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baja blast rd.

The DWMiniwad Club Plays: more things [including Brigandine, Miasma, etc.]

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I stumbled on this club and it gave me an excuse to return to A Hidden Mountain Factory. I first played this probably two or three years ago, after I'd played through Doom and Doom 2, I found it on the top wads listing on this site and it looked interesting so I decided to give it a go, got destroyed by it, but actually appreciated the flow and the chunky machinery aesthetics.

 

That's still largely where I am now, though I got destroyed less. I played through on GZDoom, on UV with saves, missed a lot of secrets, but came out still feeling roughly the same as I did before. I really really like the way the linearity and tight spaces flow in this wad, even though I still have a lot of trouble navigating through them without losing a good chunk of health, and the mountain factory aesthetic is nailed so well with the resources that they used for it. I do agree with what @Doritos420 said shotgun-wise, it ended up getting a bit stale by the end. It's not one of my favorite wads I've ever played, but it's one that kind of remains in the back of my mind a lot of the time.

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Brigandine (I really hope this is long enough).

 

Essentially, this is a city map in the heavy stages of corruption. The shape is definitely of an organic one you might want to explore if you didn't generally pay a price. The corruption seems pretty light at first, with the occasional skull texture, but noticeably starts to grow more intense as you enter some more of the indoor areas. Music conveying doom and gloom really helps to aid the suspicion that we may be in a losing battle with the demons.

 

After a incredibly intense beginning, including quite a few shotgun guys, threats are more manageable for a little bit. You'll eventually reach a fork in the path, but you should probably take the lower left one because that's where you'll find the super shotgun, though you're gonna have to fight for it. That's actually a hallmark of this WAD. Non-hidden goodies never come without some accompanying encounter that might make you regret trying. Case in point: You have the opportunity to grab the rocket launcher fairly early after dropping from a bloodfall near the top of the circular tower that you'll find yourself (after dealing with either hitscanners or some revenants, depending on the path you take), but dropping onto said platform triggers an Arch-vile to teleport in, along with some demons in the basement below. Unfortunately, this Arch-vile is more likely than not to teleport between the different platforms for a bit before teleporting down to the floor, where they'll then proceed to resurrect the cacodemons and revenants which you killed earlier. Needless to say, you might run out of rocket ammo, and then your survival chances end up becoming slim indeed.

 

Another trap that's kind of nasty is when you grab a non-secret Supercharge gazing over the courtyard below a door that opens when you acquire the blue key. A pair of Manicubi will teleport in on each side to attempt wrecking your day. It's not quite as intense as some of the other ambushes later on, but it can really catch you by surprise if you're not looking out.

 

Now, secrets. I wish I bothered to investigate a little more carefully certain areas, because the BFG9000 is hidden away somewhere I couldn't access. I did find the hidden cave with spectres and a berserk at the other end, as well a switch cunningly hidden by vines near the blue key which opens a passageway to the floor of the room you're in, allowing you to lower the alcove with the megaarmor. Also, that graffiti in that one hidden area which seems to show Dopefish eating Doomguy I believe is a nice touch.

 

If you've got the BFG, (I did not) you'll probably find the final fight to be little trouble. Take out the Pain Elemental that appears when you grab the yellow key, fall into the moat, turn around, and run towards the now-open yellow gate. You'll just see some Cacodemons and Imps at first, but you'll soon spot a pair of Arch-viles hanging around in the exit gate, one of which will probably end up emerging and resurrecting some of the slain Cacodemons from earlier if you're not looking. It can be quite tricky to handle them if you have no BFG and find yourself running out of rockets. Hopefully, you'll have taken one out so you can dart in and grab some more rockets to take out the likely one remaining arch-vile and their blubbery bodyguard.

 

Much thought went into the incidental encounters of this map, that much is clear. That may have distracted me somewhat from finding many of the secrets, but I think things turned out ok in the end.

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Decimate

 

D_Runnin wasn't replaced, so I just put on some Spotify and forgot about it. Starting out, you're in what's probably supposed to be a gate of sorts, facing a modernish house that anachronistically has some large towers on each side (could be Europe I guess,but that seems unlikely), as well as castle ramparts at each corner of the squarish complex, each containing a pair of Imps. At the other end of the house is the exit, closed off. On each end is a sort of gate with baron icons on the sides that's really the only sign demons have been here. Maybe this is more like some demon country house? It would certainly explain why the hell there's lava that will scald you to bits if you drop into it. It's especially infuriating because there are ledges running along the outside, as they run outside the front of the house, to the towers I mentioned earlier where the tower gates block you, and there are some strangely tempting little details like blood or lava or whatever running out of some drains.

