The DWmegawad Club plays: Eviternity

[tmorrow]

chapter: Hallowed, map26: Transcendence, by Xaser
uvmax, 100% k/i/s obtained

The Hallowed chapter begins with @Xaser's marvelous map. We've transcended earth's mortal coil and reached the heavens. What a breathtaking view. Some of the columns are reminiscent of the parthenon. What is this? Monster count of 490! That's a lot of enemies! Our marine has become all too accustomed with the beauty but outright lethality of Xaser's maps in the past. But how did these monsters get here? Our marine bets that the evil pentagonal, satanic, hellish orange structure to the north east with blood falls at its base is at the heart of the problem. The hideous structure is suspended by 3 enormous chains and you will find out once your marine starts exploring that the structure is blocking your marines way to the exit as well as spoiling the heavenly decor. Regrettably, with such a vast monster invasion of the sanctuary, there's going to be a lot of blood and guts spilled all over the heavenly floors before our marine can find his way to the exit. He can only hope that the blood and guts isn't his!

On this map, rather than hunt down keys, your marine will instead be seeking 3 sets of switches, each set removing 1 of the 3 chains supporting the satanic structure. There's a marvelous scene after you've removed the last chain where you get to see the satanic structure sink into the clouds below, leaving behind a fatal pain sector if your marine is unfortunate enough to fall into it.

The map has an open layout. Regions are separated by grand staircases. Almost every region has enemy spawns but there is plenty of room to move. The enemies usually can't leave the region they spawn in due to blocking lines or stairways they won't easily climb. The exceptions are the astral cacodemons and cacodemons that will hunt your marine down wherever he goes. There are also 3 exuberant cyberdemons that need to be, er, calmed down!

The pistol starter will need to use his ammo wisely since it is fairly scarce on this map. Both bfg and rocket launcher with ammo and a berserk is provided early on and much later you can pick up a secret chaingun. Our marine is sad though, having to do without both the shotgun and his favorite, the super shotgun. You will want to encourage a lot of infighting and use berserk liberally to conserve your rockets cells for the 3 cyberdemons, astral cacodemons and cacodemons. Fortunately infighting opportunities are ubiquitous. There are also several demons, nightmare demons and imps you can duke it out with. There's even some annihilators that will probably do more damage to each other than to your marine.

The 7 secrets on the map produce a chaingun, megasphere, 2 soul spheres, allmap, green armor and cells.

Edited March 27, 2019 by tmorrow : fixed some grammar

[SiFi270]

+++ Deadly Standards, +++ Master Levels

[VanaheimRanger]

 

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP26: Transcendence

 

So, 450 monsters on Hurt Me Plenty, Tyson-style start which hands you a berserk pack and encourages a "Have at ye!" approach to the hell knights and revenants ahead, slaugther-esque mass releases of monsters the minute you go to grab yourself a bigger gun, and a wide-open layout full of distant vistas of intricate megastructures that leave my dinosaur sweating.  This is the point at which I'm calling the front desk to request an early check-out, because this is a gorgeous map which nevertheless is made up of just about all of my least favourite things.  See you guys next month, maybe!

[ReaperAA]

@guitardz I never got to ask this before but what HUD mod are u using.

[VanaheimRanger]

34 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

@guitardz I never got to ask this before but what HUD mod are u using.

This one:

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=63863

 

Be sure to grab the Eviternity alignment fix for it as well on that page.  I've also found that a lot of other WADs that have misaligned STBARS with that HUD can also work well with either the Eviternity fix or one of the others.

[Dragonfly]

1 hour ago, TheOrganGrinder said:

This is the point at which I'm calling the front desk to request an early check-out, because this is a gorgeous map which nevertheless is made up of just about all of my least favourite things.  See you guys next month, maybe!

 

If I could lure you back in, the maps that follow are much less slaughtery than this one, more 'traditionally difficult' vs 'overbearing monster count'.

[Catpho]

A challenger approaches!

