The DWmegawad Club plays: Community Chest

[Yumheart]

Don't worry, I've not given up yet, I just wasn't really in the mood for writing yesterday. Forgive my poor writing rn, I'm pretty tired.


Map25 "Blood Demesne" by Archvile46

Knowing about this map's ridiculous resource starvation, I didn't even try to go for 100% kills here. This did end up helping me quite a bit, I left the SMM alive for example, but my god is this map ever still brutal. That's partly due to it apparently not having been tested with infinitely high actors, that beginning is very annoying to get past, whether you'll get blocked and clawed to death or not is very much out of your control.

The hardest part was the mid section for me, I had to do a lot of reloading, because of how absurdly little health there was, I wasn't really able to afford any unnecessary damage. After overcoming the weird fleshy room with the Revenant snipers, the map becomes a lot easier, but getting up to that point was pretty painful.
Yeah, I'd be lying if I said I had fun with this map, but it wasn't quite as miserable as expected.


Map26 "Breakout" by Kaiser

Definitely my favorite Kaiser map in the set, it felt much less sleepy than his other offering, though it did also get the most convoluted in terms of progression. The fights here are fun for the most part, as the map's crampedness makes traps that would usually be trivial rather engaging. The visuals are also really good, texture selection, color coordination and architecture were all on point, especially considering it was the 2000s, and it stands out in that regard, even in comparism to Kaiser's similarly elaborate Map10.

I felt there was a lot more backtracking than necessary, the ending is the worst example of that. After already killing every or most of the monsters, you're behooved on yet another switch / teleporter hunt, just to raise some stairs to the exit, needlessly padding the level out. Despite that, this was still a good experience, I'm interested to see how Kaiser developed as a mapper.

[Book Lord]

MAP 27 – Afterlife by @Sphagne

PrBoom+ 2.5.1.4, UV, Continuous, blind run w/saves

 

If you want to steal the name of a famous Hell Revealed map, at least do it for a good reason. I cannot tell if Donner & Niv megaWAD was popular among non-speedrunners in 2002, but I acknowledge that the last Sphagne entry for Community Chest cannot cast any shadows over that classic. The idea behind the map was that Doomguy had been killed, buried, and sent to Hell Port 666, from which the ships depart to the islands of hell. The goal was to upturn the verdict of eternal damnation and find a way to Heaven instead.

Spoiler

Starting inside a grave was something I have seen many times, but nevermind; wandering around a colossal necropolis made of mono-textured cubes, fighting hitscanners in the open, was all but a great experience. It was terrible, and that was just the beginning. The only way to progress was through the central building, a nicely decorated hellish temple where I was subjected to the most annoying hitscanner placement of the megaWAD. I was stumped for a while, then I realised that MARBFAC3 textures worked like doors. I made some progress then, and I even found the secret goodies by strafe jumping on pillars. Every achievement was saluted by new monsters, coming from the lowering boxy structures. After running around the vast outer wall of the necropolis, I collected the BSK and moved to part two.

Spoiler

It consisted of an infernal wharf with a docked ship, complete with glitchy flying demons that were visible in their HOM hideouts. The long-range combat in the enormous empty space was depressing and was counterbalanced by the claustrophobic cabins on board. I used the Invulnerability to frantically dispatch the crew and collect the YSK. I quickly advanced to the next section, as I was getting nervous because of the poor gameplay.

Spoiler

The final island was much harder because there was not enough ammo for the opposition. I was playing continuous and was left without shells, rockets, and bullets, relying on plasma rifle and chainsaw. I collected the RSK behind the marble building and entered it, falling into an awful situation with elevated chaingunners everywhere and no bullets to shoot at them! With some reloads I managed to get through this incredibly unbalanced part, which required to raise a bridge between the turrets to reach the balcony. Behind the red door, I finally found some ammo, and even a Berserk pack!

