The DWMiniwad Club plays: a handful of standalone maps and short mapsets I feel like playing (extended to 12/31 because I got sidetracked by other writing obligations)

[baja blast rd.]

 

Surprise, I felt like playing some wads. This runs from now until 12/31. 

 

If you join in, play these in basically any order you feel like it. There's no 'one map a day' rule; there's 33 maps though so you can do that.

 

Garden of Plagues by Sneezy McGlassFace

 

One Mucus-Flow inspired Boom map.

 

 

Sigma by Didy

 

One adventure-centered Boom map. 

 

 

Night on Doom Mountain by Cannonball

 

One long, difficult Boom map.

 

 

The Settlements by dashlet

 

Three Boom maps that explore surreal environments. 

 

 

Glaive 3 by EANB

 

Ten short, action-focused limit-removing maps. 

 

 

Fucking Hostile Psychoholic Slosh by Peter Schiecke

 

Six fucking hostile psychocolic slosh vanilla maps.

 

 

Jaded by lunchlunch

 

Three challenging MBF21 maps (one long map and two short bookending maps).

 

Gravity by Eternal

 

Two scenic maps for strong limit-removing ports. 

 

 

Hundreds and Thousands by finnks13

 

Six short Boom reality maps (take any damage, you die). 

 

 

And finally...

 

Bonus by unknown

 

???

 

Revealed at a later date

 

Bonus by unknown

 

???

 

Revealed at a later date

 

Thank you to the lovely person who gave me suggestions for some of these. They insisted that I pick one of my maps so one of them will be a later bonus. Both bonuses will be short ones. 

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Woah woah..... how did I miss Jaded. Not to discount the others (Glaive 3 is a damn good time, can confirm), but that Jaded screenshot had me like:

 

[baja blast rd.]

Garden of Plagues by Sneezy McGlassFace

 

 

 

This is cool. The background MIDI and the everpresent green slime and feeling of being in the dour bowels of some ruins do contribute a lot to an oppressive atmosphere. One of the map's strongest qualities in this respect is the feeling of 'tiered-ness' to the way the various areas are oriented relative to one another. In the knotted pretzel-like layout, with the way one slime chamber pours into another the map kinda feels like this endless procession of descents to the bottom of something, and like it can keep going. Screenshots naturally undersell the map's appeal then.

 

Action is rooted in modern 'tactical setpiece slaughter', but it does have a certain looseness to it that might be appealing if you don't want that type of gameplay to feel overly choreographed. Sneezy is more than willing to use more extensive, complex spaces that make it basically impossible for fights to feel too scripted, with chaotic enemy placement rather than more cleanly delineated armies of species. Save one traditional rev hallway, the larger fights feel more like they're dumping in clumps of fun enemies for the weapon you have -- and at that, they do a good job of being made of satisfying-feeling compositions. There's even a sense of looseness to the nonlinearity. I once ended up taking the route to the rev hallway fight without the rocket launcher, which... yeah, reload save. 

 

There's a lot of vicious little tiny fights too, going up a lift and fighting three revenants in a tight box, or having to deal with viles in areas with unstable, precarious cover, which is the sort of one-vile fight I often like -- you have to figure out where in the room to hide rather than using the obvious pillar. These little battles suit the emptier, quiet spaces well, imbue them with a much greater sense of danger.

 

You can definitely see the Mucus Flow inspiration in the resource cache rooms, a few reviving turrets, the tech-hallway stretch, and the slime, but the inspiration overall is light outside of some more apparent notes.

 

Much of the map is dominated by green slime, but there are also two other liquids -- brown slime and hurt floor blood. And it's neat how these have different personality types where they are introduced. Green is sort of the status quo. A shift to brown later on indicates sheer treachery, and then blood is home to the action climax of the map. Getting an idea from that, which is using different liquid types during different moods of the map, like water might be healing/safety, green slime (I don't feel right calling it 'nukage' in maps like this) might be sparse, resource-starved combat, black slime might be puzzly exploration and mystery, lava might be guns-blazing action. Or whatever. Matching theme to gameplay style is one of those big ideas I find interesting.