Sorry for having neglected this thread for so long. Yadda yadda things get in the way (in retrospect shouldn't have made this post so early). My play schedule is actually up to date though, so i think I'll be jumping in for the last stretch. A summary of my previous experiences will come soon(ish) (spoiler alert: they are positive)

CHAPTER VI: Hallowed (who ever named this gets the title of "the punisher")

MAP26: "Transcendence" by Xaser

Ah, fluffy clouds, smooth blocks of marble, golden trims, vague religious iconography that's not satanic for a change... That's right, it's the theme park version of heaven! This depiction of humanity's speculated ultimate reward is seldom seen in PWADs, though just general white stuff drifting amongst the blue yonder on the other hand already has it's fair share of maps. Cue speculation! In any case, Eviternity is setting itself up for unique sights that will be remembered long after the set's conclusion, and you gotta admit the irony is hard to resist.

What better way to get the divine ball rolling than with the X-Man? "Transcendence", judging from it's ending scene, is actually just temporal stop, a gateway before entering Angel land proper (because even in the afterlife the torment of bureaucracy is eternal). It's the stage for a magnificent vista, probably one of the best there is in a wad already lauded for eye candy: the towers of opposing forces, representing good and evil hanging in the balance. My word, such beautiful circles/cylinders. The rest of the journey never lets up on it's visual assault, with many fine details in every view. The best bit is the halos on the columns, god bless them. Special mentions go to "Gonzu" by Kniggit, a track that's equal parts serene and dissonance, perfectly capturing what the level is all about (too short tho, and the loop is weird to get used to :P).

Finishing 25 maps, players up to this point are no doubt ready for Eviternity's worst! A bfg from the get-go is intimidating, something I bet my noob self would tremble at, considering what it could imply. However, fears from people such as @TheOrganGrinder is ultimately unfounded, I think! Xaser plays around with crowd control, but it's of the "learning" and "warming up" variety, not reaching any level I would call strenuous. Though it's the awe and the fear and respect generated form the player's mind I like best, e.g "What else can they throw at me when they've already handed the big bad gun??? Omg im going to die!!!!!" (hopefully my interpretation is not far off heh). The progression is a very cool implementation of special effects, complete with custom chain sounds and a dramatic send off to what is ultimately just a glorified roadblock plummeting from the skies.

Lovely, lovelyyyyyy map.

Some screenies:

Edited March 30, 2019 by Catpho

[Tristan]

5 minutes ago, Catpho said:

 (who ever named this gets the title of "the punisher")

 

:(

[dac]

MAP 26 – Transcendence

 

For future reference, I had GZDoom on a software renderer mode and that does not play nice with those massively detailed landscapes like the beginning of this map. Switched back to openGL, and it’s still a bit choppy but oh so much better than the alternative.

 

With that out of the way, welcome to demon-infested heaven, where angelic structures share space with some demonic thorn we have to remove before we can continue this chapter. 450 demons to slaughter, BFG and rockets only. Yes, I know there is a Tyson segment, but thankfully for the rest of us there’s a secret to dodge that specific fight.

 

450 demons might sound daunting, but most of it is imps so it isn’t that bad. Really, this is a rather soothing map, even with a few astral cacos around and that screech. Be in awe at the architecture, fire the BFG a bunch, enjoy the ride.

 

Also love the use of multiple skies.

[Budoka]

MAP21: Imperishable
------------------------

 

I like the idea of thinking of this as some alien planet rather than just the usual hell dimension that is par for the course with Doom flavouring. It's more interesting that way. At any rate, this one greets us with a hectic start, and in fact it turns out that the best way to survive the early portion of this level is to trigger as many of the next ambushes as possible. It's kind of Resurgence-like in that sense, which is to say that, of course, I like this map a lot.

 

Another interesting thing is that from start to end the player is kind of under-supplied armament wise relative to the opposition they have to face, although it could be that I just missed a secret Berserk. However, there are two encounters here that could be considered questionable. First, there's the Plasma Rifle ambush, in which running in the direction of the exit portal and camping in front of it seems to be the only strategy that gives you reasonable chances of survival. Second, there's the final Cyberdemon, which extremely boring to fight as well as entirely pointless (it's very easy to just run past it).

 

Aside from those two mishaps though, this is a real solid offering, as are most of Dragonfly's entries. He's the backbone of the whole project for a reason.

 

MAP22: Viscera
------------------------

 

This "Archviles everywhere" gimmick, as well as the overall difficulty balancing of this level, reminds me of Erik Alm for some reason. Well, there's that very obvious "spiders everywhere" map he had in Scythe, but it's not just that. I can't quite put my finger on it though. Anyway, this level is very atmospheric and does a great job with its red and purple contrast.