Spoiler

There was still a long way to go. I found a teleporter inside a bizarre “Radiation” pillar, which sent me to the other side of the island for the second round of long-range projectile warfare with Mancubi. The building had another entrance on that side, and the interior was full of dangerous monsters, including a Cyberdemon. I lured him down the lift to lose him on the ground floor, as I could not spend my scarce ammunition to slay him. I was also tired of this level, honestly. The Arachnotrons jammed the elevator multiple times, adding to the frustration. At least I healed myself with the Blue Armour and the Soulsphere, before taking the path to the exit. The awful use of space led to questionable gameplay on many instances, and the ammo stinginess was palpable on continuous play. I cannot imagine how a pistol starter would get by. Overlong, confusing, imbalanced, boring, and not always pretty, Afterlife had what it takes to be considered one of the worst maps of Community Chest.

[NiGHTS108]

MAP27: Afterlife

By Sphagne

Kills: 78%

Items: 70%

Secrets: 60%

Time: 24:23

 

Oof... perhaps the map most worthy of Bobby Prince's "Sign Of Evil", Afterlife is a horrendous slog of a map through nearly the edge of eternity. This is probably the most simply depressing map in the megawad, the progression here is more cryptic and miserable than Avenger AND Blood Runners put together and honestly it hardly even resembles those maps, I think the blood port where you can only leave by two unmarked steps is the worst of a bad lot, I don't even need to explain that to you, it writes itself! Other dishonourable mentions include the Baron wall hiding an SSG, a necessary Berserk hidden in a secret until practically right at the end, this cramped boat you can't leave until you grab a plasma rifle and hit a switch, and the awful exit room involving pressing a lot of dumb switches to raise things which opens doors out of nowhere in the Cyberdemon sanctum, worst of all in this map, your ultra deep ammo blues, more than No Tomorrow, Avenger or Blood Demesne this will seriously be the map to test your trigger discipline, it's virtually impossible to reasonably use it, don't do what I did, find that Berserk in the eastern zone building ASAP

 

Grade: D-

Difficulty: A

 

 

2 days left.

Edited March 27, 2022 by NiGHTS108

[Dusty_Rhodes]

3 hours ago, Book Lord said:

If you want to steal the name of a famous Hell Revealed map, at least do it for a good reason.

I hate this map, but to be entirely fair to Sphagne, it was completed and named in 1995, which is before HR. It just got spruced up a bit before being added to this wad.

[Paf]

(added a few more votes in a new message)

Edited March 30, 2022 by Paf

[ReaperAA]

+++ Hexen: Beyond Heretic

or
+++ DBP37: Auger;Zenith and Heartland

 

Comment copied from last thread:

Quote

 

A part of me want to see Hexen win, if only to see how dobu gabu maru manages the hub progression :D. for variety and also since Heretic has already been covered. It would be interesting to take a break from Doom and discuss about Hexen's design and where it succeeds and at what parts does the game fall flat on its face.

 

Alternately, I vote Auger;Zenith and Heartland. Yeah I know almost everyone here has played both of these at least once, but having a DWMC for these wads would be great. I particularly want them to win because I love the "realistic environment" elements in them that I would love to write about. I also added Heartland since Auger;Zenith only has 22 maps and Heartland having 7 maps fill the remaining days of the month.

 

 

[Book Lord]

5 hours ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

I hate this map, but to be entirely fair to Sphagne, it was completed and named in 1995, which is before HR. It just got spruced up a bit before being added to this wad.

 

I do not have first hand information, of course, but I have read his idgames infotexts. He said the maps were done between 1995 and 1999 and he tells the chronology. Blood Runners was the oldest (8th map), followed by Avenger (10th) and Afterlife (14th). Mother Ship was Sphagne's 19th map and it qualifies as his most recent creation.

 

While Afterlife might have been created after Hell Revealed, there are no chances that Sphagne knew that megaWAD, since he declared that he discovered the Doom web community only in 2002 and decided to drop some of his old maps for others to enjoy. Anyway, he seemed to have no problems with giving names from popular levels to his creations (he called a map Stronghold and another was even labelled The Living End...) and I have no problem with it as well.

 

His life after death concept was actually deeper and better developed that Donner's MAP26 of HR... just the execution was poor and cannot contend in any way with the established classic bearing the same name.

[Gibbon]

RZDoom, HMP, blind, no saves.