[baja blast rd.]

Felt like playing a reality mapset since I haven't done that in a while. 

 

Hundreds and Thousands map01 "Morsel"

 

Good aesthetics here, a familiar meso + highlight color combination that feels like a 2016-era Ribbiks B-side (compliment). This sort of hubspoke layout with areas branching out of a central point is old hat but saturating that inner chamber in darkness does so well to give the pattern a fresh coat of paint. The circular blue laser ring over the mancubus is also a simple effect that adds a lot of spice.

 

So this is a gentle intro to reality maps. Since all it takes is one hit for you to die, this has the curious effect of making zombiemen a genuinely frightening enemy, not because it's likely for you to get killed but because it's so possible, which in turn has you respecting cover on the other side of them, leaving you more vulnerable to the projectiles enemies on the other side. This map also showcases one unique role of melee enemies in reality-style maps, which is that since avoiding danger becomes so much more crucial to do well, even slight interference or attention-splitting in the form of ordinarily harmless pinkies becomes more dangerous than usual. You can't really ignore a single monster in these.  

 

Also wow that mastermind has a lot of marine kills. Were they all just charging it without using cover? Silly marines. Speaking of comedy, I love this god mode version of the player face.

 

A short/easy enough map even with 1 health to do a fast-paced demo so I'll do that, but probably not for others.

 

 

[LadyMistDragon]

Fucking Hostile Psychoholic Slush

 

I dunno how 'psychoholic' fits into the name exactly beyond an excuse to make the name more wordy by emphasizing the 'climatic' modes of the action. In either case, I've played this back in April and have no wish to replay it due to a striking blandness that permeates the vast majority of this wad. I will try to summarize my impressions of it, though.

 

Basically, anyone who tries to credit Dario Casali with inventing slaughter maps probably isn't cognizant that there were plenty of other maps experimenting with some form of it in the mid 90s, like George Fiffy maps for instance. And FHPS after probably the first map or two is one of them! This isn't really 'slaughter' in a recognizable sense though, because the enemies fought herein are about as likely to be Imps as Cacodemons and overall, it's not a terribly difficult wad despite the rather claustrophobic confines of these maps. Peter does have a certain flair for chaingunner traps, as Map 02 most aptly demonstrates.

 

Although that assumes you're playing continuously as God  casual players intended. See, it's quite clear that Peter like probably most people not all that integrated into the Doom community in the mid 90s (and the Casali brothers of course!) always played continuously. Not to say that any map is necessarily impossible from pistol start but 1)I really am not sure how close one could get to 100 percent kills with the amount of ammo and weapons available in each map and 2)RNG and fortunate infighting are indeed a must to get through the tighter areas. 

 

Thankfully, Map 05 suggests a path forward in more ways than one. Ok, the pistol starter will have to deal with an amount of BS that might be worst than City in the Clouds from Hell Revealed in a location or two, but the difference here is some sophistication in the combat and a level structure that flows quite well. Map 06 is also not half-bad, though much of that is due to the Arachnotron/Cacodemon clusterfuck at the end with an odd amount of room to evade as it happens. It's also a butt-ugly map where one has to avoid falling into the drink below, so that drags down it a fair few degrees.

 

But this leads us to another characteristic of this wad: an incredibly odd difficulty curve. The same vibe is probably present in some Kama Sutra maps to some degree, but in the case of Map 05, despite a cheapy-placed Cyberdemon in one room, the difficulty does a serious nosedive shortly thereafter, only daring to toss trash monster traps our way, with only the chaingunners in the canyon presenting any kind of threat.

 

I think I might be downplaying the impact of Map 04's ambush a tad in the bit for Endless /idgames I wrote, but again, while the slime waterfalls and little canyons are kind of nice in the first few maps, there's also far too much gray. FHPS isn't without its charms but might be best experienced with a mod like Final Doomer or Anteresian Reliquary.