 

It's also great at creating tension, not just thanks to the very fitting MIDI, but also because its very non-linear progression is basically base entirely on trade-off choices. The many early fights are all doable from the start, but noen of them are easy. The two rocket launcher arenas are frantic battles reminiscent of MAP14, if somewhat more understated, and they're great fun. However, and in contrast with the previous map, I do think the highlight here is the Cyberdemon fight. It's very hard to cheese, and at the same time very versatile.

 

As for the yellow key fight, it ccould be complete chaos, or you could just go around the back if you're willing to face the Spiderdemon. Which unfortunately is a lot more time-consuming than difficult. in fact it's not difficult at all, there's cover right beside it.

 

I also think that there are perhaps a dew too many health power-upson this map. Even so, after playing it twice I've decided that it's one of the coolest and most satisfying levels in all of Eviternity, which is no small praise.

 

MAP23: Tribulation
-------------------------

 

Love that entry hallway that is plunged in complete darkness. Adnd holy cow, this one is brutal. It felt trivial during my original playthrough, but I guess I must have lucked out somehow. Just about every encounter here is incredibly tricky. The Pinky swarm in particular threw me in for a loop this time around, I just couldn't figure it out for some reason.

 

Oh and of course, the return of the custom enemies, especially the Astral Cacodemon, is most welcome.

[Bauul]

1 hour ago, Budoka said:

I like the idea of thinking of this as some alien planet rather than just the usual hell dimension that is par for the course with Doom flavouring. It's more interesting that way.

 

If you've been following the (admittedly rather flowery) intermission text, then you'll know that this is indeed not the Hell we see in most Doom maps.

[tmorrow]

chapter: Hallowed, map27: Heliopolis, by Dragonfly
uvmax, 100% k/i/s obtained

@Dragonfly immerses us into a gorgeously, lush, heavenly location with tan marble architecture complementing the natural landscape of green grass, trees, hills and natural springs. Picturesque! Our marine is upset to discover that this beautiful location has been taken over by hell spawn. What could have gone wrong? After all, monster invasions almost never happen in doom maps! It seems our marine has been sent on another mop up operation.

The exit is located smack dab in the middle of the map this time, at the top of a diamond shaped area. Access to the exit is on the north side, where there are 12 red candles flanking a set of invisible stairs that start in a collapsed state. In order to raise the stairs, our marine has to hunt down 12 pedestal switches distributed all over our Heliopolis, each with a weapon, health or armor sitting on top. Using each switch raises one of the 12 steps into place. Your marine will have to discover and use all 12 switches to complete the staircase to the exit. Some of the 12 switches also reveal new areas or enemies. The most dangerous 2 switches are to the northeast and southwest, both with a plasma rifle perched alluringly on top.

Obtaining a start on this map is a little tricky for pistol starters. As soon as our marine crosses the bridge he is set upon by, well, uh, everyone. Lacking the more powerful weapons and necessary ammo, our marine has to go for a bit of a run, trying to locate better weapons, health and armor at the same time as avoiding being chopped into mincemeat by the enemy. Naturally, running into new areas unleashes more foes that add to the large swarm on the chase. Your marine will probably rely on picking off enemies using the classic "run by shooting" strategy for quite a while before being able to claim some territory of his own, after which he can control the pacing a bit more. Most veterans will be able to handle most of what is dished out but there are some dangers. For example, it appears that cybie and a handful of archviles have reenlisted for another tour of duty with the enemy and the spider mastermind has been assigned exit duty - stomp, stomp, stomp, ratatatat!

If you find the 3 secrets you will pickup a bfg, soulsphere and a megaarmor.

[VanaheimRanger]

 

[dac]

MAP 27 – Heliopolis

 

On 3/27/2019 at 12:30 PM, Dragonfly said:

 

If I could lure you back in, the maps that follow are much less slaughtery than this one, more 'traditionally difficult' vs 'overbearing monster count'.

 

Dragonfly is not wrong here, this is a tamer map than Xaser’s one. It’s also less, for lack of a better word, visually catchy? There is a LOT of engine trickery going on with the architecture, but it all involves muted colours and grey skies. It feels less like a heavenscape and more like ruins in earthly nature. And this mundane world becomes a problem when the goal of this map is to find twelve switches, and the indication that these switches do something more than giving you weaponry can be easily missed. The music (stewboy’s Imaginarium) didn’t help matters, and I kept comparing this rather drab map to one of the most imaginative I’ve seen.

