Bobbypilled: The "Literary Doom Podcast" about WADs (and the occasional non-sequiters) I ""like""

[Bobby :D]

THREAD PREFACE:

 

Greetings non-accustomed Doomworld denizens!

 

It is finally time for me to do something about my profound "never gets a darn thing done" attitude when it comes to writing about Doom stuff and actually act on it! This thread will serve as the go-to hot spot for all my written rants and digressions disguised as reviews of classic, contemporary, and gem-in-the-rough WADs, and a quasi hub for my dialogues on music and mapping in Doom. I will talk about things I like, things I don't like, and everything in the middle, for it can't be a true Bobby thread without some sort of impassioned one-sided arguments on things that very few (albeit equally zany) people would bother to care about anyway, it's Doom after all so the bar is low enough! (we are all mega nerds :D)

 

I will mostly be covering WADs for a while, they tend to be pretty easy to write about cause, y'know, we all know a bit about Doom! For any dialogues on the art of music making and mapping I will mostly make my own threads/videos for that elsewhere, but occasionally something smaller will be posted here instead if it relates to a WAD. Those will be a bit more infrequent, however, trying to explain what goes on in a song/map and converting that from Bobby speak to real words is a bit of work!

 

WAD REVIEWS PREFACE:

Spoiler

I will be reviewing individual maps, sets of maps, and entire wads, but all presented in a level-by-level basis. All wads will have a preface, covering background, history, and my first experiences with the WAD if I have one, and a conclusion, which will present my closing thoughts, how I feel about the WAD and it's place in Doom history, and my final critical synopsis (with a score, based on how likely I would recommend the WAD).

I'm not a super stern critic, I enjoy a variety of styles and ideas, from super IWAD inspired dungeons, hyper-modern gargantuans, amateur and veteran works, and anything in the realm of extreme niches. I will cover WADs with a variety of difficulty which I will disclose for the review, but difficulty plays no bias on my part. I will mostly focus on what interests me most, and I will still try to give some sort of critical appraisal. Criteria for what I enjoy follows, this will cover what I look for in a WAD and the more criteria met, the more likely I am to enjoy it and recommend it.

 

Bobby's Analytical Reference Forum for WADs and Anything Neat & Kool (BARF WANK):

 

WADs I like and recommend do one or more of these things well/interesting

 

Gameplay:

• Mechanical, fun emergent gameplay that focuses on elaborate layout design
• Beat by beat, shapely encounters that encourage a variety of strategy and implementation
• Intense emotive elements that inspire a plethora of feelings not found in standard gameplay

 

Structural Design:

•  Multi-layered, well thought ideas that encourage the player to sink their teeth into the WAD's "rules of the world" (aka immersion)
•  Strong Authorship that establishes a consistent and expressive character that shape the WAD in a choreographed manner

 

Map Design:

• Well composed architecture that uses motifs and applies dynamic shaping and structure
• Aesthetics comprised of "moving" elements, establishing some sort of strong metanarrative or background

 

Music Design:

• Elaborate compositions that incorporate elements of musical storytelling and dynamic form
• Balanced arrangements where every part gets a moment to shine and evolve in character
• Genre bending elements that evolve past traditional archetypes for VGM/Doom Midis
• Copious amounts of Jazz Fusion

 

... and as always if a WAD contains a serious amount of zaniness I will love it :D 

(Credit @baja blast rd. for the Format)

 

 

LIST OF POSTS (and things)

Spoiler

Syringe

1. Preface - Map 01: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/2493952

 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Bobby "J

[Daytime Waitress]

Dangit, Bobby - this is a wonderful idea!

 

As someone exceptionally new to PWADS, I often find that I struggle to put my thoughts about maps into words effectively. Beyond just writing itself, I sometimes feel crushed by historical context: I'm not able to reference other things that have come before, and place what I'm currently playing against that, in order to better understand it. And that lack of experience translates into a lack of "Doom vocabulary" or "Doom syntax" - a lack of a way to express what this piece of work means to me, and to communicate that coherently to others more familiar with the established conventions.

 

So it's really encouraging to see someone commit to building a framework for their discourse (or nabbing one from @baja blast rd.) , and I'm very much looking forward to reading this!

 

tl;dr: you had me at jazz fusion.

