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dobu gabu maru

The DWmegawad Club plays: Deathless

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E4M1

Relatively low key opener, with the vast majority of the opposition being troopers. A lot of similar motifs to the first three episodes in design, with the addition of a cute little cemetery. What was the build time for this episode and when was it made?

 

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Yeah E3M8 is pretty annoying, all those damn Barons and if you go to the left from the start, once you take out the 1st 2 Barons, the others can easily knock you off the narrow walkway and then you're screwed:(

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E3M7: Wormwood Cathedral

100% kills, 2/2 secrets

 

Like @TheOrganGrinder I found the layout to be interesting at first with the multitude of key doors, but my final opinion is more like @Capellan's in that I found the gameplay underwhelming with a lot of "imps on ledges" as it was. Other than the slime most of my damage taken came from a blind teleport into said ledge imps I had not cleared out yet. Not a fan of the texturing scheme here, the ROCK textures always look bland to me when so liberally slathered across every ceiling and wall, and there were a few spots where the same rock walls suddenly had marble tops instead of the rock tops? It also felt a bit overly blocky though I suppose it is supposed to be a constructed rock wall instead of naturally occuring so maybe it should be blocky... and now I've spent more time thinking about ROCK than I ever have before. At least you telefrag the cyber at the end; I always love that. And hey, finally a secret in a waterfall! I've been checking so many this whole episode only to be disappointed every time.

 

E3M8: Ire

 

Yeah this isn't too terribly exciting. On continuous going to the side rooms is probably a waste of time (I came in near 200/200 after last map so it would've just been a waste of ammo) and the main battle is just get the barons and SMMs to infight, then let loose with the BFG or plasma gun. No way out of the lava, either, so step carefully.

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E4M1: Inhuman Remains

 

This is a pleasantly creepy necropolis environment that progresses in a more-or-less linear fashion, curling around to loop over itself before carrying you to the exit.  I was wondering what was up with the partial invisibilityt, then a rack of zombies with shotguns came popping up out of the ground and I was left going "Oh, that's what the secret is supposed to defang!"  That creates a nice bit of forward pressure, unless you're willing to do the map author the disservice of assuming that the partial invisibility was just thrown it with little thought and for little reason then you're going to find yourself pushing ahead, looking for the problem to which the partial invisibility is the intended solution before it runs out and you're forced to make do without it. 

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Episode 3: Deathless 

 

 

 

E3M1: “Open Wound”

 

a much better version of hell keep, while being faithful to the original. i agree that the old e3m1 was weak gameplay-wise, with the terrible pinkie corridor leding to imps crammed into the exit. this version has the same beautiful (heh) hellish look of blood pools under an fiery sky, but leaves enough space for some action. the starting closets offer some goodies, like a very welcome armor, and the best was still the berserk pack you can jump onto and go rip & tear. what i did, and many imps and pinkies were ripped apart that day.

 

 

 

E3M2: “Salted Earth”?

 

perhaps i should read the other players' comments after playing a map, or their points will be especially visible during play. the mapset has a habit of showing the next waypoint in advance, you look through doors and windows and see where you will (or want to) get later. iirc that's one of the design principles romero described. here you see the exit above on a cliff. the key hunt was not very straightforward, and combat is rather incidental, with little resembling an ambush.

 

 

 

E3M3: “Forlorn Morgue”

 

very classic hellish design, red rock walls, wooden bridges over blood rivers. an underground map with much interconnection, winding and surprising me with turns into new directions. i ran low on ammo at first, but the damn skulls having less health is really helpful, and the rocket launcher comes handy for the few cacos around.

 

 


E3M4: “Vestibule”

 

wait, i know that start. everything else is different though. there's a open, barren area with some imps and a caco, one can get the plasma gun and the rocket launcher here easily, but ammo is limited, so i thought i's better go to the undergeround area first. cleared that, then escaped the caco ambush, while from behind a baron and some imps approached. i guess i should have stormed the open area now and shot everything dead, but unaware how much more will follow, i held the choke point to the cave where the baron clawed the cacos to death as they ran into each other, and i had plenty of ammo left when i exited. played it again faster, because it's a compact map and can be done quickly.

 

 

 

E3M5: “Soul Drinker”

 

a hell castle / whatever featuring your halfway turreted cyberdemon. that makes going outside a bit risky as long as pinkies can block the path, because it's a recipe for catching a rocket. inside the castle one quickly finds a rocket launcher, and a plasma gun in a corner. that's enough for dealing with the cyb, it can be easily shot from across the courtyard. not very threatening overall if you know where to go first. there's a visible bfg for those who like to fight the cow on its platform, but i didn't find the secret. 

