The DWmegawad Club plays: A.L.T.

[Capellan]

MAP16

Apparently I picked the exit that skips the secret map(s).  C'est la vie.

 

Decent techbase map, though the long linear crate crawl was a bit of a misstep, I think.  Some solid action elsewhere, interspersed with the usual oblique approach to progress.  Thankfully it's more in the 'puzzle it out from the elements on hand' style than the 'okay, so now I wander around until I find what that switch did' style.

 

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP32: Bonus Track

 

So I guess this is a level that's defined by its traps and puzzles more than by its combat, which for the most part doesn't rise above the level of background noise; I think the exceptions to this are possibly the arachnotrons in the blue-walled room (which can claim a cheap pelt or two in the pitch dark) and the revenants and mancubi in the north-central room (a claustrophobic encounter that you're pushed into by the presence of crushing ceilings on both approaches).  I ended up using the invulnerability to soak the exploding corridor of death and probably should have used it to traverse the crusher hallway too, rather than wasting its duration pumping rockets point-blank into the Barons of Hell guarding the yellow key.  Once you're done with that section of the map, there's the great hall with rank upon rank of arch-viles in stasis, lorded over by a similarly narcoleptic Cyberdemon, and... I think I screwed up the exit some, because the switch disappeared into the floor and then the floor turned into sky and ultimately I was just pressing blindly at the spot where it had been and then the level ended.  I don't know.  It's a weird level but not in the way that A.L.T. has so far tried to engender, its sense that reality is crumbling and you can't trust your own senses or experiences or the physical solidity or the world around you; here, I feel as though the map author was constantly playing by a different set of rules that I hadn't quite had explained to me sufficiently for me to do more than fumble my way forward.

 

MAP16: Dead Calm

 

This one's a very cool level, a return from the experimental weirdness of the secret levels to something more akin to A.L.T.'s regular offerings of derelict technical-industrial spaces, though even by the standards of the WAD this one is on the conventional side, a predominantly brown complex of grimy corridors and broodingly anonymous mechanisms that wouldn't look out of place in any number of other Doom episodes or experiences.  The crossed arches of the central hub form an impressive landmark, John Romero's rule of creating recognisable navigational aids writ large, from which the player is directed to go spelunking through a number of different industrial environments: there's a reservoir of toxic slime, a couple of outbuildings overlooking a lava pit, the inevitable crate maze... nothing here is unexpected but everything is nicely realised and engaging.  A good opportunity for the player to get their bearings, gather their wits, and get their feet back underthemselves after the disarming peculiarities of MAP15 and the optional/secret maps.

[gaspe]

MAP16: Similar to MAP14 this what I consider to be Azamael's take on a more conventional setting for a Doom map. It's an industrial/tech complex that is familiar but it still has some cool and unique details to not be your common experience, even though for ALT standard it stays pretty normal. You start inside a little octagonal hub room with only a way out and the map suddenly explodes with some rather big areas: the courtyard with the arches and the next area with the big lava pit. The map is still very playful with switches but the things are straightforward overall. The room with the hell-knights on the pillars looks cool with the tier of red flaming textures below the normal brown bricks. It's also included a crate room but the way is simple and linear, if you were hoping (or fearing) it was a maze. The best moment is the arch-vile duet in the dark room.

[gaspe]

MAP17: Not so much to say here, it's a well detailed techbase with some solid action. It's the most conventional map of wad.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP17: Reaction of Pain

 

This is another map that wouldn't look out of place in any number of other, more conventional WADs, though it differs significantly from the preceding level in scale.  Gone is the wide-open hub with its grand arches, the looming towers overlooking a vast and magma-choked rent in the earth; this is a much more compact affair that's cosy in general, intimate at its best, claustrophobic at its worst.  The steady pacing of progress and gameplay is about as relaxing as shooting demons can be; press switch, enter new area, kill demons, anticipate telegraphed trap.  I feel this is a level that would benefit from being placed in a different context; at this point in the WAD, the gameplay is too staightforward and the challenge just isn't there compared to the fiendishness of earlier maps, nor is the weirdness to which I've grown accustomed and for which I now find myself longing.

[ella guro]

no hate to Chaingunner, but Map 17 is my least favorite map in ALT. it just too conventional and doesn't really fit in any context of the rest of the set. at least it's short, but it's almost jarring to have such a normal, small, mostly unremarkable techbasey map in the context of the set. Map 18 is at least better and brings back a little of the weirdness, though in a much more muted form than a lot of what surrounds it. but yeah i think maps 17-19ish are my least favorite stretch of the set... thankfully that doesn't last very long before it gets back into being ALT again.