 

It certainly gives a certain presence to this place. Upon stepping through the front inner gate, a large welcoming committee of Imps greets you. Unfortunately, there isn't a Shotgun anywhere outside, so you'll have to run around the back, (the front door requires a key I had so much trouble with but more on that later), past one of the side fountains and enter the back door and find yourself greeted by a pair of Shotgun guys that'll probably hurt you badly. Anyway, take their weapons, ascend the stairs from the tight, snug room and enter the rather tight and snug corridors. Straight ahead of you is a window you can't crawl through because you're too big or something, but outside, the sight of a Megaarmor tempts you, but unfortunately, it's inaccessible for much of the lava  On either side, there are door. For some reason have a certain common Doom II techbase as the door texture. Yeah, I don't get it, but you have to give Gurkha Boy credit for doing something that doesn't stand out too much.

 

So where do you go when you have maybe 8 shells? Well, take the right corridor and eventually find yourself in a room with Shotgun Guys. They'll alleviate your ammo woes, though perhaps not seriously.  You can either ope open the other door in this room and deal with the Hell Knights right then, or if you're feeling anxious about ammo like me, run to the other side of the hallway, try to take a Chaingun from one of the Chaingunners closest to the door then fire at them as they come to you. Unfortunately, you'll have to run out and grab some more ammo at some point, because you'll probably burn through quite a bit of it before you've killed the half dozen or so that are here. But the other people that have played this map have pointed out this map's ammon stinginess so I won't belabor that.

 

No matter what, you should probably try to use at least 3-5 shells on the Revenants that greet you in what was probably a generic mansion room - long with brown-vined windows and a nice vista outside(identical to the hell knight room because while there's a bullet box in the chaingunner room, Revenants aren't easy to kill with a chaingun, even if you can incept a pain state on one half of a pair.

 

Anyway both the Revenant and Hell Knight room have a switch below their respective entrances which'll lower one pillar each guarding the entrances to the tower. Try to enter the south tower first because you'll be able to get the rocket launcher sooner. See, the switches in each of the towers will both a)lower platforms in the shotgun and chaingunner rooms that contain a Super Shotgun and rocket launcher b) an Arch-vile will be summoned when you pick up each weapon and you might want to have the extra firepower for both of them. Granted, a pair of Cacodemons will teleport into each tower when you climb the rather dull, dark stairs, and the rocket boxes in one of them will probably tempt you to use it. It's up to you ultimately. While ammo may be tight, you can still make decisions when you get to a certain point in this map. You may want to use a Super shotgun blast or two on one of the Arch-viles because extra shotgun ammo will probably help you to feel more comfortable. On the other hand, you may find that too risky.

 

Now, in the shotgun and chaingunner rooms, there are also little pillars that lower when you hit the switches in the towers that don't just open the doors to said towers when they close. Hitting both of these switches open lower the bars to a passageway to the left of your starting location (no, not the one with the plasma rifle, you won't be able to go there until the map's nearly over) This passage eventually leads to a large grey room that appears to be an auditorium or stadium of some sort. It's purpose is unclear and what's even more unclear is why anyone would stuff a yellow key so out of the way from everywhere else.

 

No matter though, maybe you'll spot the slightly depressed wall on the column in front of the yellow key. Press against it, and you can get a Berserk Pack, which ends up proving very useful very soon. Or it would be soon if I didn't spend 14 damn minutes wandering around the map, trying to figure out how to lower the bars in front of the yellow key and acquiring the Super Shotgun and Rocket Launcher in the process. Eventually, I pressed against a fairly unobtrusive column in the center of the large room that granted, looked different from the other columns (hey, it was stupidly dark) which lowered and raises up to put in front of a shootable switch which lowers the bars in front of the yellow key. Collecting the key will open up several monster closets in this room mercifully containing demons and not spectres that you can then punch out if you found the berserk pack earlier. Not like using some shotgun shells is necessarily a huge deal, as there's a quad of shells in at least half of the closets.

 

With the yellow key in hand, you can finally open the door at the front of the mansion, handle the Revenants, finally collect the megaarmor and hit the switch in front of you, causing some Archnotrons to teleport into the courtyard, as well as 2 Cyberdemons outside. Waste the Arcahnotrons, hope you find the hidden switch that opens the chamber with the plasma rifle near the beginning (the shootable switch in the neighboring chamber seemingly has no purpose) because wasting the Cyberdemons will become much easier. Because they sure seem to waste me at least a couple of times.

 

Or else you could just run past them and head into the exit located at the opposite end of the map. All in all, Decimate was a very solidly presented map. The combat wasn't half-bad and actually might shock you with the arch-viles teleporting in when you're collecting basic weapons in what's an only 75-monster map. I don't pretend to know why this ended up in the miniwad club, but checking the date of creation, it's very easy to see why the monster count was so low. Fighting two Cyberdemons is very cool to some people, so there's that. The backtracking does feel a little bit clunky (especially the passageway to the yellow key), but....it's just good. While I think rooms filled with hitscanners in the manner of this map might earn some eyerolls these days, it's still quite playable, even though it's probably aged worst in the visual sense than A Hidden Mountain Factory (but I hate white marble so you're wrong, ha!).

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