 

If this map was early in the set, I would have been more forgiving. In the final chapter, not as much.

[Dragonfly]

Fair comments, fair comments. I think it's 'punch' is certainly lost after Xaser's godlike (heh, get it?) work! This map was also one of the earlier ones developed IIRC. I'll factcheck and talk more about that when I eventually type my piece on it. I'll probably be posting in this thread well into next month at this rate!

[tmorrow]

chapter: Hallowed, map28: Judgement, by Dragonfly
uvmax, 100% k/i/s obtained

It appears that our marine is about to be judged. Ain't that a bitch! A vicious and mean arena style battle has been lovingly crafted, beautifully presented and carefully orchestrated by @Dragonfly to rip off our marines arms and stuff them down his throat. It appears that our marines reputation precedes him. I don't think his latest memoir, titled "Suck it down, Cybie!" has not been well received in the monster community. In fact, the monsters are chomping at the bit and frothing at the mouth to sink their claws into our marine in retaliation. It seems that 330 enemies is the chock full capacity of this arena and Dragonfly is unable to squeeze in any more. It's been reported that several monsters have been turned away disappointed.

Judgement begins when our marine hits the first switch and scoops the weaponry and health. Two golden pillars rise to the east and west with a cybie atop each one, like colossi against the sky. Eager to get the party started, both cybies let loose a rain of relentless rocket fire that follows our marines every step. Our marine must collect the blue keycard to the west and yellow keycard to the east amid the rocket hail and several opposing enemies. Completing both areas opens the way to the southern half of the arena where things get really nasty.

The switch in the southern half of the arena lowers the red key, both of the cybies and reveals their support teams, a diverse collection of monsters. The way to the north is blocked off. This is the first slaughter wave. An undisciplined all in attack against our marine ensues.

Surviving the first slaughter wave, our marine can use 2 more switches to open the way to the north and then use his 3 key cards at the triple switch to start the lowering of the exit bars and unleash the final slaughter wave. This last wave is no organised onslaught. Without order the enemy appear and immediately close in on all sides, lunging and scrambling over each other to get at our marine. You've heard the old adage that "diversity is strength". It appears that this does not apply to monsters as they fight among themselves to be the first to draw blood.

Our marine would like to report that the slaughter waves can be readily managed on this map using Sir Robin's genius strategy to "bravely run away". Using the outer southern part of the 3/4 moon shaped arena works better than heading to the north where there are some dangerous bottlenecks and congestion. Our marine does admit to defeat on a few uvmax attempts, and no, he does not want to discuss the details of those failures. Ultimately he came through with a success and has been judged victorious!

The solitary secret on the map holds a megaarmor.

Edited March 29, 2019 by tmorrow

[dobu gabu maru]

Avactor, Deadly Standards & Master Levels, and ESP 2 are all tied with 3 votes. Since 2 of the Avactor votes aren't necessarily for Preacher & Fetish Film, we could always mix and match by doing Avactor & Master Levels or Avactor, Fetish Film, & Deadly Standards

[ReaperAA]

7 minutes ago, dobu gabu maru said:

we could always mix and match by doing Avactor & Master Levels or Avactor, Fetish Film, & Deadly Standards

 

Avactor's levels are really long tho. It might only be 12 levels, but its length is comparable to a typical megawad.

[FrancisT218]

+++Avactor, Deadly Standards, Preacher

 

(Ignore my prior vote please)

[WH-Wilou84]

+++ Avactor, Deadly Standards

(Avactor's length should indeed be taken into consideration)

[Walter confetti]

+++ Deadly Standards, Avactor

 

Make it finally happen. Also this looks like a interesting combo.

[Snikle]

Looks like I fell behind a bit... I was playing RC1 and writing for that back in December until I got to map 20 or so, then I waited for the final release to finish playing. And, well, I didn't do any writeups after that. 

 

Anyway, Map 25 - Slave

This episode-ender was a fun little arena map. The arena was simple, but thankfully not symmetrical. I don't remember all that much about the gameplay, but I remember enjoying it. The bridge was pretty cool, along with all the faux-3d blocks and midtex chains hanging above.