 

apparently 17 + 18 replaced two other maps that were a whole source of drama and led to the dissolution of Clan [B0S]. or so i've been told. so possibly they were made very quickly, or maybe at the last minute.

 

that said, Maps 14-16 are all great for me. 14 is not Azamael's best, but i think it works as a more linear follow-up to 13 and it still takes you on its own weird little journey. and of course, the architecture in 16 is great. i like the little puzzle room in Map 15, because it's short and minimal on combat anyway. it's not the most amazing puzzle, but given the novel setting and Map 15 placement it makes sense to me. oh and also: apparently BeeWen added the whole Doom 1 + 2 section at the end of the level.

 

Map 31 reminds me of the sort of maps that are in BeeWen's incomplete set Voyager. a lot of great ideas, but punishingly cryptic progression. Voyager's maps are incredibly pretty and highly unique, but very difficult to navigate through. and i say that as someone who likes puzzles and occasionally cryptic progression. i don't find ALT Map 13 to be so bad at all, for example, because at least it has its own internal logic to it. that said, the fact that it's a secret map here makes that more bearable. Map 32 is obviously much shorter and has similar issues, but it does have a lot of interesting ideas in it and it doesn't outstay its welcome.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP18: Save Your Life

 

This one feels less conventional than the preceding map, but it's still very much by the same designer and cut from the same cloth.  Maybe some of its spaces are a bit more experimental and committed to quirks of gameplay over sense-of-place, for example the rising and falling platforms that are actually liquid geysers like something out of a platform game.  I found the central area of the map to be awkward to navigate and tricky to get my head around in a three-dimensional sort of way, and overall I don't think the progression here was as strong as in the preceding map.  Combat had a little more bite to it, but not always in ways that felt satisfying rather than cheap.

[Capellan]

MAP17

Another techbase map - I can see why some people find ALT a bit visually drab, though as a fan of the aesthetic it doesn't worry me that much.  Has some of the 'jagsaw'/'puzzle box' feel of Azamael's map, but at a significantly muted, less sophisticated level.  I had a decent time playing it, but I'm not sure it will stick long in my memory.  Some fun placement of barrels, though, I will give it that.

[gaspe]

MAP18: Chaingunner continues from where he left us at the previous map and this time the techbase will some more interesting moments like the BK room with a death sentence if you dare to step near the crushers, and the little platforming with some nukage geysers. It has a rather strange progression, the BK is near the start and it's purpose is to unlock the way to the RK that will be needed much later to open the exit room. This is also encouraged on pistol start as an optional area with the SSG will be accessible after you pick the RK. The main part of the map can be considered the center where there's some back and forth to do to reach the exit. There's a spiderdemon encounter in a rather akward position there's no cover and you can only jump down on the green slime pools of face the boss. Though you can use the revenants to help you and nearby there's also a secret megasphere.

[Capellan]

MAP18

I'm not sure if this is intended, but it is quite possible for the AV that's supposed to teleport to the red key room to actually teleport to the start, where you can safely ignore him.  If one of the HKs is blocking the teleport in the red key room when he crosses it, he is much more likely to end up taking that diversion.  This happened to me, which meant I could blithely ignore him and his little sergeant and imp rezzing spree, and merrily tootle off to the blue door.

 

The nukage platforms room feels a bit impractical, given the number of monsters in commanding positions (including chaingunners, which is the second time in the map you've had high distant hitscanners to deal with.  Not much fun, that).  Once you divine the strategy it is doable, but you're likely to lose a chunk of health in the process.  And then you face ole spider mama.  Fortunately I had a BFG, so she and her skelliebob entourage didn't actually do too much damage, especially after they started squabbling among themselves.  And then I was able to find the secret megasphere, so I'm going into the next map in very good shape.

 

[Capellan]

MAP19

A "work your way up the lift shaft" map, and not an especially good one.  It's got none of the baroque style of Azamael's work, but it's also not a satisfying regular Doom map.  Oh, and the exit's a mite busted since you can actually drop under the exit switch that's supposed to lower in front of you.  Fortunately, you can still press it from down there.

 

Also, if you're going to have a gang of barons fight some cybers, do me the courtesy of staging it somewhere I can see.

 

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP19: The Point of Return

 

Got to the end of this one with a bunch of monsters still not killed and only half the secrets found.  Realised I didn't feel like poking around for whatever undiscovered beasties or bennies might yet be tucked away.  Realised as soon as I warped to the next level that I'd left a megasphere behind that I'd decided to "save for later" in a fit of sheer contrariness when it looked like the level designer wanted me to be compelled to grab it after a long string of health and armour bonuses, and I decided to prove that, no, you didn't have to collect the megasphere in order to hit the switch behind it.  Realised I didn't much feel like loading an earlier save and going back for that either.  Honestly this is a grindy and claustrophobic map full of cheap-feeling traps and tight spaces where you can't get out of the way of fireballs no matter how lazily they might travel.  I know @Crusader No Regret predicted an exodus around MAP11 but so far the stretch from MAP17 through MAP19 have marked the low point of the WAD for me; there's nothing that's weird or unexpected, no intrusions of an alternate reality upon your own, no sense that the rules have been twisted and you can survive or even thrive if only you can figure out how those rules have been rewritten, just all-too-conventional brickbase maps bleed excitement from me as much as they do pixelated blood-spots from the hapless marine.