 

Breakout - MAP26

 

Well Kaiser..  can’t say I like this one.  The first 5 minutes before I was gunned down outside were…. Odd to say the least.  Pressure plates that open bars and ambush after ambush after ambush..  

 

Oh and you forgot to texture your walls after they lower, resulting in a beautiful noclip effect.  I guess nobody tested this one either.

 

Afterlife - MAP27

 

A mish mash of rooms, imps and shotgunners really.  You have to use the rooftops to get the blue key and then risk your ammo to fight more ambushing mobs.  I ran out and got splattered by a Caco but ran through it again after.  Takes about 45 minutes..  I really don’t like it at all.

 

MAP26/27 try to be a magnum opus, but end up being a magnum doofus.

[Jaccident]

Map 27: Afterlife

 

I live… again! I started off not minding this one but the difficulty was really poorly implemented, it didn’t seem to give me enough resources to fight everything, which was rather annoying. I got lost once at the start when I didn’t use a specific exit, but other than that the flow was decent. Sadly, the lack of ammo and abundance of annoying enemies means I didn’t particularly enjoy this map. The texturing is also rather drab and not enjoyable to look at.

 

[Silhouette 03]

Map 26: Breakout- Kaiser

A breakout success.

 

Kaiser's second offering to Community chest is a massive step up in pretty much every way. The combat generally feels a lot more refined than his previous map, with the outdoor areas being a highlight, where you can make use of infighting and the more powerful weapons in your arsenal. The ammo/ health situation is also a lot better than in map15. Progression is mostly clear and relatively straightforward, though I don't like that to lower the barrier guarding the red key you have to find a random switch on one of the pillars that lower and then backtrack all the way to the red key area. Another thing I'd like to talk about is the mixture of different themes. I criticized the previous map for it's inconsistency in it's visuals. This map, however, incorporates different visual themes quite nicely as it sometimes meshes those themes together, such as the marble and base textures. It looks and plays really good overall.  

 

I'm debating whether to participate in another month. It really all depends on what we play. I'd rather play Auger zenith on my own time. Hexen: beyond heretic... Yeah, I went through it once before and I'm really not sure I want to do that again. I saw Paf mention RAMP. The problem with RAMP is that it has more than 200 maps(209 to be exact). Also, I contributed a map and it would be really strange for me to play and critique my own map as well as the fact that I'm pretty sure I've improved since then.

 

Kills: 99%
Secrets: 25%

[Poncho1]

Map27: Afterlife

Author: Sphagne

 

I swear, every map with the word "afterlife" in it has it out for me. To this day, I still haven't beaten Scythe 2 because of its own Map27; as for Hell Revealed... well, I simply gave up as early as Map18 due to the sheer boredom and bullshit I was feeling. This is the only map of this unofficial trilogy that I have beaten, and thank fucking God I pulled through to the bitter end, because this was utterly exhausting. As with some other maps (like the later Speed of Doom's Map21), the player begins in a hollow grave. The first area is some sort of demonic town, filled with rooftop snipers ready to chip away at your health (have fun with the hitscanners!), Cacodemons and Pain Elementals descending, launching all manners of hell at you, and then the Imps, Barons and the like in the centre building only add to the misery. There're two vital secrets tucked at the end of the corridors in the central area, which you'll need going forward. This map's main problem is its lack of resources. For as long, tedious and filled with tanky enemies as it is - usually firing at you from a distance, no less - Sphagne withholds the player of the necessary equipment meant to simply beat the areas. It is this that really bothers me: the difficulty from this level comes by simply handicapping the player; not through inventive scenarios, but by keeping them at arm's length from needed supplies. Even with my continuous run, I suffered major ammo shortages about halfway through, and I'm not someone who wastes ammo easily. On top of this huge issue, Sphagne's progression problems return in full force. Whilst not a navigational problem like Avenger was, this map opts to drag its runtime well past what it should've been: having to solve an idiotic puzzle or two to obtain the SSG, or the Blue Key; jumping onto the ship in the harbour, only to find you can't disembark until you pick up the Plasma Gun and hit a switch; the retarded fight in a cramped area filled with Mancubi, a Cyberdemon and sniping Revenants; the barely-visible ledges needed to get out of the damaging blood; making sure the bridge to the final island also blocks you from making it to a platform with loads of Mancubi, forcing you to backtrack through a Red (I think?) door where there's a teleport room to the right, and a door to the Mancubi platform to the left which will finally grant you access to another part of the map... the list goes on. Let's not even forget the glitched-out Cacodemons stuck in the Invulnerability island, for example. As for the ending, well, it's a clusterfuck. I couldn't tell you how to go about reaching the exit: random switches to raise bridges leading to sniper towers, constantly respawning snipers, walls lowering revealing hordes of Chaingunners, and so on. From a megawad with a whole lot of crap, this quite possibly ranks as one of the worst. One of the few times I can't say it was better than Pistol Panic. A truly horrible level.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Poncho1