[Bobby :D]

Syringe (by Tarnsman, Xaser, Pavera, and Marcaek): Part 1

Music provided by Psychedelic Eyeball

 

 

Preface:

 

Syringe is a 6 map mini-sode created by a veteran mapping crew composed of Tarnsman, Xaser, Pavera, and Marcaek, who in this vanilla-esque adventure express their evolved and exciting takes on classic IWAD themes. The project was conceptualized in the early 2010's as a follow up to No End In Sight, titled NEIS II, and is comprised of 3 episodes with distinct themes; Fresh Hell, which is a take on Doom 1/2 styled rock/marble hell, Brazil, a theme in the visual style of Plutonia with a emphasis on more elaborate layouts, and Luna's Bleeding Heart, a space opera of carnage and bizarre celestial landscapes in the vain of TNT teams more whimsical works. Project scope, combined with the mapping teams million other obligations, left a few maps to catch dust on hard drives, but in the late 2010's the project started up again and with a smaller scope of 6+1 maps. The project released December 24th, 2019, and was immediately met with overwhelming praise for it's refreshing take on classic themes that don't dilute much of what made the classics so good in the first place, with just enough of the chemistry shaken up to allow for a more brutal gameplay loop and expressive authorial ship than many of the previous DTWID-inspired works the mappers have done before.

 

I first played this wad in late 2021, after I scoured the cacowards for wads to play and also due to recommendations from my friends. I was immediately plunged into this more emotive, bleak hell scape that I had not seen done before. Some how you made hell seem like a more miserable place that it already is, making me reminisce on other miserable experience like talking to a waiter or ordering food from a spot I never visited (I am very hungry), but still that parent gene of TWID cheesiness remained a centerpiece and a focus for the aesthetic of the wad, even if it's a bit funkier this time. Architecture and map design in general is definitely more advanced and complex than anything ever seen in the pioneering days of Doom, but much respect is given towards it in the wad's focus on primitive, simple implements with a stripped down philosophy that leaves only the most essential detail present.

 

Encounter design is often a facsimile of the same surprises and trapdoors seen before in the IWADs, but much beefier, tougher, and cooked to medium rare perfection (that means it's really darn juicy and oh boy I want to sink my teeth in it BADLY!). Rarely does a moment go in the wad without some sort of moment of immediate player agency being a necessity. This aggressive encounter design is balanced with the wads focus on precise and open layout design that gives just the perfect amount of room and player freedom for the interweaving structure of these maps to be a major facet of the gameplay. Moment to moment, yet rife with strategy, freedom in movement, and exploration, is what makes the gameplay so addicting to come back to; the experience always plays a bit differently every time just cause of how much is left for the games emergent design to take place. This element really drives home the wads focus on a more TWID design, even if the fight and general gameplay are more choreographed than your typical DTWID project.

 

Ammo, health, and other optional-not-optional quality of life things are not commodities in Syringe. Fighting for every bullet, every health potion, and every little chance to get a rad suit is often juxtaposed with the encroaching odds that necessitate such trinkets in the first place. Corners are flooding with hellspawn and magma flow, the air remains a constant whirlwind of swarms of projectile and fodder that make it hard to not go one second without losing your grip on the situation and falling behind on your resources. Never does Syringe ever try to completely overwhelm the player with an impassible obstacle, there's always enough room to balance out your life taking and life preserving. It's up to the players willingness to brave the often treacherous gaps, pools of lava, and straight ahead danger to enact on this space battle (get it?). It serves to help propel the WAD's focus on combat while maintaining that sense of freedom the layouts permit within the setting. Never does something feel bullshit or like the WAD's fault cause there is always a way to overcome the situation, it just requires a bit of adrenaline pumping bringing you back to life to do so.

 

Map 01: The Well by Tarnsman & Xaser

Midi: "Carbon Wired Steel Forest Trees Awaken And Take Over The Land In A Massive Violent Outburst Before The Night"

 

 