[gaspe]

MAP19: This level has a series of different areas build around an elevator that we have to make it go up to next stop. Each area has its own theme, starting from a sewer, tech, marble, wood until you come back to the sewers at last. This level feel like a more brutal and cramped version of Tricks and Traps where the different areas have their own staged trap. In the first area there's a secret with 8 soulspheres but you can revisit it so you can recover well after you visit each section. The last room looks like Tricks and Traps YK room on steroids where you can watch a large group of barons deal with 4 cyberdemons.

I also agree with the others that MAP-17-18-19 is the least interesting part of the wad, where ALT sort of loses itself.

[Crusader No Regret]

The map 31 permastuck I was referring to is in the "B" segment.  I was under the impression that with the ABCD switch sequence, getting them out of order or hitting the center one too early would break further progression.  I'd rather be wrong about this, though.  Getting stuck sucks.

 

map 9: 100% kills, 5/5 secrets

 

  I suppose the previous map exit suddenly dumps the marine into the monchrome world with nothing but partially invisible enemies about.  The blue skull keys are unneeded for gameplay completion though they have a narrative purpose.  I have this headstory about how the waste in the mass of barrels is used to make the skull keys.  Little unsettling, this.  A portal takes the marine back into the "real" world of color but it seems the path has collapsed.  Time to find another way out.  As already mentioned, a part of the grey world has seeped in near the end, raising more questions.

  For completionists, 2 of the secrets are in areas that cannot be returned to later on.  They're easy enough to find, just be certain to trigger them.  The core at the end is grindy with only shotguns and chaingun available.

 

Map 10: 100% kills, 6/6 secrets

 

  Other than the heavy use of black on floors and walls, this felt quite normal by Doom map standards.  Encounters take place in tight spaces and progression is totally linear.  Grab key, go to key door, repeat.  The secret computer map is a big help, showing other secrets as well as providing a hint for the spiderdemon reveal.  I had a revenant get the spider stuck which helped preserve my cell supply which I will be wanting in the next map.  Couple of completely optional archviles at the end with no reason to fight except for those seeking 100% kills.

 

Map 11: kill% irrelevant, 10/13 secrets

 

  This map is exhausting.  It 's also epic, expansive, seemingly endless, and enchanting in its own quirky ways.  The dropoff from the base in the previous map connects to some magma caverns.  Fairly normal by Doom standards, of course there's going to be hellish terrain near manmade (or alien made, if still going by the visitor to another world) base.  Things mix up upon reaching the set of 5 teleporters, which are revealing in order.  First destination is the top of a fortress wall.  In gameplay terms, corridor shooter.  Use the bodies of other monsters to obstruct chaingunner fire (and let them deal with them).  It's a short segment.  Next up is something that I thought was a hospital based on the wall textures.  Research facility may be a better representation though and there are signs of demonic/alien influence leaking in.  The nightclub is up next and it's the most interesting of the mini areas.  From the entry, one descends into a dining area with restrooms offsides and a more private booth.  There's also the shooting gallery another area for serving up drinks, and some rooms off to the side.  My first impression when i first played this was of a restaurant but some of the shemanigens behind closed doors in the private rooms sold me on the seedy nightclub angle.

 

  The next stop of the tour is a house with lovingly rendered sector details.  I tend to have a fondness for this sort of thing so the memory sticks better than it will for most.  Plenty of mystery about this suburban home suspended in limbo.  Could it be Doomguy's bachelor pad?  Does it belong to the demons who specifically modeled it after human living spaces?  Maybe they did this to gain insight on the marine's mind to try to learn to combat him better.  Pair of archviles in the shower together until you walk in.  Use your imagination for what the pair in the closet were doing before it's opened.  Final teleport of the group drops the marine in A.L.T,ernate space again where a red skull key awaits.  Only to be thrown out before reaching it but it turns out the key made the journey too.