[finnks13]

MAP27 - Afterlife by Sphange:
The most exhausting of Sphange's three exhausting Community Chest maps is the hellish port city that is Afterlife. Unlike Sphange's other two maps, I didn't particularly enjoy this one, it's significantly harder than his other two offerings (only Map25 has been harder so far) and while it features a very similar theme of berserk focused combat due to lack of ammunition, the high amount of non-punchable enemies made this much more frustrating to deal with than any of his other maps. The opening is probably the hardest part of the map, you have a shotgun (and at the cost of some health, a chaingun) to deal with large amounts of hitscanners, cacodemons and imps hurling projectiles or hitscanning you from very far away. There's very little health immediately accessible in this first section, so gaining a foothold feels like a bit of a crap-shoot.

 

It is very possible to miss the berserk pack, I missed it for a while before I decided to check the large marble building more thoroughly, and I wish I found it before punching a load of pinkies to death without it. Nearly a quarter of the monsters in this map are chaingunners, and while there is a fair amount of health available, they just constantly and unavoidably whittle you down. There are a lot of monsters suspended in plain view in the ceiling, and this feels a bit weird, especially in the blood  sections, where they're just dumped in the blood and the sector they're in doesn't have a lower texture (this isn't a massive deal, it just looks weird). Overall, I would describe most of this map's combat as "miserable".

 

I really wish the plasma gun and rocket launcher were given out a bit earlier as, yes, the map is built in a way where they're not necessary for the combat, I think I would have enjoyed the map more if they were just there. The rocket launcher especially is placed so far into the level that it was pretty useless. The ending is a bit weak, you're given an invulnerability to tackle the cyberdemon with and this robs a cool finale of it's challenge (though I will admit, I wasn't that upset about this when I was playing the map). I can see why, in Scythe 2's DWMegawad club thread, people were saying that Afterlife II is a sequel to this map, and not the more well known map from Hell Revealed - they both seem to have similar themes of ammo and weapon deprivation, combined with a very oppressive feel to the layout and monster placement. This map's scope and sophistication of meanness is an impressive achievement, but I don't hold any love for it.

 

Rankings:

Spoiler

Really Liked: MAP02, MAP07, MAP17, MAP21
Liked: MAP04, MAP09, MAP13, MAP14, MAP31, MAP16, MAP18, MAP23
The Boring Zone: MAP03, MAP11, MAP15, MAP32, MAP19, MAP24, MAP26
Didn't Like: MAP01, MAP05, MAP08, MAP12, MAP20, MAP22, MAP27
Really Didn't Like: MAP06, MAP10, MAP25

 

[LadyMistDragon]

Map 27: Afterlife by Sphagne

Played continuously with Whitemare class form Final Doomer.

 

You find yourself in a freshly-dug grave, as the lonely notes of "Sign of Evil," start drifting in. "I live...again?" More like "I'm hopeless...again." You could've at least changed the player start Sphagne.

 

Anyway the basic structure of this open area is nice ands sqaure. You basically start in the backyard of a masoleum as you emerge into a long street which on the left side has one of the biggest enemy placement bugaboos that exists in Doom mapping: a far-off chaingunner that's impossible to hit from the location you first spot him at who stands a good chance of taking you apart.