 

Map26 - Transcendence

The scale of this map is impressive, and although it's so grand, it's not nearly as long as MAP32 or MAP19. The fights just started getting slaughtery, but not obnoxiusly so. The hordes were fun as hell to squish, and there was plenty of powerful ammo to do so. The visuals were amazing, of course. The mixture of Heaven and Hell was pulled off very well, at least until the Hellish spire fell away thanks to our marine. The switches to do so were some of the coolest looking things I've seen in Doom. Those midtex chains were great too. All of OTEX is great too.

 

I guess since Avactor levels are super long, I'll vote

 

+++Deadly Standards and Avactor

 

Ignore my first vote. I'll vote for Preacher next month. And hopefully Refracted Reality as well...

[Tristan]

Catchup catchup catchup

 

MAP26: Transcendence - Xaser

13:45, 100% kills, 71% secrets

 

So, this is gorgeous. A stunning intro to the final chapter, but it's a bit of a baptism by fire, not unlike the Hell episode, and judging by the end of the map, that can be taken literally. Xaser mentioned recently he wanted this map to hit the type of slaughter that was approachable for everyone and, uh, OrganGrinder not withstanding I'm inclined to say he's succeeded on the basis that I actually enjoy this map. The difficulty is quite manageable on HMP, though I recall UV gave me a lot of trouble when I first played it. The monsters are encountered in dense clumps despite the stunningly large scale of the environment, so the 450 monsters disappear pretty quickly, in fact this is quite a fair bit shorter than the average guest map, no doubt much of the playtime for the unsuspecting player is more likely to be spent being pummelled by the hordes, but for me, the way this is set up is basically ideal, rocket launcher and BFG are the primary weapons, and there's enough ammo to see you through without much trouble, but not so much that you can get away with Leeroying your way through everything, sometimes I used berserk on smaller monsters to conserve ammo.

 

Health on the other hand is a bit more on the generous side, with the multiple soulspheres, berserk packs and even a megasphere available, the secrets here really do pay off - there's two cybers on this map on HMP and both are in close proximity to such items, which to me is the perfect opportunity to practice the 2-shot trick on them with the BFG. It's nice to see the astral caco finally making a significant comeback here, having been virtually absent since the brutalism chapter.

 

The main eyecandy points here though are the two giant towers that dominate the skyline, a clashing of worlds, Heaven and Hell. I think the objective of the map is really awesome, making further use of the chains seen attached to MAP21's helltower, now functioning as the life support for the tower, and we have to release them to cast the helltower down out of the sparkling plains. When this happens, the sight of it descending is quite something to behold. I also love that arc-shaped structure looming behind it, and there's other really neat touches, the golden sky contained within the halo of the heaventower, the pink sky used for everything else - a literal fusion of the red of Hell and the white of Heaven, and the little bits of symbolism that ultimately make this map what it is - a tribute for a fallen community member. It's beautiful.

 

MAP27: Heliopolis - Dragonfly

13:00, 98% kills, 100% secrets

 

This one by contrast always ends up taking me longer than I expect it to. We're tasked with finding 12 switches which we have to use to access the exit which is at the end. Man am I glad I'm not pistol starting this, lol. It's non-linear to the point where you can easily fuck yourself up by going somewhere before you're meant to, an unbalanced non-linearity, or even pseudo-linearity? The idea is something I've considered myself for Doom, with my own thinking of creating something parallel to the castle in Rogue Legacy where you can go anywhere right from the off but you won't last 5 seconds if you head straight to the dungeons, for example. Does it work? Well in this case, I like the map well enough though I'm still not fully convinced by this concept in Doom, maybe I'll try it myself one day.

 

All the fake-3D architecture present is quite unlike what I'm used to seeing in Boom WADs, and in that sense it's somewhat fitting that it's stewboy's Imaginarium that we're hearing here, previously used for Ancient Aliens MAP24 which was also quite unlike anything else I'd ever seen, and also had a heaven-like theme to it. The large open spaces of the map allow the nightmare demons to show off how fast they can sprint at the player, and there's a lot of them here. Oddly enough it's the last two playthroughs of this map I've found the most challenging, and I put that down to that unbalanced non-linearity I mentioned earlier, now that I know the map better, it seems I'm less likely to follow the safer route, even though it would really make life a lot easier.