 

 

 

E3M6: “Dire Prayers”

 

nice hellish map reminiscent of mt. erebus. mostly low-key opposition, especially against plenty of rockets here. the baron preaching to the imp congregation made me smile, especially the most pacifist solution to this: repeatedly open and close the door until the priest has killed all his sheep. some annyoing lava because it's 20 hp iirc and seeps through the radsuit. the only frustrating part was not finding the damn teleport to the secret exit. i'm not an example of patience though.

 

 

 

E3M9: “The Wastes”

 

ok, i liked seeing doom2 maps ported to doom here, but this one is almost a direct copy, retextured, so i would have preferred "re-imagining" the maps. especially m05 as it's not one of my favorites from doom2. now it also has lava in the tunnels and is restricted to udoom's monster variety. the better part was the cyb, you have to sneak past him from pistol start, perhaps with help from the baron, until you can get back with the bfg. 

 

 

 

E3M7: “Wormwood Cathedral”

 

beautiful cathedral of hell. intriguing view from the outside, reminding of the udoom unholy cathedral, and elaborately decorated interior. not much opposition, most of them imps, a few barons, there's a berserk pack to take care of all of them, so i exited with plenty of ammo. a solid map, although not it's not very memorable imo.

 

 

 

E3M8: “Ire”

 

well, the SMM is a hard to use boss, and combined with plenty of doors with health it's not particularly engaging either. 

 

overall i'm impressed with e3 though, especially considering the build time @Capellan mentioned.

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E4M1: Inhuman Remains

100% kills, 3/3 secrets

 

Decent opener if a little short; the shotgunner ambush can be a good shot in the arm for the unwary. I didn't find the invisibility sphere until late in the game (tried to open it as a door, didn't work, then realized it was a false wall by accident) but it does work well once you know it's there.

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E4M2

Felt quite short and nonthreatening to me, though I did like that the demon in a trench could teleport up and potentially bite you in the butt.

 

Forgot all about the secret exit being somewhere on this map, though I did find the secret soul sphere.

 

 

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E2M6: The Mad Mistress

Very nice map here, There's a few bits of techbase here and there but this map is largely a hellish kind of castle or fort. Difficulty it higher than the average for this wad, not too many threatening monsters here on their own but they're used in the right spot and there's a few traps that can take some health off of you as well. such as the lights out imp trap if you don't act fast enough.

 

E2M7: City of Coal

A pretty typical city map, not as complex as some of the more modern ones you can find but not as plain as the classic Doom II levels either. While the last map made good use of a smaller number of enemies this one seemed to have the oppisite problem, where despite the hordes of monsters and a number of Barons it felt like there little actual threat throughout the map. The scale of this map just felt a bit off to me, instead of feeling like an actual city which is something the more basic Doom II maps did an excellent job of this just felt like everything was shrunk down and placed in a lego city or something. Seemed like a bit of a waste to make a city level such a small map.

 

E2M8: Dukes

2 Cyberdemons on pillars and a bunch of annoying, pain in the ass cacos to get in the way. Certainly a cool map but i'm not quite sure what the desired effect was. Once the cacos are out of the way you can just snipe the cybers from a distance and you don't even need to bother hitting the switch to teleport them to you, Unless I was cheating somehow and missed something? Just make sure you don't get shot in the ass or waste half your shots and have no ammo left to kill them.

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E4M2: Fetid Site

 

This one feels like a twisted mirror of the preceding map, compact and brisk as you're taken through a clockwise and downward-tending spiral rather than an anti-clockwise, upward-tending spiral.  The secrets are pretty bald (I did enjoy the readily accessible soul sphere and the freedom to come back and pick it up at a time of your choosing) and the monster threat isn't great; one satisfying moment came when I winged an imp with one shotgun blast, shifted a little, and lined up another shot in which one pellet finished off the imp while the remaining six passed through to explode a lost soul behind it.  Good times!

 

E4M9: Under

 

Well this one's no more shy about its origins than the other three secret maps, is it?  And I find it interesting that as we've advanced through Deathless, the referenced Doom II maps have been presented in a descending order (MAP20 > MAP11 > MAP05 > MAP02).  Under is pretty faithful to its Doom II inspiration-slash-incarnation, with the major aesthetic change being that this is primarily an outdoor rather than indoor map.  Three maps in I'm not sure I have a handle yet on the aesthetics of this particular episode, but there's time yet for it to assert itself.  I do get the feeling that the BFG and plasma gun secrets are going to be really powerful going forward.

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E4M3

Feels a bit on the short side again, though I like how many occasions there are for you to look between zones and see upcoming or previously explored areas. That's definitely a design element this wad does well.