 

Other than that, this opening section isn't really too bad. You'll have to enter the mausoleum at a certain point and hit the MARBFAC3 walls to lower the structures toward the walls outside for some odd reason. At least there are a decent chunck of shotgunners that will give you ammo. I do think tagging a couple of locations in the mausoleum as secrets was quite dumb though.

 

After this however, things quickly start going downhill. Significant amounts of foes keep getting tossed in your direction despite not really having the ammo for them. And things get even worst as you reach the port on the Ruver Styx. I swear to god, Styx...i mean Sphagne has nothing but unbridles hatred for you at this point. Lost Souls flying everywhere, Imps on the sides and Cacodemons flying in your direction might intend infighting but Spahgne was following his own (mediocre) muse when he made basically all of his maps, so maybe not? The ship's even worst: Revenants prowling the decks whilst belowdecks has another mini-conflagoration of them while the captain's deck contains that most hated Plutonia trio (you know what that is, no explanation required here. d:). This would go down slightly better if the music wasn't taunting you so severely.

 

Talking about the rest isn't terrible important. Safe to say you wander through some hallways, ammo situation improves slightly before Sphagne decides to throw more Pain Elementals and nobles than the scraps of ammo you find can or should realistically handle. That central courtyard near the red key was annoying as hell and you might want to not bother with anyone that's not a chaingunner when you get to the mid-level ramparts, and I ended up noclipping to the red key nearby because I was just about sick of Sphagne's idiot progression (seriously, there was probably something I was missing).

 

This was such a miserable map in literally every way. Trying to find a way when it wasn't obvious was enough of a struggle I wondered why I even bothered. Though I think that was Spahgne's intent, so I can't quite put it at the bottom. But really, putting that red key behind some stupid hidden teleport line was just one bridge to far.

[TMD]

Does anybody else hear the Jaws theme?

[Gibbon]

11 minutes ago, TMD said:

Does anybody else hear the Jaws theme?

 

I'm preparing for that run today.

 

I hear Jaws, Jaws 2, Jaws 3 all at the same time.

 

I'll need a couple o'beers for this one..

[Yumheart]

Map27 "Afterlife" by Sphange

This is mostly due to @finnks13 giving me tips over Discord, but I didn't think this map was that bad. It's probably my favorite of Sphange's maps in this set, mainly because of the combat feeling a lot more engaging, nice use of snipers, hitscanners and crampage (what's with those "sniper" Pinkies though, they can't really do anything besides infight with the Chaingunners...).
That said, I still have some problems with it, but surprisingly enough, ammo wasn't one of them, I actually exited with a fair amount of ammunition left and probably could've gone back and killed the remaining demons if I wanted to. Luckily you're provided with a berserk pack pretty early on.
 

What bothered me primarily was, once again, the progression and moving around the map, not just because of it being hard to follow, as was the case in Avenger, but also because of how you sometimes have to interact with very non-obvious walls to get where you wanna go. The aforementioned berserk for example is accessed by pressing on a seemingly random gargoyle face, which turns out to be a platform that can be lowered for whatever reason and you obtain the SSG (which opens the way forward) by lowering a random baron face. The ending is also a drag, with so many strange button-presses that I can't even go into specifics because I forgot everything about it.

 

My favorite moment was cleaning up the Cybee in the somewhat cramped room with the contorted marble faces, it made for a fairly tense fight, though it's probably a lot less exiting if you use an Invuln on him, I decided against it and exited with one to spare. Without the gift of foreknowledge, this map would've probably been really painful to beat. Knowing about it's pitfalls, it was still only "alright enough".

Edited March 27, 2022 by Yumheart

[DavitW]

MAP25: Blood Demesne

My initial hopes for this map were pretty high, I mean it starts with a SSG right in front of you, how could it possibly be bad? Unfortunately my hopes immediately plummeted about 10 seconds in. Just about every negative thing I've said about any other map in this wad can be applied to this one, it blows chunks. Still, it was only my second rage quit of the wad... so far.