 

You'll all notice that so far this episode hasn't been doing the flowing exits seen in almost every map before it - it's a interesting little detail because it returns in the final maps, and as such the final three form a kind of mini-chapter which I've narcissistically dubbed The Elysium Trilogy. This, combined with Xaser's map being what it is, inevitably leaves Heliopolis as a bit of a black sheep in the chapter. Good, but in the weaker half of Josh's maps IMO. As pointed out by dac, coming straight after Xaser's map doesn't do it many favours either. Rather you than me buddy :P

 

MAP28: Judgement - Dragonfly

6:32, 100% kills, 100% secrets

 

Some light slaughter to kick off the Elysium trilogy (:V). This map consists of basically a few small arenas that open up after the blue and yellow keys are collected to form one larger arena in which we have to fend off two big fights, one for the red key, and one for opening the exit after it. With the BFG from previous maps this isn't so difficult as there's plenty of cell ammo left for us since the intended weapons for this map are the plasma gun and the rocket launcher. Really impressive architecture, and a very fun map, though I don't have a whole lot else to say about it. The exit is right behind the start, and leads into a dark tunnel. I wonder where this goes :o

[dac]

Elysium Trilogy, huh. Tomorrow we get to the meat of it, but for now:

 

MAP 28 – Judgement

 

A Pokemon Mystery Dungeon song! And it’s not the one everyone knows, too!

 

This is a short, small, focused arena fight. One fight for a blue key, another for a yellow key, and both obtained open up another fight for a red key. All three keys combines initiate a fight for the exit, the arenas opening up to become one big cluster. It’s all fun, but nothing too memorable apart from the architecture and the arenas themselves. It’s a series of fights, and alone it doesn’t compare once again to Xaser’s opening and the map coming directly after it.

 

Playing on HMP, the ordered part of me was rather irked at having a cyberdemon on one elevated platform and a mancubus on the other. It’s an irrational irk, and I get having two cyberdemons would have been a bit much for this difficulty.

 

 

[VanaheimRanger]

 

[Magnusblitz]

Onward to Hell!

 

MAP21: Imperishable

99% kills, 4/4 secrets

 

The hell episode begins with a pretty classic red-and-black hell, though there's some nice orange lava to add some visual interest. Finally get to see the tower in the titlepic, too, and I really like how the map makes full use of it, first with the dead-end point to make the player turn around see the vista, and then later as the map curls back around and into the tower. Quite a few bits of unleashing a big wave of monsters from afar, which gives the player time to run around and stir up some infighting since they won't have the heavy artillery yet. Ammo actually proved to be quite sparse, even finding all four secrets I felt it was better to just run past the cyberdemon at the end as I was forced to use my plasma taking out the demons up the stairs.

 

MAP22: Viscera

100% kills, 2/3 secrets

 

Quite the impressive opening, both visually with the dripping blood and a good scare with the arch-viles at the start who then scurry away Hunted-style. It's a collect-the-key quest, but as seen previously in Dragonfly's maps the level will guide you from one to the other without really making it feel like a 'hub.' I ended up going red-yellow-blue for what it's worth, and I really liked (and died repeatedly on) all three of the key battles. Shows off the nightmare demons quite well, regular demons would've been pretty easy in that battle but the bigger quicker baddies means you have to play it a lot more aggressively. I almost missed the cyberdemon though and the SMM at the end felt pretty anti-climatic.

 

MAP23: Tribulation

100% kills, 1/2 secrets

 

The architecture of this one had a certain weirdness to it... usually even the hellish stuff is often recognizable as a castle or temple or whatever but this one just felt 'off', in a good way. Maybe it was helped by the Geiger-ish black textures and strange neon purple but the design with the triangle room or the flowing goop fountain or the low ceiling-battlements, I dunno, just felt very off-kilter even by abstract Doom standards. Small map but bloody, I like it. That first astral (figuratively) made me shit my pants as I heard the mancs first and was looking for them and bungled right into the astral, heh. I will say that the nightmare demons are used rather ineffectively here though, as it's easy to just kill the manc and then safely sit in his space since the nightmare demons move too quick to move into it.

[tmorrow]

chapter: Hallowed, map29: Elysium, by Eris Falling, Dragonfly
uvmax, 100% k/i/s obtained

Elyseum is an exquisite level, an epic adventure and my favorite Eviternity map overall. The collaboration between @Eris Falling and @Dragonfly delivers everything you can hope for in a doom map with both beautiful layouts and epic fights from beginning to end. Both mappers know all the ropes and they are trying to strangle our marine with them!