 

 

PS: For some reason, slime does 20 damage in basically every spot. It's not too hard to avoid, I think 

Videos of the last two maps below (believe me, it would have been painful to watch a playthrough of 3 and 4 at least). I know I mixed up the descriptions but honestly, these aren't that important.

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited October 31, 2023 by LadyMistDragon

[General Roasterock]

Garden of Plagues

 

  I hesitate to call anything with dirt and slime a Mucus Flow. The mystical inspiration made a grandiose point in being forlorn, a graveyard of the era of Doom B.P.R.D. saw. It was a ceremony to the conclusion of the scene at the hands of Quake and the like, a dismissal of constant retreading of techbases that would ultimately be forgotten, and a sputtering of the mapper’s empty gas tank. Those components make the Mucus Flow, and they allow for it’s stupefying sloppy execution, horridly unoptimized Chaingunner towers, broken and incompletable release state, controversial ammo economy, and overall misshapen attitude as a Doom map to be footnotes in the collective conscious. Garden of Plagues asks to be intense, but in none of the same ways that The Mucus Flow does. It’s more directly intense, clear about what it wants to do without a need to read through a user’s history. It’s shown through the weight of the earth bearing down in a subterranean tunnel system, and a Snaxolotl midi that honestly became a bit of a snooze after it’s third loop. That intensity, despite the difference in communication, is the only thing I would say Garden of Plagues has in common with its inspiration. Super Shotgunning the remaining health off of a Cyberdemon isn’t even the last thing I would expect to do in one of the Nuts God’s works. Nevertheless, as I kept finding backpacks, as my cup runneth over and all that, I still played very stingy with my ammo. 

  My first run ended at the first Revenant horde, as I could only look upon it and say “Am I supposed to have a Rocket Launcher at this point?”. Author agency be damned, I can’t say that I’ve been punished in an open ended map in a while. You could make the point that the stated inspiration for this map did that too, but there’s a couple nuances there:

-The Mucus Flow balanced the entire map around the retreading, keeping the weapons in visible known spots that the player would understand upon first reaching the stockpile

-The monster density is so bushwhacked in The Mucus Flow that you could safely exit the map without taking any more than the Super Shotgun if you aren’t going for a max. 

  Here, I just miss a Rocket Launcher on a path I couldn’t have known blind that is unable to get to after jumping into the fight beforehand. I could blame it on known cruelty, but I’ve felt a couple points where it feels like the map is pulling punches. The Imp pincer with the Revenant blocks is dastardly with its creeping Pain Elemental support, but the soul cages are simply blocked by a midtexture fence that makes them harmless until they hobble around the corner. I find that completely fair since that fight was the hardest from my experience, but it works to make the other fights piecemeal and shakier. 

  The progression into how viscerally dirty this map gets is the highlight, ranging from computer storage, to mossy cavern, to mistreated catacomb, and concluding on blood soaked gluttony. Seeing the slime room for the first time hit me with the one two punch of “well this looks kind of boring”, and “holy shit I’m sinking into it”. The desperation of having to claw your way out of the mud in order to have a chance against the Revenants heading in to meet you is fascinating, engrossing. On top of just being great ingenuity with the fake floor, it goes beyond most maps simply saying “Doomguy is trapped” by having him wander tight hallways and instead drowns you in the filth that you’ve been callously treading through this whole time. It earns the slaughter ending saying “yeah we’re done here, enjoy this combat idea I had” as it does more than enough to say that this map was meant to suffocate. It makes the inability to turn around purposeful, like the descent.

  Garden of Plagues is simultaneously joyous and grim, a product of unique mapping ideals and a surpassing of them. It has dread seeping out of the gills, combat to make a Mucus comparison appear to be an insult, and just enough of a bumpy road to improve upon.