 

MAP26: Breakout

Another level that I felt had potential at the start. Although this time it doesn't immediately squander it all in about 10 seconds. It looks really good, combining techbase, marble, and hell themes, and like all the other maps so far I began from a pistol start. Unlike many other maps so far the balance here wasn't actually too bad. You still might want to induce as much infighting as possible however, otherwise you can definitely find yourself out of ammo and a corner too far from a box of shotgun shells. Another blind demo attempt that ends in a lame death early on, but after already spending so much time on this wad, who wants to watch me ineptly play Doom for 25 or so minutes?

cc26.zip

[sincity2100]

Oh Boy, I played Afterlife once only.. and the first time I played this map I played it on a Continuous Playthrough, and I ran out of ammo completely, it was such a drag and I exited the map without killing one Cyberdemon.. such an abysmal map..

 

[PeceMan]

Level 27, Afterlife
    Well that was a map 27

 

    I mean, after a certain point, everyone expects wads to ramp up the bite for their final act. And this one definitely ramps up the bite.

 

    You are almost always in the line of fire of some hitscanner 3 miles away. And the interior buildings don't shy away from sending all kinds

    of hefty monsters at you.

 

    There's a bit of Doomcute here and there, which is appreciated. In fact, the entire visuals of the map are pretty enjoyable.

 

    Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't exactly say I "enjoyed" that level. But as a level 27, maybe it wasn't supposed to be simply enjoyed. It was

    built to challenge. To kill and to maim. To disarm the player, in preparation for the final showdown (which who knows wether its actually that

    hard, but the intention exists, at least I think it does).

 

    I wouldn't like a wad filled with maps like this one. But I think this map fits the 27th slot pretty well.

 

 

 

Ratings:

Spoiler

Five Stars:        
            02 Nullth Precinct; 18 Sudden Death

 

Four Stars:            
            04 Outer Base; 05 The Forgotten Prison; 07 The Boardwalk; 08 Battery; 10 Termination Center; 11 Mandrel; 14 Substation; 

            20 Technodrome; 22 Future Grave; 26 Breakout; 27 Afterlife

 

Three Stars:        
            01 Pistol Panic; 03 Ground Floor; 09 Flow; 13 Another Dead Hero; 15 Infernal Reaches; 16 Methods of Fear; 17 Inflictions of Hate;

            32 The Citadel; 21 Avenger; 23 Blood Runners

 

Two Stars:        
            12 No Tomorrow; 31 Mt. Chaos; 24 Bring Evil Upon Thee; 25 Blood Demesne

 

One Star:    
            06 Goin' Down; 19 Monster Mansion

 

[baja blast rd.]

+++ Haste and Micro Slaughter Community Project

[Bobby :D]

+++ Haste and MSCP, will want to see what funny reviews come from the denizens of the DW club.

[Pseudonaut]

+++ Haste and MSCP

[TJG1289]

GZDoom/UV/Continuous/Saves

Map 26: Breakout - Kaiser

100% kills and secrets

Time: 33:52

Deaths: 3

 

Honestly, this 34 minutes went by pretty quickly. Kaiser's final map for CC is probably his best one. It's much more linear than the other 2, and despite its size, it doesn't feel that big. It looks very nice, and has some of the most functioning 3D bridges in the WAD. Fights aren't too bad throughout, as there's plenty of health to help patch yourself up with. I could have prevented my 3 deaths if I had better paid attention to the rooms I was in. All 3 deaths happened in the room with the lowering pillars that release hell nobles. I had gotten down to 3% health and saved after killing them. I then hit the teleporter to the next area, and got perforated by the chaingunners that showed up from some closets. If I had paid attention to the pillar room, I would have noticed the berserk back behind the initial teleporter I used to get there. Didn't see that until after my deaths. I managed to lure things away by teleporting in, teleporting out, then initializing a BFG shot just as I was about to enter the teleporter again, hitting the chaingunners as I reentered. Convoluted, but it worked. It was the only fight I lost a lot of health from, tho there were some close quarter closet ambushes that were tense. Speaking of this pillar room, the map's biggest progression issue shows up here if you're not paying attention. When the pillars are lowered, look for the one whose lighting flickers. Ride it up, and you'll notice 2 switches up here as opposed to 1. One lowers you, and the other lowers the half-walls around the red key (I'm assuming). How I noticed this immediately and not the berserk, idk. I did spend a few minutes wondering what that switch did, before deciding to see if it made the red key accessible. This was the only issue I really had with the map, as I wish it would have made this a little more clear. Other than that, I have no issues. The final secret is very obtuse, but the other 3 I figured out without needing the Doomwiki. Overall, pretty fun map!