Our marine is presented with one brief glimpse back at the judgement arena before he is rudely plunged into darkness. Was he not favored by the gods? Was he not worthy? It looks like our marine must take the hard road to Elyseum.

Our marine makes his way out of the darkness and to his delight sees a bunch of weapons being lowered on pedestals in a gigantic building that he immediately swipes. Looking around further he discovers the first launch pad on the map. Whee! Using the switch on the platform where he lands reveals the first 2 cybies on the map. Our marine would like to report the discovery of some mild cheese, red leicester perhaps, for this fight. He condemns the use of this outrageous and totally abhorrent technique. No, no, no!

 

Spoiler

After using the switch past the first launch pad that starts lowering the wall to the outside, run back to where your marine collected the weapons. The cybies will be revealed outside and start to fire rockets, just in time to crash into the hellknights spawning in front of your marine. The hellknights are all facing away and will not be a threat. Your marine just needs to avoid any stray rockets and polish off the weakened cybies after all of the hellknights go down.

A couple of launch pads later and our marine arrives at the central hub where the 3rd cybie is encountered with a host of revenant friends. Initially the only way out of the hub is to the north. After visiting the 3 key switches, the areas on the the east and west sides of the hub open, releasing a swarm of cacodemons, arriving fashionably late to the party, but who are keen to join the fun.

The blue keycard pickup is to the west and is the first nasty trap. It involves the fourth and fifth cybie's, several hellknights and a handful of imps. Our marine has sniffed out some medium strength cheese, gouda or havarti in all likelihood. Our marine turns his nose up with utter contempt at anyone using such deplorable tactics. He would never stoop so low! No, no, no!

 

Spoiler

As several of the walls are being lowering to open the trap your marine can immediately run into the small alcove between the 2 cybies with the switch that lowers the wall to exit the area. The 2 cybies won't wake up since their line of sight is broken and it is only a couple of angry hellknights that will take pot shots while your marine waits for the exit wall to lower. He may be driven out of the alcove a bit early and have to dodge for a few seconds as the wall comes down before escaping.

To obtain the red keycard, our marine must drop into and negotiate a beautiful, yet deadly cavern, chock full of spectres, mancubi, arachnotrons, imps, revenants and the biggest swarm of astral cacodemons our marine has ever seen. He has ongoing nightmares about the caverns denizens and was only able to survive by slowly kiting the buggers, traversing the cavern clockwise and all the way back to the bottom of the cave. From there, he was able to avoid the revenant and astral cacodemon attacks by circle strafing and ducking into the southwest cave indentation to annihilate homing rockets from time to time. The red keycard lies through the portal at the end of the cavern.

The yellow key is picked up after using the blue and red keys at the 3 switches north of the central hub. Using the yellow key opens a one way trip to the final area from which you cannot return. Those seeking a uvmax will want to ensure there are 131 enemies, 3 items and 2 secrets remaining on the map before taking the launchpad through the golden circles.

The golden circles portal takes our marine to ... OMG! It's his worst nightmare. In a surreal vision, he's back on map01 again. Nooooo! Make the nightmare stop! The map appears to be bereft of life until our marine is foolish enough to use the final switch, after which all hell breaks loose. The sixth and seventh cybies roar to life along with 2 archviles and several revenants and hellknights with some tier 1 riff raff thrown in for good measure. It turns out there is some sharp cheese buried in the final fight, almost certainly parmesan. Performance of this maneuver is inexcusable and unforgivable in the eyes of our marine. He would never perpetrate such an atrocity! No, no, no!

 

Spoiler

Use the final switch to release the final fight and then race to the secret teleporter area that leads to one of the megaspheres. Parking your marine there is quite safe for most of the infighting, although a revenant or two may follow your marine in, they are easy to take care of. After the hostilities have subsided, your marine is left with a simple mop up operation of taking out the 2 cybies and a handful of enemies that weren't splattered by rockets earlier.

The 3 secrets contain valuable pickups, 2 megaspheres and a soulsphere. I hope I'm not giving too much away when I say you should know where 2 of the 3 secrets are located since you've been there before.