[Helm]

Garden of Plagues

Verdant & flowing, snotty, quaggy cavern tells you you're gonna struggle, right? And struggle I did! The first fight with the rolling imps, mancs, demons and spectres and 2 PEs and that late cyber took me a solid 10 minutes of deaths to get out of only once. When that happens, sometimes I get more into like, let's replay this fight until we're good instead of just pushing through to the next inevitable embarrassment. And I should have done that because I didn't get an exit in the end. I got to that rev corridor without a RL and tried for another 10 minutes to get through with SSG and infighting, almost got through once but yeah I stopped playing there. I might return and find the RL and do the proper progression at a different point but I should have listened to my gut feeling after that first fight. 

Early observation of the layout and the enemy composition of fight 1 makes a very clear proposal of what this map is going to be like. This is a challenge fight, in a challenge map. However throwing in cheeky spectres and low drip mancs you have to navigate around/through to dodge a layout active cyber says that this isn't about finding some perfect setup it's going to be twitchy combat/improvisational running around. That contract is weakened when you stumble into a rev corridor that isn't allowing for improvisation at all but that'd be fine if I had at least found the appropriate weapon organically at that point. 

The mapper is very talented and I certainly will be playing more of their stuff. This is not a negative impression, it's just what someone's in the mood for. You can tell when a map is quality regardless.

I have footage but I doubt anyone wants to see all the deaths and then just noping out

Sigma

I'm glad I tried another because that one sat better with me in this particularly overcast Stockholm morning. The music is dope, the opening with the huge grandiose structure pulls you in. Even the lift down to the entrance of the base looks cool. I ate a 80 dmg rev rocket first thing just to acclimate but I cleared out the parapets and grabbed a blue man to stabilize my condition. That was a little perfect mini sojourn for recovery which organically provided weapons, minor encounters and interesting viewing vantages deeper in the map. That's why not saving and reloading all the time makes for better doom (adventuring) experiences than just being angry at a high roll and immediately going back.

Map gave me RL and Plasma in the opening so there's a few options about how to take care of minor combat as we transpass. So far I remember enjoying myself a lot but I didn't anticipate that the map would find such interesting environmental contrasts later on. There's a few more orchestrated fights in the central hub of the base, some revealing geometry (well balanced second blue man) and enemy reups utilizing the same space in different combat scenarios. Besides being a tidy way to get more gameplay out of a space the slow down of the pace from the initial rockside lift journey is appropriate. It makes the techbase portion of the map feel more meaty and important even if it's not anything super hard in terms of combat and honestly isn't a huge space. 

There is a little trap to the side which spawns a chaingunner behind and an archvile in front with nothing but a pole to dance on. it's a customary AV setup and it claimed one doomguy from my endless stock but it is a point of criticism on reflection if the way the difficulty is balanced on this map the only thing likely to get you is just a chaingunner spawning behind you while an AV cooks.

After conquering the technase we move some doom machinery around to activate a teleporter that takes us through a fine particulate mist. Cool transition. Now I am back outside but not necessarily in a similar place to where I started. The feeling of displacement and the open air, rocky beach that I am delivered on is a good mood shift from the dark techbase. What I didn't expect was boom deep water and a whole Jim Sach's Aquarium worth of midtex fish and assorted Things in the depths. I really loved that feeling of jumping in and finding all that stuff (and the necessary red key to exit) as a contrast to what has come before, I'll explain why later on. Not a huge fan of single intense friction mud sector however and it must be noted that if you put a whole aquarium's worth of billboarded multicoloured midtex in a space, spotting a hidden red key in it isn't going to be the easiest thing in the world. Did any of this stop me? Nope, so it probably won't stop you.

Thankfully the fighting you have to do underwater is fairly minor so getting caught on some plant Things here and there wasn't a heavy blow to the experience. The enjoyment of the underwater sections will linger in my mind in connection to this map so the aesthetic trumps the gameplay niggles, here.

The exit of the map has a doomcute reference to some damn dirty apes, or at least I think that's what that is about haven't watched that movie since I was 8 years old but, regardless the humour inherent in finding a sector statue of liberty in doom works out anyway. The actual exit line is a bit of an opaque discovery, that's actually probably my only criticism that doesn't get balanced out by something else as it would be very easy to fix a more clear exit without hurting the map at all.