 

 

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E4M3: Corroded

 

Outside of the Doom II-derived secret level, the so-far consistent size and scale and proportions of the maps of this episode have put me in mind of nothing so much as a series of deathmatch arenas, and I could have sworn reading somewhere that this was the map author's intent, three episodes of regular maps plus one of primarily-deathmatch maps, but I'm damned if I can find any such reference so maybe my brain just conjured that out of nothing in the fever dreams of the last week or so.  (On a side note, the flu sucks.)  Anyway, lots of bouncing around various platforms over a level that's drowning in green slime, with imps at various elevations as your constant companions and a few flying enemy types (a handful of lost souls and a pair of cacodemons at opposite ends of the level) to flaunt your mobility while you dance about trying not to get melted from the ankles up.  The compactness and brevity of the maps this episode has offered so far makes it a bit of a struggle to find much to say about each individually.

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E4M2: Fetid Site

100% kills, 2/2 secrets

 

Even for a uber-speedwad, this one is "blink and you'll miss it" territory, consisting basically of four rooms arranged in a square pattern. At only 35 monsters on UV I had wiped out half the map's denizens before even stopping to look at the layout. Even the secrets are a bit underwhelming, both being "press the wall" types.

 

E4M9: Under

100% kills, 3/3 secrets

 

Unlike the other secret maps which were either too iconic to miss the reference (E1M9) or felt like just re-textured maps (E2M9 and E3M9) this one actually took me a little while to realize what map was being referenced here, since the architecture is a lot more changed, being a lot more open air and the red doors being re-designed. The main draw here is getting to beef up your arsenal, as you'll enter with just the single shotgun and leave with potentially every weapon including the BFG, which may well trivialize the rest of the episode.

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Merry Doom-mas

 

 

E4M4

In two minds about the combination of stone1 and wood textures here. It's ugly, but it's also kind of a cool kind of ugly.

 

On the other hand, I'm confident about my feelings regarding the gameplay: it's a bit weak. After another hottish start, it calms down to a lot of imps on ledges and small set pieces. Generally speaking, I think that the first three episodes, despite their very brief build time, have been a bit stronger on that front.

 

 

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E4M9: The best of the secret Doom 2 "reskins" is more than just a reskin.  Probably my favorite map in the entire WAD.  A reimagining of Underhalls with a hell theme that hits all the right buttons.  Familiar, yet original. 

 

I am not sure if the Griefless episode was speedmapped or not, but I know it wasn't part of the epic 9-day mapping marathon Jimmy had for the 3 Deathless episodes.  Whatever the case, the quality in this episode, and this map in particular, is the best the WAD has to offer.  It is also a lot higher challenge than the previous episodes.  I like it.

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Am I allowed to vote despite having never done one of those?

 

If so, +++ Eviternity.

 

If not, ridicule me at will!

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Just a semi-official announcement before it racks up too many votes, Eviternity RC2 isn't so likely to be ready by the turn of the year due to the amount of internal testing still to be done on it - the aim is for RC2 to be as close to final as possible so the guys understandably don't want to rush themselves to get it done by a specific date...again. It may be better to wait until February, so as not to cause hassle with updating WADs mid-playthrough, though personally I understand it that February kinda blows for a full megawad...

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Hey guys and gals, I'll be with you in your next megawad. Long time lurker, but posting for the first time. 

 

And my vote goes to Good Morning Phobos. I played it countless times both vanilla and with gameplay mods, it still doesn't tire me. It is really good. 

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E4M4: Incision

 

I'll echo @Capellan's sentiment about this may being "a cool kind of ugly;" in that respect, it takes after episode 3 of the original Doom with its warped aesthetics and commingling of themes rather nicely.  It is another map with a lot of imps milling about on ledges, though, and in this particular case I don't know that the map is big enough, creepy enough, or exploratory enough for The Demons From Adrian's Pen to be the best fit.  If this were something of a breather between larger and more ferocious, then the music choice might work better, but as things stand this is all very much in the same vein as the three main-sequence maps of the episode we've already explored, so it doesn't stand out.  That's one thing I'm getting from this episode compared to the other three, that variety seems quite diminished and each map is less memorable.

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Bit of a bummer to wait a another month to play Eviternity, but I guess it's the best for the team's health haha.

I guess +++(Ultimate) Doom The Way id Did then!

Edit: here

Edited by Catpho

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E4M5

Old Stompy figures more as an environmental hazard here than a true enemy, and the hazard is more bark than bite, really. There are plenty of safe places to lurk while planning your next move. Most of which moves are 'jumping between platforms'. Overall, it feels like this map draws a lot of inspiration from the post-E1 Romero maps.

 

 

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