 

  Beyond the red door is a point of no return so complete everything you want to before passing through.  This is where the map will test one's endurance for those who insist on playing without saves.  It turns into a grand spectacle with the massive stair climb (complete with monsters sniping away from high above) starting things off.  Then the ceiling collapses around the walkway where even if one avoid's death from crusher should they fall, they may well be stuck (without IDCLIP).  The void of black and grey columns is one of the most memorable scenes in the WAD for me.  I cleaned out the lost souls before engaging in the maze where one misstep could very well leave a soul lost forever.  (random thought: the lost souls are all that remains of previous victims).  It was still spooky and tense and I was glad for a change of scenery when it finally came.  Were one to get bumped off the path by a persistant lost soul, I can picture the amount of salt that would result.

 

  More grand spectacle of the outdoors variety before the icon fight.  Supposedly, this is the source of the nightmare so taking it out would end things.  This would be another place where it would hurt to lose after coming all they way because of, say, a cyber rocket right in your direction because it had a moment where it wasn't aggroed by anouther monster.  I apparently missed the invulnerability completely though it's simple to win without one, merely more suspect to bad luck.

Edited January 27, 2019 by Crusader No Regret : map 11 is long

[Capellan]

MAP20

Azamael returns, bringing with him(?) the grandeur and scope and occasional sheer WTF-ery that is A.L.T. at its best.  Some great vistas here, along with the "wait, was I supposed to do that?" moments that either define or detract from the WAD, depending on your perspective.

 

It's not without its missteps, mind you.  The "hell knight gallery" is kinda boring slog work unless you treat it as a slalom course and just weave you way back and forth through the goatboys (which is what I did after the first three or four) and the exit seems like it's one of those cases where the optimum approach is to just "nope" it since you can jostle your way over the exit line if you wait until the very last moment to wake the cyber.

 

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP20: 20.44

 

Well that's a cryptic title for a map that is similarly cryptic in its progression; I'll echo @Capellan's sense that "Wait, was I supposed to do that?" was a question I repeatedly found myself asking, with necessary steps for progression arranged in such a way that they might at first be taken for side areas, optional content, or even the route to a secret cache, though in only one such case (the secret BFG tucked away beside the return-to-sender teleport behind the red bars) was I right about that last impression.

 

It's nice to have left the staidness and predictability of the last several maps behind, escaping to a level that takes largely beneath the open sky and offers no shortage of opportunities to stop and smell the roses bloodfalls; it's an environment that combines rock, masonry, techbase nuggets embedded in the landscape like shrapnel in a wound, and copious amounts of freely-flowing gore in a setting that isn't particular coherent but nevertheless is rather compelling.  That said, the fragmented path of progression, with teleporters wrenching you to and fro, contributes to a sense of unease that has less to do with present or imminent danger and more to do with a worry that any such teleporter, marked or not, might be a one-way trip, closing avenues of exploration to you, denying you piled resources that you've carefully hoarded for later.  It's not a bad map to round out the episode, but it's definitely one that feels like it's closing out the story of the three preceding brickbase maps, rather than telling a complete tale of its own.

[gaspe]

MAP20: Despite the size it isn't a long level. Some stuff can be easily skipped: the teleporting monsters at the RK, the whole zigzag hell-knights path (and all the revs on the red rocks below); if you jump down in the canyon and go all the way at east a teleport will take you directly in front of the red bars. Also the ending feels rushed with a couple of spiderdemons that won't be able to do much and a cyberdemon that is supposed to block our way to the exit that you can reach it anyway. It's very cool visually with many different places, starting in a brick building, there's a grassy rock ledge with a strong contrast with all the things arounds, few places are carved in the rocks and on south it still survives a little techbase. All of those enviroments are crumbling in madness with huge bloodfalls that seems to spurt from the center and will also flow into the sea, there are some scattered pentagonal pyramids and green slime that spurts out from the ceiling.

[Catpho]

I did not forget about this hehe. The writing department of my mind is getting way too laggy tho X_x. This will probably end up like MM2 when I try to catch up late in the month, but whatever, just wanna write these :P

MAP03 - “Dies Irae” by Azamael

The name literally means "Day of Wrath", which is probably a piece of vague context for this map's desolate "ghost town" setting. It seems, however, that the demonic attack has been in full swing for quite some time now, judging from the empty streets that implies the demonic forces have moved on to their next target, and the houses are more like a gateway to a slice of hell than an actual human settlement, as if it's their world now. Really, anything that can be considered "human" left here feels like a hollow shell of it's former self. Azamael's once again excellent lighting and a haunting ambient track just punctuates the somber mood. The level itself is a visually well-crafted cityscape, with many neat buildings to explore through it's non-linear progression. There are a lot of cool scenes with each of the building's demonic subversion, standout ones are when they cut to gory sights. All in all, it feels like "Downtown" with a touch of weirdness and unease. I didn't find the gameplay to be particularly stellar, with it's mostly mediocre incidental encounters, though it is a step up in viciousness with it's ambushes. First time I noticed the roaming "wind" sound too. It's a nice touch.