I think my love for this kind of community creations only deepens over the years of my involvement because there's something in here, in wads like these, made sometimes in process oriented ways ("let me make some landmasses and I'll figure out what we're supposed to do in here later, perhaps I'll put a manc there, who knows") is so counter to how professional videogames are constricted into a shape that has passed review and scrutiny on like 8 preproduction layers before anyone starts doing anything creative in an editor or engine in an unguided, intuitive sense. Ad hoc worldbuilding coming out of your fingers doing stuff as much as your brain precomposing stuff is very touching. Finding interesting contrasts that you can tell just came to a person and were implemented on the spot is touching, you can feel the other person on the other end. Community Doom stuff, for me at least, remains a little peek inside the minds of strangers who are always in a dynamic tension between wanting to make a competent video-game experience and wanting to just express inchoate feelings or impulses that come out of using the mapmaking software as a toy, as something to do to relax, as something to do to keep one's fingers or brain active. That's what I got from this one: it has a techbase and some cool doom encounters, you know, you can do the thing you can play the video-game in here, but there's also a meticulously arranged zen garden of an aquarium, because the mapper wanted there to be one, it made them happy. That makes me happy too

Footage:
 

And a Jim Sachs picture so we all understand why that vibe is cool to find in an otherwise innocuous doom map


 

[Andromeda]

15 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

Fucking Hostile Psychoholic Slush

 

See, it's quite clear that Peter like probably most people not all that integrated into the Doom community in the mid 90s (and the Casali brothers of course!) always played continuously. Not to say that any map is necessarily impossible from pistol start but 1)I really am not sure how close one could get to 100 percent kills with the amount of ammo and weapons available in each map and 2)RNG and fortunate infighting are indeed a must to get through the tighter areas.

It's possible to get 100% kills on all levels from a pistol start without infighting/melee, although MAP06 is painful due to the lack of SSG/RL.

[LadyMistDragon]

3 hours ago, Andromeda said:

It's possible to get 100% kills on all levels from a pistol start without infighting/melee, although MAP06 is painful due to the lack of SSG/RL.

It says far too much about you that you played all of those maps enough times to know that (maybe 3-4 each?) :P). I certainly found few of them that warranted that kind of examination.

[Andromeda]

2 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

It says far too much about you that you played all of those maps enough times to know that (maybe 3-4 each?) :P). I certainly found few of them that warranted that kind of examination.

Nope, I just breezed through them in little over an hour today :P

[Ravendesk]

Night on Doom Mountain by Cannonball

 

I went into it expecting some kind of moody horror-like adventure, but turned out it's a full out combat-puzzle / microslaughter map. Can't complain.

 

Very impressive map, the colour scheme is immediately established with the opening shot (I like those slightly desaturated but still bright greens and purples) and I appreciate that the maps gives you a some time to look around calmly before you move and trigger all the enemies. The mix of incidental combat and arenas feels really good, as well as how the map is structured: free-form non-linear layout of the first half of the map and strictly linear push to the top in the second half, this creates a strong sense of journey, that culminates in a final fight. Also I really loved what credits map did, very atmospheric way to wrap up said journey.

 

My minor complains would be slightly weird dark imp death animation (I'm never sure if it died or not without waiting for animation to end) and somewhat uneven difficulty of the fights (a lot of them are pretty trivial, while others are suddenly very difficult - hello purple key stairs fight, omg), but those are whatever and ultimately didn't detract my enjoyment of the map at all.

 

Great stuff, highly recommend.

[General Roasterock]

Sigma

 

  I was prepared to simply walk around a boring rusty techbase today, and here I am, soaked with a full spectrum of cheesy. Sigma is like playing through a VHS tape housing an old recorded cartoon. It clearly has more going for it in presentation than coherence, but that’s right where it should be.

