap near the RL. I played maximum infighting simulator there and still had to grind away with the SSG after blowing most of my rockets. Also, I don't appreciate 6 Revs insta-popping in my face. This isn't Speed of Doom.

[Catpho]

4 hours ago, Poncho said:

 honestly, rubbish (Abyss from D2TWID). This one can fall under the decent category.

SAY THAT AGAIN, BUT SLOWLY

Uh, secret hunting and solving puzzles plus other stuff right now so sorry for no post.

[Poncho]

Map32: Return to the Birabuto Kingdom

I'll be honest, I never played Mario (well, maybe the first NES game for a good 5 minutes), so I haven't a clue what the "Birabuto Kingdom" is. Alas, this is 1000 times more straightforward than the previous map, also to the point of being simplistic. It's an A-to-B-to-"right-next-to-A" affair, with some decent combat and well-placed secrets, and some very repetitive grey-like textures. However, the Cyberdemon that triggers in the Supercharge secret is just annoying to kill. I honestly think an Arch-Vile would've been a better choice. Once again, an average map.

 

Map16: Skyward Vivarium

Pinchy goes mad with symmetry! The colours are really quite nice, and I do like the gameplay (except for the first room, though). The zombiemen on the outskirts of the map aren't the main issue; they're just distraction for the Revenants on the pillars. I like that sort of design: it forces you to go quickly without being overwhelming. All the Arch-Vile placements are pretty good (even if I died to the double AV-blue-key trap). Since I'm playing continuously, this wasn't too taxing, but looking at the Doom Wiki, there isn't a lot of ammo in the map when pistol-starting it. Well, maybe there is enough, but I'm not gonna try any time soon. Really like the music, too. Fun level.

[Pinchy]

Similar to Mayhem 2016 there was a speedmapping session held to fill out map slots.

 

Skyward Vivarium was one of those, built in 3 hours with an hour of fixing and adjustments later.

[cannonball]

MAP31 - “Sinkysand Switchland” by dobu gabu maru

This was an enjoyable break from the past couple of rather tough maps. A cute little map filled with some smart puzzles to solve. It took me a while to get to the exit but I never felt completely stuck at any point. Good job Dobu as per usual.

 

MAP32 - “Return to the Birabuto Kingdom” by Death Egg

This was a little dull to be honest, the gameplay is pretty simple as everything is near enough in front of you and pretty straightforward to dispatch once you have cleared the start area. The monotone look doesn't help here to be honest. The secret maze area is another problem, firstly the cyber is completely pointless located there and as I found out, you could pick up the shroom through the fence and hence avoid triggering the cyber entirely. This is probably my least favourite map so far, sorry Deathegg.

[baja blast rd.]

Map 17: "All the Monster’s Teeth are Perfect" by Angry Saint

 

I overhauled the thing placement on this map. It used to be a really straightforward map02 grind through the corridors, with meatier opposition than the weaponry warranted. I put the SSG at the beginning, and changed everything in favor of gratuitous bloodshed, lots of low-tiers trickling behind the start and clumped up elsewhere to be turned into pulp with the RL, and farcical reveals towards the end. The ammo balance with the first secret (even without it, tbh) is set up that you can use RL on way more stuff than you actually need to. Random imps wandering around are fair game. I put all those former human troopers on the balconies specifically to be fodder for the RL.

 

Marcaek suggested adding an invul because the set had used those sparingly, so I worked that in. I like the invul because there is a lot you can conceivably do with it: a) release and kill the viles, b) kill the perched revenants, c) make sure the pain elementals are dead, d) try to kill the first cyb, e) in the other room, rush and get the plasma rifle, f) grab the megasphere secret, g) free the second cyb. You can do like 3-7 of those things depending on which you pick. Making sure the perched revenants are dead is the most important thing, probably -- those are pesky to have around afterwards if you want to fight the cyb honorably. The pain elementals aren't really that much of a concern, since the cyb will kill or weaken most anyway. 