 

Some screenies:

 

[Catpho]

MAP04 - “Death From Above” by Azamael

Sudden running for dear life! Azamael cranks up the action to eleven with this over the top and unusual rooftop chase, with you being the target of a cyberdemon! Despite having a harrowing premise, it's a rather forgiving level on the difficulty side (quick recovery from failed platforming, not under much pressure when dodging cyb rockets,..), but many players will still find it a pretty frantic and exciting experience with it's constant acrobatic leaps, the ever-present threat of the cyb and roadblocks popping up out of nowhere! On the surface this all sounds like a serious shift in tone for this megawad, but it all somehow felt like a "logical" step, with the persistent "A.L.T-ism" of the environment breaking down, warp and bend itself in creative ways to hinder you and make you feel uncomfortable. On the visuals, Azamael's worldbuilding is just fantastic, convincingly and gorgeously rendering another slice of the city. A bit short on the runtime, but with all the excitement and surreal events leading up to the map's surprising conclusion, it will undoubtedly stick with many players long after they have reached the intermission screen.  A brilliant level.

Some screenies:

Edited January 20, 2019 by Catpho

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP16: Reaction of Pain

18:50 | 100% Everything

A fairly standard base map, but I found it to be a lot of fun nonetheless. I came in fully megacharged, and then I completely mishandled the vile/revenant ambush in the southern room and was taken down to like 25% health. I also really dug the peeks outside. Good stuff.

 

MAP17: Save Your Life

21:38 | 99% Kills | 100% Items | 100% Secrets

A continuation of the previous theme, but a bit more tricksy. I liked a lot of "secret" little passageways that turned out to be standard progression. The exit was...weird. The first time, I tried shooting the switch/eyes, and then dropped into the pit, which started to raise up and then the level ended. The second time, I left that room, went and found the megasphere, and then when I came back the lift was already raise. So I shot the switch, heard the "Romero" roar, and the level ended. (And then, of course, the next map looks to start at the bottom of the pit.)

[Capellan]

MAP21

Another techbase through which we ramble in search of the right switches. I think what sets Azamael's maps apart in this set is that Big A is much better at making obscure / puzzle-based progression that isn't just looking for the right switch.

 

Other than that blue-bar speedrun you have to do to get to one of the teleporters, the main memorable part of this map is the final arena, with imp and arachnotron (and eventually revenant) blasts flying everywhere. Looking at the map, it seems like two SMMs were also supposed to join the party, but they never did for me. Not sure what happened there.

 

 

 

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP21: Fracture

 

So apparently we're in some kind of virtual reality now?  Or was that meant to describe MAP20, with this level representing a return to physical reality?  I don't know if that's simply a case of the writing being unclear, or if the uncertainty is quite deliberate, one more way vector for A.L.T. to mess with the player's head.  If you can't tell which reality you're in, virtual or physical, is that a commentary on the blurring of the lines between the two?  Has virtual reality become so compelling that it can become reality for those who choose to fully engage with it?  And in doing so has it exposed the limitations and the hollowness of physical reality?  If I don't know that I'm dreaming unless you tell me so, what gives you the right to tell me to wake up?

 

Philosophical juvenilia aside, this is another techbase map, but it's one that flows in a more interesting fashion, repetitive cement corridors contributing to a building sense of unreality and oppressiveness, that this space isn't built in any way for your convenience, that it's down to you to understand it and to take it on its own terms.  Ultimately it's quite brief, especially compared to the epic urban adventures that dominated the earlier parts of the WAD, culminating in a pitched arena battle followed by a little coda in a fleshy Hell-space where the mancubus squad awaits to teach you a lesson about letting your guard down when you think it's all over.  Fortunately there's a megasphere provided too; so long as the lesson isn't a fatal one, it won't prove too harsh, and you can travel further into this final episode of A.L.T. in peak condition for the trials to come.

[ella guro]

Map 20 is one of probably my top 5, or at least top 10 maps in ALT. it's a good summary of what it offers at its best. weird imagery and environments. slightly cryptic progression that is still basically fair at the end of the day once you get inside the head of the designer, and moves you along pretty nicely. revisiting of former environments and areas with a new context applied. some freaky, unexpected bits. yeah - just a great map overall.

[Capellan]

I do feel like a lot more people voted for ALT than are actually talking about it, which is a bit disappointing.