  I’m not even going to talk about the dark ironclad base sprinkled with whatever, even if its scale is unique. From the teleporter to the beach is the chunk that truly matters here. I would almost say that this wad benefits from being a snooze out the gate, as it makes the colorblast beyond the warp so much more impactful. Flying through particle filled space in order to reach what felt like a whole new world was a shock, as was seeing water in the map that had been primarily rock and metal up until that point. 

  The first thing I noticed about the sea was a fin from one of the fish poking out of the water, circling visibly through the waves. Closer examination lead to me tripping into the ocean, dragging me right into the dramatic reveal of the chaos of the undersea life within. Technicolor coral, baked pixel seaweed, crustaceans sitting in place, weirdo animated living plants, I even found a singular eye poking out through the forest. The population diversity is massive, and having to push my way through it in an exploration for the Red Skull was surreal. With all that had been replaced in this jungle, I could’ve been looking for anything. 

  Even that gets challenged in jovial implementation by the final twenty seconds. The Planet of the Apes reference (that word is putting it lightly) coded to lightning strikes and the classic’s line delivery is just another pleasant surprise on top of multiple already. I’m shocked more people don’t try and do something to this effect with lighting, especially with how easy it is to control in Boom. It really caps off the goofy presentation nicely, still being lead on by a Smashing Pumpkins song that’s gotten very addicting after wandering around underwater for a while. Corny map, inspiring mechanical skeleton, spiritual experience.

[General Roasterock]

Hundreds and Thousands

 

Map 01: Morsel

 

  Pepper gave me an itch for this genre of map. The simple nature of the reality map means that it can’t be one that actively seeks to stomp you into the ground with dozens and dozens of horde fights. It was beautiful, and an easy sell when combined with Ribbiks’s pre-Magnolia geometry. That made Hundreds and Thousands a gnawing presence in my brain, with the Ancient Aliens feel of the screenshots, and the promise to continue flying the banner that Pepper had staked. However, much like the vast majority of DoomWorld’s torrent, I just never got to playing it up until now, so I appreciate the excuse here.

  The music has an immediate grip, another good argument for mod files in Doom. It makes the settlement structure feel passively haunted, like death could come at any moment, even without the reality mechanics. The synths are also just incredibly satisfying on an individual level, and nothing in it is too complicated to overwhelm the action. It’s one of those songs that I can listen to while writing this and compile everything that I felt in the minutes I spent in the map with ease.

  I love the opening’s focus on getting creative. Rolling the dice on the multiple zombiemen is definitely possible, but I found it more consistent to just get the Arachnotron to kill them with its plasma stream. Any hidden hitscanner, be it Shotgunner or otherwise, is treated like a significant ambush, where every door has a single Sergeant sitting behind it, a test of reflex. The other two big fights are cool individual extremes of gimmick potential. The Green Skull one is the side of no gimmick at all, simply tasking the player with mowing down every zombie before they get a chance to fire a shot off. The Super Shotgun completely deflates this fight though, as it not only lets you knock off anything in the room, but it reduces that tense back and forth with the Revenants after most of the fight has been solved. The meme of Armor Bonuses in the secret is also great. 

  There’s actually a lot of love for the spiders now that I’m thinking about it, both with the Arachnotrons guarding the exit and the Mastermind Normandy run. The latter got annoying when it felt like she would clip me on the way through the teleporter, but the pressure was creative. The former, again powerless against the SSG, is an interesting point to teach ammo conservation in a set where every object is very purposeful. It’s such a skillful map, extending more of a kind hand to reality play than Pepper did to show that it’s a meaningful change. My one complaint is that there being Green and Grey keys means that I can’t say GSK to describe a fight without it being confusing. I can’t say GrSK, or even GreSK since Finnks used the objectively incorrect spelling of gray. 

  Great stuff, and I would be happy to play this wad on Rolling Down the Street, in my Katamari being the intermission music alone.

[baja blast rd.]