 

I asked not to be credited on the CWILV graphic because I don't approve of the aesthetic design or the layout (neither of which I made any changes to). The thresholds in the last two areas are bad, and the height variation is actually counterproductive, making it impossible for combat to flow smoothly between areas and providing easy camping regions. Past the opening few fights, it is probably still a dull map if you insist on playing it as straightforwardly and survival-oriented as possible. But for a map in this difficulty range, I wouldn't do that, so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. It is fun for the aggressive, non-campy way I like to play it, which I consider a success. 

 

I can't really get myself to play this map seriously with this midi lol.  

 

 

Edited April 16, 2018 by rdwpa

[tmorrow]

map17: all the monster's teeth are perfect, by Angry Saint
zdoom2.8.1, uvmax, pistol start, no saves, first time played

@rdwpa just gave us an excellent wrap up of this map, even confessing to some post development monster placement tampering. We might have known. The layout is excellent on this map with a choice of textures that will bring a smile to lovers of the super mario franchise and have everyone else hunched over and wretching in the corners. Several of the rooms are cleverly reused for battles. Another fun map in this high quality mapset.

So the monsters have a good dental plan, their teeth are perfect according to the title and they wish to sink those pearly fangs into you! Angry Saint (with corruptions from rdwpa) has decided that 205 monsters isn't enough, 206 is just right for this map and an challenging number of those enemies wake up with your first shot. You'll be running hell for leather as the monster teleporters fire up big time but you don't want to run too far or you will stir up way more scumbags than you can handle. If you can make do with the first two rooms for the duration of the first wave then you are pretty much set up for the rest of the map because you can control the pace after that.

There are many traps but most of them can be avoided once known. Toward the end in the last 2 rooms, 2 cybies, 2 archviles and mid tier philistines are launched at you and they can't wait to stomp and dance all over your corpse. In a surprising act of compassion, rdwpa placed an invulnerability to help with at least one of the fights. As rdwpa explains there are lots of ways to use the invulnerability effectively. If you are particularly quick you can even use it to trigger both rooms and cybies and get back to where you picked the invulnerability from and then pull out the popcorn and watch the infighting show before mopping up after. I'm sure that wasn't part of the evil plan. It's sad to relate but the cybies rockets are unable to clear the ledge most of the time. We really need to enroll all cybies into a rocket vs ledges aiming class.

Both secrets are well worth picking up. One has a lot of ammo but the megasphere secret is quite difficult to find, the trigger having no visual queue that I can see.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 11 -- Aztec Ruin - 104% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA, 1 death and a save.

Here's something a bit different. Mario textures aside, the mood of this place reminds me more than anything of the first Tomb Raider game, perhaps intuitively enough, with a certain dignified sparseness to its visuals, much of the impact resting on differences in scale and height and such, though most of the time these elements have very little impact on the fights themselves. In Doom terms, the chunky, more-or-less slateface clean, largely squarish constructions put me in mind more than anything of the original Hell Revealed (again, an oddly fitting similarity, perhaps), though there's generally more attention to smaller aesthetic niceties in this case, with gradient lighting and minor details like little patches of midtex grass being common/consistent elements throughout. It still has the Mario look at the end of the day, of course, but certainly more of a sober tone to the whole, which I reckon was more immediately appealing to me aesthetically in spite of the map itself being a much simpler visual presentation than many of its setmates.

 

While quite short, progression is built on a sense of adventure, with the path to the first or 'normal' exit involving uncovering a number of hidden areas variously concealed behind very light puzzles and tomb-raiding tropes (these are actually flagged 'secret', just like the actual secrets, for emphasis), with the full tour hinging on collecting a trio of coins stashed about the ruin, as prophesied by a strange fountain-altar near the entrance. Quite simple stuff as far as the brain-teasing goes--even the secret coins are only 'hidden' in the loosest sense of that term, save perhaps for the final one--but puzzling per se is not really the point; this kind of non-standard progression is meant to fill out the moments between the map's real party-pieces with content more suited to its mood and setting than a smattering of incidental monster skirmishes could ever be (and indeed, what little incidental combat does exist in the map tends to be pretty dull/throwaway), a very savvy design choice.