Some have said that "our marine doth protest too much, methinks"! :-)

[Budoka]

MAP24: Gossamer by Mechadon
------------------------------

 

This, of course, is the re-tooled map I was talking about. It wasn't originally made for Eviternity, yet it fits in a lot better than "Dehydration" does. However, if there is one map in the set which this one should be compared to, it isn't MAP19, but rather Skillsaw's "Imperator". The two maps feature the same kind of punchy, action-heavy, moslty forgiving of player mistakes type gamelplay. Perhaps there is some relation between this and the fact that both mappers collaborated on the back to Saturn X series.

 

As for the map itself, it's a treat from start to end. As with most (all ?) Mechadon levels, as well as some of the earlier levels in this very mapset, it's one giant interconnected puzzle box. But in truth, as compelling as that is in and of itself, it's actually secondary to the overall feel of the map, the meat of the action coming almost entirely from the arena and/or slaughter fights that continue to trigger as the player progresses through the level.

 

The arenas start out straightforward enough, but become more and more strategy-heavy with each iteration. The first Annihilator fight is already something, but then there is is Imp/Caco/Reveneant combo, and this all culminates in the quradruple-Cyberdemon finale. I've found that feigning a circle-strafe only to immediately go back around tends to confuse them quite effectively. Meanwhile, the second Annihilator fight is just complete chaos, while unfortunately the final Cacodemon swarm is just about completely harmless.

 

Much like with "Viscera", this second playthrough has cemented this map as yet another favourite for me.

 

MAP25: Slave
----------------------------

 

I kind of know what I'm going to say about this one without even bothering to replay it, but let's do that anyway.

...Scratch what I just said. For whatever reason, this map gave me very little trouble during my PrBoom+ playthrough, so I was ready to write it off as that one silly stress-relieving level in the late portion of the mapset, something comparable do Speed of Doom's utterly gratuitous "Twilight Massacre" (but not its devious sequel, that level is a different beast entirely).

 

As it turns out, considering the number of tries it just took me, I think it's fair to say that this slaugther fight is fairly challenging, and a very satisfying conclusion to the episode. Oh and of course, I love the silent, atmospheric intro, especially since it doesn't overstay its welcome. I would also like to take note of the midi, which couldn't possibly have fitted this gladiator-style challenge any better.

 

After replaying it, I've come to the conclusion that Chapter V as a whole is very strong, with no real missteps. It's a genuine contender with Chapter III, even though I like the overall ambience of that one better.

[dac]

MAP 29 – Elysium

 

The beginning of this map, along with the music's opening notes, gives the impression this is going to be an epic for the ages, a journey across massive heaven monuments as demons are slain by the hundreds, a prelude to an announced grand finale in map 30. Elysium, a collaboration between @Eris Falling and @Dragonfly, is not exactly that kind of map: it is less an “epic”, and more experimental, more filled with ideas. This is the one map where anything goes to impress, from environment to fights. And for the most part, it works like a charm. To get it out of the way, my main gripe is a few of these ideas aren’t fleshed out enough. Specifically the end section, more on that later.

 

After getting past the initial pincer attack, Elysium leans hard on a “corrupted heaven” concept. Black tar is present through the map, overflowing in holy places, uncovering itself from blue water. It’s not harmful to us, thankfully. The other main element of this map are the launchpads, a nice bit of Boom trickery among a TON of trickery in this map, to travel from one island to another, or deep into caverns below them.

 

The opposition is at its fiercest, cyberdemons featuring aplenty through the map and other monsters revealing themselves or warping in at the earliest opportunity. Of the lot, the most memorable will certainly be the mapset’s first astral cacoswarm – whereas those were placed in ambushes most of the time, the final fight on the way to the red key simply sic a couple dozen of them on you along with revenants and nightmare demons.

 

It’s a lot to take in at once, and while it makes for one hell of a memorable map, it also makes for a map that left me wanting for more. What I mentioned about ideas not being fleshed enough? To tell the truth, this map could not only be more, it could have been split into two: one part the heaven section, a set of islands traversed by flight and the caves beneath them; the other part going back to corrupted versions of old maps, transformed into arenas blocking our way to the one behind it all. But that’s just because I am a complete sucker for travelling back to old environments with twists in them, and video games needs more of it, or multiple environments stitched together by astral forces.

 

As it stands, of the Elysium Trilogy, this is the best setup for a grand finale.