 

[gaspe]

MAP21: After the insanity of the previous level we are now in a more down to earth setting, to some extent. It's a sort of techbase with both familiarity and eeriness mixed. In the first parts you have pipes and some pumping systems for the nukage. Some identical rooms store hanged corpses, placed in a methodical way instead of the usual random mess of scattered decorations. Whatever the demons do with those corpses we don't know. Later after passing through a conveyor belt and a little storage room with crates you meet the same railroad of MAP05. The whole place looks shabby. For the finale we come out in a big outdoor area, to discover that the base was built on a mountain. The central island with the red crackles that appear was pretty cool. There you can hear a couple of mastermind wake when you shoot but with the teleports were make they won't always be able to join the fight. They aren't put in closets and the arachnotrons can easily block the destination sectors and the spiderdemons will wander away from the teleport lines. The actual exit is in a separate area, on UV there's a face to face with a cyberdemon. Not a bad finale, I wished it was more dramatic and thought out in a better way.

 

11 hours ago, Capellan said:

I do feel like a lot more people voted for ALT than are actually talking about it, which is a bit disappointing.

It's a general trend of the club that the participation dies the more you come close to the end of the month. Here it was low from the start despite most of the people voted for ALT, so much to the point of dethroning ESP.

[Salt-Man Z]

And I didn't even vote for it! (Though I would have.) I just happened to already be playing it. (And even I haven't done great at keeping up.)

[Demon of the Well]

Map 01 -- Seele

One could almost describe this as an interactive cutscene, though this of course hinges somewhat on how brief it is (and if you think about it in raw gameplay terms it fits the "standard map 01 design template" to a tee, as well). This is a characteristic mostly seen in Azamael's maps, and mostly early on, much less so in the later two thirds of the game, which early underwrites decently enough that this is a WAD attempting a story somewhat different than the norm, though to overfixate on this (i.e. as a pinned point of contrast/departure with "typical combat-oriented mapsets" or something like that) does the WAD and its particular awareness of how storytelling naturally works in a classic Doom context/using the classic Doom toolset something of a disservice, I reckon.

 

I really only noticed in hindsight, but this map is also *extremely* Doomcute, far moreso than any other map in the game. A number of Azamael's other maps have similarly 'realistic' fittings, but none moreso than "Seele", and suffice to say I somehow doubt that this initial dose of here-and-then-gone representationalism is coincidental, far from it. Cuteness aside, I also think that this is supposed to be played straight in tone (as I would argue that 99% of ALT is played straight in tone, despite some of its idiosyncrasies, though this is an arguable interpretation)--the SS guards used not as literal WWII Nazis or a vaguely comedic surrealism, but rather as stand-ins for some kind of generic military or paramilitary force, a special forces strike team or something of that nature. The specific details don't really matter, of course (or they don't really matter beyond however much you, the player, care for them to); the real point is the map beginning and ending quite abruptly with a pair of dovetailed 'visions.'

 

Map 02 -- Dead by the Down

This is one of the game's most memorable maps, I think, and one of those most responsible for the WAD's reputation as being heavily ambient/atmospheric in lean (somewhat typecast from the outset in that regard, I suppose, being Russian and all). Surprisingly expansive and conspicuously, even slightly eerily uneventful, here we see our protagonist wandering through the wreckage of the aircraft which was the setting for the previous map, no longer facing enemy soldiers but instead beset by strange creatures and what can only be described as 'the walking dead.' The quiet but palpably pregnant tone seems to build and build towards some new disaster or development, but this never comes. Note that the strange Gate which was aboard the craft is conspicuously nowhere to be seen, either whole or in shattered pieces.

 

An effective exercise in tonesetting and the 'true m01' of the game, as an aside I'd also credit this level as a good example of making a relatively entertaining outing of pistol-oriented gameplay (so rarely done, even more rarely done to satisfaction). The key, I think, is that not only do you get lots of squishy targets to shoot, but quite a few of them are perched at a higher elevation or visible/hittable from considerable distances, meaning you likely get to see a fair few Wilhelm dives and do some 'trick shots' and such, which makes the peashooter feel a little livelier than when you're just expected to squirt bullets into basic targets at close range a few times. The very placid/basic tone of the action is also nicely complemented by having to jump and climb and rappel at various points in progression, vs. a more traditional techbase/earthbase crawl which often hosts a similar timber of action.

 

Some have commented on the pirate flag insignia seen on the ruins of the plane's tail. While this could be interpreted as symbolic or surrealistic, again I think it's a fairly literal use of a conveniently available asset, meant to subtly suggest that our protagonist may be part of some kind of smuggling/tomb-raiding outfit or bandit ring himself, and not necessarily a 'White Hat' type in the traditional sense, which may or may not have any bearing on his fate--again, largely up to interpretation, but entertaining to muse on.