[Book Lord]

MAP 28 – Necrophobia by Gene Bird @Searcher

PrBoom+ 2.5.1.4, UV, Continuous, blind run w/saves

 

Playing a single Gene Bird map is more than enough to assimilate his style. His Doom levels play a lot like Wolfenstein 3D, with bare minimum use of height differences, and a planimetry consisting of rooms connected by doors and corridors. Necrophobia was remarkably polished if compared to previous works, with better texture variety and a functional design, perfect for hosting a shotgun fest, as suggested by the predominance of shell ammo, but also some unforeseen twists.

Spoiler

After the hopelessly flawed MAP25, the cryptic switch riddles of MAP26, and the grievous journey of MAP27 I was relieved to play one last map from the Doom Grandpa. At least it was fun, uncomplicated, and easy to navigate. I just had to go ahead, obliterate the crowd of low- & mid-tier monsters, and watch out for the occasional closet trap or teleport. I unveiled all the secrets, and I was pleased with their creativity, requiring attention to little details or the occasional jump. The Computer Area Map did not count as a secret, as well as the Soul Sphere chamber, but they surely can classify as unofficial ones.

Spoiler

There’s nothing more to add except that it was a bit shorter than the other maps by this author, and less repetitive with its ambush schemes. One of the last areas had a steep staircase that was quite a novelty, if compared to the general flatness. The room with the round Hell Knight cage and the teleporting Imps was intriguing as well. Considering that Gene Bird is not popular among this generation of Doomers, and even I could not help but slam his MAP32, I am surprised to have enjoyed Necrophobia to this extent. Now that we are close to the flamboyant end, I am glad that his Blind Alley maps have been integrated in Community Chest. They were a safe haven, providing lightness and relax after the inflictions perpetrated by younger mappers and their experimental stuff. Thank you, Searcher!

[brick]

MAP27: Afterlife

I think I liked this most of Sphagne's maps. Progression is a lot less obtuse, I had to go check where I was going a couple of times but didn't have to run around like an idiot with no idea what's going on. The design is pretty interesting with three distinct parts, a city-block like part, a bridge over bloodsea, and a citadel in a blood lake, though the detail is pretty low. There's also some interesting use of untextured sidedefs to create the weirdly see-through sectors in the middle area. I feel oddly neutral about the map, there's nothing I disliked about it, but nothing felt particularly great either despite the ideas.

 

MAP28: Necrophobia

Gene Bird really likes the SSG and he really wants you to use it. I like the SSG too and I really like authors who allow me to use it all the time, ergo I like Gene Bird. I don't find this map as good or memorable as MAP07 or MAP19 but I still enjoyed my time with it. There's something about the way he designs starting rooms that makes them look very nice (this one and MAP19's look great IMO). I don't know about UV but combat is almost incidental on easier settings, as it should be. I do like the way he uses teleport traps though, sometimes you can see the enemies waking up and see them teleport, as you panic and look around you then realize they'd teleported right in front of you. Progression involves a lot of switch pressing, though most of it is pretty straightforward; maybe too straightforward, the red key is almost completely pointless, but it's nice to play something that doesn't make you want to pull your hair out, and despite the large number of switches the map never gets repetitive as he gets quite creative with the setups. The secrets are really fun and well designed, with a lot of variety in how you find them, but all of them feel completely fair. As with his other maps I had more fun with it than I expected.