 

Said party-pieces, of course, are the handful of short but tense setpiece fights gating each stage of progression. To Killer5 himself I imagine this is likely a trivially easy map, but mere mortal adventurers will be fighting for life and limb. Again, perhaps true to the tomb-raiding theme, these tend to have the feel of cruel traps (i.e. they can kill brutally and in an instant), though being framed as proper fights rather than mechanical deadfalls demands that surviving them involves more than simply knowing or guessing what's about to happen. The generally very small number of actors involved in each scene is underwritten by a very strict thing balance throughout all of the non-optional content, emphasizing a need for at least middling/solid performance throughout (i.e. no courtesy full-heal for passing a setpiece, and forthcoming consequences for using too much ammo), a tense feel offset by the much more generous (but equally dangerous) closing fights which are the payoff for following the 'true ending' route.

 

My favorites were the blue key pitfight (I imagine a real maestro here actively uses the initially-dead imps as weapons/obstacles/distractions much more than I do in the FDA) and the strange darkened lava-altar, which is quite intimidating to first behold but quite manageable if you use your noggin (and very satisfying to do well, probably the only fight I did well on the first run). The climactic finale, despite dwarfing everything preceding it in scale, really has much of the same fundamental flavor--i.e. you either die horribly in the first few moments because You Are Not Worthy of The Power or you make it through. Probably. My one death was here, and actually was not instantaneous, which makes it harder to excuse--the fight is basically tuned as something of a frantic damage-race, hence the 4 megashrooms, and I ended up biting it largely because I opted for a not strictly necessary safety top-up before starting the fight, and then got careless and completely wasted one of the others picking it up accidentally. That said, I wasted at least one of them just as badly on the second/successful attempt, but finished with one left at the end (ironically the top-up I had eschewed as insurance on that second attempt), which goes to show that the fight is pretty effectively balanced as it stands, even though its aspect of realistically unavoidable/somewhat random damage (again, for mortal players) will of course naturally appear hamfisted to some.

 

Nicely done, Zzul.

[tmorrow]

OMG! Watch the Demos Stupid!

 

This dummy here just discovered that Super Mayhem 17 comes with 3 built in demos to showcase the wad. In my defense I almost always use a shell script to launch doom with the -warp option so I rarely see the splash screens or in built demos. Anyway the demos are of map11, map21 and map31, the first two being quick runs through missing enemies, secrets etc. but the 6 minute map31 demo is a beauty! It shows a highly optimized run solving all of the puzzles, finding all the secrets with no backtracking and with only a few minor execution errors, putting my 10 minute low level scrub run to shame. Damn these mappers think of everything!

[Marcaek]

I took the opportunity during the laggy last month or so of Mayhem tweaking to ask rdwpa, nine inch heels and dobu to make some actual serious demos for the set. It's something I'd like to see people start doing more often to be honest. DEMO3 functions as a nice walkthrough for anyone curious enough to go looking so congrats!

[Magnusblitz]

MAP31: Sinkysand Switchland

100% kills, 3/3 secrets

 

This one took me a little while, but I agree with cannonball that it never feels unfair. The imps feel a bit pointless, I wonder if Dobu was ordered to put at least some monsters in, or just didn't feel like doing another completely monster-less map. :P If there is one puzzle that fell flat for me, it's probably the sand-trap 'maze' leading to one of the secret stars, I figured it had something to do with the ceiling but I couldn't figure out where it was going. Eventually got lucky and somehow brute-forced it.

 

(And yes, it's fullbright, but this one actually has browns and blues and greens and so isn't an eye-searing monstrosity like MAP09)

[dobu gabu maru]

1 hour ago, tmorrow said:

Damn these mappers think of everything!