 

Map 03 -- Dies Irae

A relatively involved city-type map, this one does a pretty good job of reading as more open/non-linear than it truly is, and is an early example of ALT's sometime tendency for slightly trickier pistol-starts (again, this is mostly, but not entirely, seen in Azamael's maps, to whit), with some itineraries being potentially a lot more ammo-starved than others. Having only played this set once before, I don't exactly know it like the back of my hand yet, and so I spent the middle third of it or so with crowds of creatures that I lacked the ammo to kill rattling around in some of the buildings (esp. the sort of 'chapel' or meeting hall or whatever it is at the south/east bend). Actual consequences of this are low, however--most of the creatures lack any real mobility, sometimes to the point of this reading as a technical flaw rather more than an artistic choice, as with the oddly lethargic/immobile enemies released near the 'barrel bonfire' at some point. Progression is a bit rope-y, perhaps, but shouldn't be hard to parse for anyone reasonable accustomed to how things tend to go in Doom II city levels writ large.

 

Some nice nuances of setting are there for those inclined to see them, i.e. the little backroom den in one of the townhouses which seems to be a hideout for whatever shady group it is the protagonist is a part of (note that the keycard for the little shipping/storage building is found here). Note also that any and all clocks encountered in ALT are broken, or all stopped at exactly the same time, 11:58 or so -- considering m01, "Two Minutes to Midnight", anyone? :)

 

My favorite thing about this level is actually the scripted sequence right at the start, where you're supposed to open a door to be immediately sprayed with guts from some body literally exploding out of the aether (somebody conveniently/conspicuously in possession of a shotgun just like yours, at that...), and then the hell knight killed at the end of m02 spontaneously resurrects itself to chase you through the little rat-run of boxes. This clever scripting of fairly involved 'cinematic' sequences is Azamael's particular purview in ALT, though given that this is a limit-removing WAD under the hood it can also easily misfire unless the player behaves 'just so' (i.e. if you fart around at the start the body will teleport before you've even opened the door to witness it).

 

Map 04 -- Death from Above

Like m01, this reads as more of an interactive cutscene, Doom-style, than anything, with a cyberdemon possessed of singular arcane abilities hounding you as you navigate a crumbling bit of skyline above the apparently long-dead city below. Continuous players can probably spoil everything (as is so often the case) by boorishly insisting on plinking him to death with stockpiled ballistics from the outset, but the intention seems to be that you're chased into the loft at the end, where the building itself seems to come alive with some malevolence, until he mysteriously disappears, setting up the 'dropped beat' before the very colorful (and, hard to argue, at least slightly funny) abrupt exit.

 

Not really the point of the design, again, but this does betoken that a fair few of ALT's maps are a royal pain in the ass to get maxkills on, incidentally, which here is a matter of pure design but in many later levels is often a question of primitive/unreliable off-map monster-closet construction. I'd also observe that the progression at the end is maybe some of the most obtuse or 'secret-like' in the whole mapset, which is a weird contrast with its otherwise on-rails and generally very forgiving design (i.e. no real penalty for falling off the building or the like).

 

Map 05 -- All Nightmare Long

 

a.k.a. "All Hightmare Long", apparently? Never noticed that error/typo before.

 

Apart from using my favorite track from Monolith's Blood for BGM, I most remember this one for its charmingly involved green room megasphere secret, somewhere in the back half of progression. Writ large, the level is ALT/Azamael to a point of some fault, IMO, being very slow-moving/slow-developing at first (i.e. the gradual clearing of the identikit cells or barracks or whatever they are) and then ending in something of a directionless splurge. Some more openly surreal stuff starts to show through the generalized city theme here (i.e. the 'slime ruins' or w/e), though the WAD is still holding its weirdness cards pretty close to the vest for at least a few more minutes here.

 

Though I suppose they technically debuted in m03, this is as good a time as any to mention the ALT revenants, since they've a more noticeable presence in placement here. All of the creatures in ALT have new sounds, of course--the distraught wailing and gnashing of the zombies, the strange active/ambulation pipewind 'howl' of the demonic-type enemies, etc.--but the revenant's are noticeably more discordant/horrifying, making them a comparatively jarring presence wherever they appear. I reckon it's telling that the enemy most visually reminiscent of (fairly universal) human images of death/mortality is made so comparatively distressing in ALT, both by its new sounds and particularly violent death animation. Notice also that this enemy type, far more than any other, is the most likely to feature in 'jumpscares' or flash ambushes as we proceed through the game.

 

Map 06 -- Sanctuary

The first of the non-Azamael maps, and quite the departure, in both tone and style. Ella guro's blog piece, linked in Dobu's OP, supplies some interesting background information about what was evidently something of a troubled/schismatic development cycle for the WAD, with BeeWen/Lestat evidently spearheading its finishing as a group project of sorts after some unnamed drama or controversy involving some of its maps evidently led to Azamael's withdrawal from the scene and apparently even to the eventual dissolution of the Clan.