A map that is perfectly beset in the midi title, the opening map of Syringe is a middle of the night fever dream, warping the true elements of reality with the sensibilities of an unconscious being scattered throughout, it's inconsistencies becoming contradictions becoming torment for the apathetic lucid dreamer, not sure if the trauma can stop with a pinch of the elbow. Unfortunately, for our dreamer, in the night, what was unconscious evil has now wrecked it course on reality. The Well has all the sensibilities of Doom 1 style opener, with it's up front nature, small size, simple ideas, and skyhack setpiece, but now laced with three times the lethal dose of insidious design. The starting load-out is worth it's weight in gold for how tight it is secret-less, the starting area is a bottleneck littered with nothing to help the player out, and all the goodies needed to fight the beginning horde are in the middle of it all, with smatterings of enemies poised up on skin-met rafters and firewall cliff side to the moat of lava that surrounds the titular well and the under-crofts. The grimy, desaturated white rock, laced with blood moss brick and dilapidated marble, are all poised against vibrant red skies, the smell of rotting flesh turns to burning as you navigate the flood regions with your limited rad suit supply (only one is offered). As said before, any and all resources are sensitive to burning up (literally) if you aren't willing to brave the horde, and with the tight start, coiling around the edge of the titular well, you aren't going to be living long in the world of the undead. Accessing the dim undercrofts, supported by jagged bone crypts as much as the rubble rock, you can get the chaingun and open the path to get back to the well, the next hub of action as your newly acquired expenditures are put to the test with a murder of cacos and low health fodder to stun and mow. The area around the well lowers, revealing a matrix of brick architecture that pulls the maps final trick in it's sleeve; a multi angled attack of shotgunners from all sides and a sneaky archvile right behind the player, reviving the recently re-deceased mob. One final sweep of the Well's seemingly endless crawl of attack from its farthest depths, the player can finally take their final plunge into the magma to end the map, though it won't be the last with harrowing heights set atop vitriolic footings.

 

Everything this map tries to achieve as an opener in my opinion does it perfectly; the mood is set in cast already with the lavish and progressive soundtrack that feels almost bespoke with how the map implements it's lucidity and angluarity in the arrangement with it's equally jagged experience. Nothing in this map gives you the wrong impressions about the WADs nature, but it will frequently showcase both of the authorship influences. The build of all the architecture and rock formations are distinctly modern and Tarns/Xaser-esque, but are leveled with a touch of warmth and simplicity that emphasizes the shaping and patterns, with it's blunted triangles and diamonds, circles and other small shapely implements.

 

Extravagancy is reserved for the suddern bursts of intensity, like an air bubble induced arrithmic murder, the most raw, intense moments unsuspect, but Syringe always maintains fights are deliberate in their craft. The integration of the setpiece well for the axis of all gameplay to orbit around is beyond intentional, it's coined in the title. With the modicum of safe square footage for the player to roam around, every second feels like another chance to slip in the Well's many gutters. The encounters are all challenges of space against mobile foes and numerous hordes and test the players ability to stay grounded amidst the treachery.

 

"Steel Forest Trees"

One of Eyeball's magnum opus post-rock opera inspired songs, the midi delivers some of the artist's most explorative and journey-seeking arrangements and progressions, and is a member of my GOATed midi club. The somber twinlkings, moving in no particular direction, are contrasted with strings served 3 ways, all propelling the listener to the way forward out of the glistening ghetto. The rhythmic matrix seems malible to the constant shifts in melodic and percussive rhythm, while keeping the opening counterpoint-twinkle groove in the arrangement no matter the signature or movement. Arrangement was clearly the most important thing on Eyeball's mind while composing, every new instrument layered serves to interlock in the growing spiderweb of melencolic melodic cacophony with it's own distinct character, sound, register, and pattern rarely crossing for longer than needed to keep the colony of sound stable. It's seems that a page was taken from classical arrangement with this piece, every section has it's own spot to stand alone or at the top and float around every part of it's identity amist the driving force of the constantly shifting progression. With this, the midi never feels stagnant, always searching for the way forward out of the night.

 

The form of this song is reletively contemporary, alot of even bar structures and variations, but within every section are constant threads of thought, weaving into the matrix with it's own voice and sounds. No tree is left unheard or unspoken, each crying out to the night with screams of despair, the reality of the world becoming conscious is encapsulated within the songs endless sprawl of variation on central themes and ideas, like each instrument came to life to sing their own tunes. No one measure goes by without some sort of variation on what has come past. In that way, Eyeball crafts one of his densest works with confidence in the most simple ideas being reinvented and juxtaposed every moment possible. The constant emotional shifts, from the most timid reservations to the heights of the last sections sudden acceptance of the situation, work perfectly to describe the narrative of a world's most devious cracks in nature becoming beyond tangible, where previous subtleties in the violence are full force attacks, and it seems the new nature is present with it's own flavor of subtle inclinations of mass destruction. Eyeball, without knowing he would, crafted the perfect midi to describe the nature of Syringe 14 years earlier.

Edited May 12, 2022 by Bobby "J