 

I did the keyboard-only run of MAP31, and I told Marcaek that it was a really nerve-wracking experience since I wanted to reduce the amount of slip-ups as much as possible, which lead to some really nervous platforming for the 1st green star. Only took me... three? tries to get a smooth experience I think.

 

MAP15: Xaser does the obligatory "Mario Ghost House" map, but the only ghost here is likely to be you—in a few seconds. The first two minutes are some preeeetty rough waters as you're introduced to the map's mechanics without any floaties to help you swim: namely, rockets, lowering floors, and that dastardly AV+rev combo. The map only utilizes two weapons and five enemy types total—which is super impressive—but good lord can the "floor descends now fight 2 AVs" gimmick grate on you. It's not an obnoxious map so much as it's just really dangerous due to your most useful armament being the RL (which kinda sucks for surprise traps in close quarters) Plus, I think the combat works better in some places than others; the stairwell near the exit in particular is a massive middle finger to the player that forces them to scamper away and fight the AVs from across the gap (I mean c'mon, 2 AVs with only a little wedge of cover? And that's only if you clear out the bowser paintings!)

 

Design wise, the map is sublime. Lots of twists and turns, a cool and gloomy aesthetic that uses black textures as silhouettes, and a pretty impressive BK denial "cutscene" that leads to another "love it or hate it" fight. All of Xaser's sexy layouts always leave me a bit envious and this one is no different: the amount of pathways through the map and cleverly hidden traps are a designer's delight. This map has some absolutely masterful construction (dat secret exit!) that lets me excuse Xaser recklessly locking me in small room with 2 revs + 1 AV and no cover :P

 

MAP31: I'll get around to this tomorrow :P

 

MAP32: Woof that start requires some fancy footwork! However once you reach the blue armor and its cache of rockets, the map completely plateaus in difficulty, letting the player play it at their own pace. Which, after the likes of MAP11/14/15, I'm actually kind of relieved to do! I don't have a lot to say about the aesthetics unfortunately... the GB palette is really kind of dour when compared to the rest of the palette, and I wasn't exactly getting strong Mario Land vibes from the map after the initial area. It's a cute map, but the strongest impression it makes is definitely in its first second.

 

MAP16: Heyo! Great map from Pinchy over here! Unlike his E1 entry, this map actually lets you more or less move around the grassy airship at your own pace, though no matter what path you choose it's probably going to be a tricky ride. Two things that stand out here is 1) great use of mass hitscanners to constantly keep the player searching for medikits, & 2) great use of barrels to impede the players progress and get them to fire. I really liked the flow of this map, and the majority of its combat; hell, this map was mostly symmetrical and I didn't mind! I think the only two shortcomings are 1) It's impossible for the player to know that the weapon platforms lower only from picking up the BK, and 2) the final fight is a straight-up mess, especially if the player is low on rockets. Still loved the map in spite of those issues though—dug the atmosphere, dug the combat, dug dying to former humans over and over :)

[Spectre01]

MAP11 - “Aztec Ruins” by Killer5

Found 5/8 of the secrets here and ended up with 34% kills. I briefly saw Zzul streaming this map, so it seems like I missed at least 2 encounters, including a BFG fight. Despite not playing through the hardest parts, this map was still tense with some rather tight health balance. Also, I cannot consistently punch out those 2 darn Viles without eating a hit! I'll be sure to get back to this map later, but I've still got some catching up to do.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP16 Skyward Vivarium

 

You know the last time I played a map called Vivarium I had to deal with a fucking annoying monster zoo map. This is a good map. I like being given weapons, and a few nasty fights at the blue key (don't you love it that archies can attack you through the glass?). Also hitscanner hordes and some guarded keys, so it's technically a hub map. Only real ambush was at the three-key door. As good as it is, you can't help but expect more.