 

Whatever the nature of this incident, its fallout certainly shapes the overall tone/character of the WAD in many significant ways, with there being something of a rather evident disconnect (IMO) between the very singleminded point-to-point linear (if surreal) narration of Azamael's maps to the much more polyglot panoply of styles and settings which fill the many resultant holes in much of its long middle stretch. "Sanctuary", by nomad, for its part reads as a "monster map", a sort of experimental canvas, typically for a relatively inexperienced designer, wherein s/he builds discrete area after discrete area, each largely divorced from the others, while learning the ropes of the editor. The big blood-sump area which serves as sort of semi-hub for the last half or so of progression is presumably the titular Sanctuary; the rest is a dissociated collection of arenas or corridor-slices in widely varying aesthetic and construction styles, some very plain/simple, others notably more mechanically and structurally complex, ala the first roughly city-themed area, which segues fairly conveniently with the previous string of Azamael's maps. Again, I'm inclined to read 'something' into the first appearance of a spider mastermind (read: big crazy-evil brain monster) in such a place, but this could mean anything or nothing, really.

 

Outside of the aforementioned first zone or area, which has some uncanny/fairly involved traversal/progression in the first tower and around the first key, most of the vignettes seen here are relatively barebones, uneventful safaris. There's a certain pleasure in the scale and style of some of them (i.e. the big blood-hub, I kind of like that), though I reckon it's hard to make the argument that these areas are the way they are as a result of It's Art (TM) versus designer innocence/experience. Most colorful is the sort of dark/spooky and initially unpopulated 'haunted base' area featuring in the first sub-leg of progression off of the blood-hub, which seems almost shoehorned in to fit the ALT mood/narrative, though if anything it's that first area that reads to me like it's most likely to be the product of editorial stitchwork, perhaps on BeeWen's part.

 

Ironically, perhaps, but not unfittingly, this stylistic and even tonal discordance doesn't really harm ALT or its narrative tone (though I would personally resist interpreting it all as being some cohesive artistic mastercraft) much in the long run, precisely because from page one it's a WAD that sets out to celebrate the telling of a story in the way best suited to Doom, i.e. by presenting you with a bunch of tenuously (if that) related material, and leading you to make your own pointed observation through a suggestive nudge here or there. In my opinion, most of the 'guest maps' or whatever you'd call them in ALT are not as well-developed (and often not as memorable) as Azamael's 'core' maps, but nevertheless the project could not exist without them, and in their way they contribute to its air of surrealism in a way that 32 maps of one author's vision realistically could not, no matter how carefully conducted.

 

 

 

[Capellan]

MAP22

Some quite finicky shoot switches in this, which preclude the chainsaw/punch activation option. Also a lot of running through nukage – though at least there is often a radsuit on hand. Not really a fan of the 1-2-3-4 switch area, and frankly I'm still not sure what I actually did to 'solve' it, but I managed to scrape through. Seems like a place where ammo could well become an issue ... I didn't have much left by the end of it. At least the next area was a good chance to stock up.

 

The exit is most arbitrary. Presumably if you knew where it was you could activate it without actually clearing the icon face room?

 

 

[BeeWen]

Initially, the output map 22.  Through the opened window with the texture of the eye-breaker, the cyberdemon from under the crusher shot undermined the killing pile of barrels for him and this action moved the player's doll to the exit line. The Issuer has not invented anything better, finding such a solution is too complex to draw this ridiculous exit at the left sleeve.

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP19: The Point of Return

13:04 | 100% Kills | 84% Items | 66% Secrets

This one was a lot shorter/simpler than I expected, kinda like TEETH meets Tricks 'N Traps. It was enjoyable enough, and at least the brevity meant it didn't overstay its welcome. The finale was pretty nuts, all those barons and cybers; when I first saw it, I woke 'em up from on high, then boogied on back to secret-hunt, and when I came back all that was left were the cybers. My first attempt to leap in failed, but I saw the invincible sitting there as I died, so my second go was a piece of cake. Weird exit, too; I thought I was supposed to get under the crusher. I was actually waiting for it to come back up, but it didn't, so I clicked the side and that's all it took.

 

MAP20: 20.44

37:52 | 100% Kills | 83% Items | 50% Secrets

Now this is an A.L.T. map! Fairly linear, but there are a number of little sidepaths that you need to discover and explore, or else you'll get stuck. I love the just balls-out abstract look of the place. And the shimmering portals are cool. Biggest complaint would be have to circumnavigate that monstrous starfish-shaped cliffside over and over. And the revenants clogging up the central ledges below were tedious: I dropped down onto the shelf, and then hid behind a pillar and plinked at plunked at them with the chaingun and/or SSG until they were all gone. Great map.