[Poncho1]

Map28: Necrophobia

Author: Gene Bird

 

Now this is more like it! After a trio of maps that were either insanely difficult, cryptic, or both combined, it's joyful to be able to sit back and feel like a god whilst blowing away the opposition. Gene Bird's fourth and final entry in the first Community Chest is yet another SSG blaze, with hard-to-miss secrets, little height variety, wooden texturing, and copious amounts of smaller enemies to butcher. As is often the case, there're still some things to complain about with a GB map: having to know to flip a switch behind you when you teleport onto a tiny island is dumb, because if you fall in you can't get back out. *tsk tsk*. However, Gene does spice things up from now and then: I liked the area with Hell Knights and caged Imps, which makes for a more intense encounter. The ending also has, *gasp*, a staircase! Whoa! Another distinguishing feature about this Gene Bird map is that it has some of his best detailing yet: the Supercharge chamber and the outdoor section housing the Yellow Key don't look too bad for 2003 when this was released. I must thank Gene Bird for making some of the least frustrating and playable maps of the set: in spite of looking mostly primitive, they were all good breather levels. And, knowing what the next map is, this kind of level was desperately needed here.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Poncho1

[DisgruntledPorcupine]

MAP24: "Bring Evil Upon Three" by Torn

UV, pistol start, no saves

100% kills, 1/1 secrets

 

There's a sort of elegance to this one that makes it a pretty refreshing play. It's quite a short one, and shows us a very typical looking marble/wooden hell that is pulled off quite nicely and with some good detailing and lighting throughout. Ammo is also quite generous, your SSG and rocket launcher will be the main weapons of choice and you get plenty of shots for both to get the job done.

 

Despite containing over 200 monsters, this one goes by in a flash. It has a few mini-slaughteresque fights in its corridors, feeding you large hordes of weak enemies for you to mow down with rockets and SSG fire. Simple, but it gives the map a nice feeling of blowing off steam at this stage. It's not a very threatening map at all, but it knows how to show you a good time despite that. Shoutout to the layout for being once of the clearest layouts this wad has had in a while.

 

I was quite fond of this one, even if it did feel very easy for its placement it at least provided a level of action that didn't leave me wanting in the end. Good map.

 

I'm afraid I may have to end my playthrough here though, as I have to go out of town for a few days tomorrow. I took a few cracks at MAP25 to try and knock out a writeup for that one today too and uhh, yeah, the warnings were right. That map has some pretty bad balance issues, especially with sourceports containing infinite monster height. To sum up my thoughts in brief on the maps I did play, it's about what I expected. There are a lot of mapping eccentricities on display that very often don't make for a good player experience, but it could be charming at times. A lot of very ambitious layouts that don't quite land with me as well. Combat throughout the wad isn't too bad though, some sloggy or dull maps here or there but there's fun to be had with this one.

 

I greatly regret not being able to check out and write about the colossus that is MAP29 yet, it's definitely a map I'll try for myself sometime in the future, and I'm eager to come back to the thread at a later date to see what people think about it. 

[Crusader No Regret]

Map 27: Memory got jogged and I remember a bit about this one.  Coming out of a grave may have been done many times in Doom maps over the years but it still adds that bit of immersion.  As a earlier standalone release that ended up in the set, it falls under the category of filler map I defined earlier in the topic.  I recall having ammo issues on this one and that was on HMP.  This seems the sort of map where it's important to know the layout and plan a route to be able to finish it.  During those moments where one is not being bogged down with ammo scarcity, this felt much less oppressive than map 25 and survival was less of a problem.  Maybe need to utilize infighting and intentionally leaving some monsters alive to have the means to defeat the ones you can't really go around as well to finish.  I played pretty far in this one but don't recall now how far I went without god mode.

[Gibbon]

 

RZDoom, Skill 3 (HMP). Blind Run/w no saves.

 

Necrophobia - MAP28

 

A Gene Bird map..  whoever cannot resist the mapping style of a legend!  It may not look like much, but it is fun.  I know some people want fancy looking levels, but who doesn't love gunning down a bunch of hitscanners and imps with a super shotty?

 

Gene provides!

 

Video:

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited March 28, 2022 by Gibbon

[Book Lord]

1 hour ago, Gibbon said:

From Doom With Love (FDWL), Skill 1 (yes skill 1!), complevel 9 (Boom 2.02) Blind Run/w no saves and I've never played it before.

 

Citadel at the Edge of Eternity - MAP29

It's the 28th today...