Extended club by half a month because some other wads dropped and I feel compelled to play those too. :P 

 

You can stick to whatever you were planning to do if you want, though. 

[RjY]

Gravity is a lovely stroll in a park and some castle ruins on a summer's day. The combination of deep blue sky, green grass, wide open space, and ancient-looking brickwork gives the nostalgic feel of being 10 years old going on a class trip to a local site of historical interest on a warm June afternoon.

I did not find it particularly replayable though, it is more of a discovery/exploration wad. On replay it did not seem as engrossing. This can be alleviated by waiting several years between playthroughs; having experienced it on release, and again in late 2017, I plan to wait a few more years before making another visit.

Finally, spot the chaingunner:

[Helm]

Gravity

hard to tell if I've played it before or if I've seen someone play it. I've played lots of Eternal's stuff and I really liked most but I had no functional memory of anything here just a vague recollection of the look, so that led to some vague nostalgia amping the playthrough, just enough to kind of make me stop and notice more. Had a perfectly good time running through, wherever I got stuck on some playformy thing for a while at least that gave me time to soak in the atmosphere of which there is a substantial amount to experience. The music on map 02 does grate and gets replaced but that aside, I don't regret the near hour I spent figuring this one out, as with a lot of Eternal's stuff you run in it around for long enough it starts to feel like a little pocket art piece meticulously crafted by the standard of its day to be this unique playspace with a cryptic personality waiting for you to unlock. So in 2023 the puzzles have become more layered and the encounters more deadly but the approach hasn't really changed.

 

[Xyzzу]

I unwittingly played one of the WADs listed in this here thread just now, Sigma, and uhh... holy shit there's some real Skyewood energy here. The teleportation sequence was hypnotizing but I had no clue was I was in for after that. Playing Where's Waldo? with the red key amongst the hyper-cluttered mess of the aquatic realm was a rare form of challenge that got me intrigued with what you could do to expand upon it. My only gripe was wading through the deep sand was a bit awkward in the "I only tested this in ZDoom and wasn't aware the friction is borked in Boom" way, but it was worth the trouble to see that striking ending.

Edited November 7, 2023 by Χyzzy

[baja blast rd.]

Night on Doom Mountain (#1) 

 

Finding the overview format stifling my motivation to write, so I'll talk about various parts of these wads as I'm playing them, which is how I naturally comment on wads anyway.  

 

I played NoDM last year and enjoyed it. Years go so deep now that this won't even seem like an especially 'important' release that a lot of people talk about, but specifically within the hard map niche you should not miss it.

 

 

My favorite early part is your intro to the big SWTW-like black marble temple that is at the heart of the map's progression. You press the switch and are met with a setpiece encounter that introduces the 180mpv Nightwatch Cacodemon, which you can think of as a more palatable version of an afrit -- but rather than locking this encounter into a bars-lowering setup, what the map lets you do is escape directly into the fray of other small skirmishes, and this is really fun, just running around and stirring up trouble that has its benefits and its downsides. The speedrunner in me will always play along happily with 'setups' like this if you can call them that, without needing a particular reason to do so. A lot of map starts do this naturally, so you come to expect it there but no where else in a map. So another reason I like this one so much is that it comes a few minutes into the map, after a series of battles in the surrounding mountains.

[baja blast rd.]

Night on Doom Mountain (#2)

 

 

This curved rocky stairstep fight is the hardest in the map by a good margin (assuming you're not dragging in lots of resources from elsewhere, possibly). It's to the point that it feels miscalibrated, because you can beat pretty much every other fight in the map straight-up without anything special but this one has lots of 'FDA bait' (like those perched revenants that are replaced with archviles). The key is preventing that big mob of revenants from charging up the stairs. Taking them out first won't work reliably because the cacodemons will crowd into the stairs. So you want to immediately rush up and take the 'high ground', which keeps the revenants clumped up downstairs, which ends up looking like a cheese due to how irrelevant they are for most of the fight when this is done well, but that's one of the reasons there's often little distinction between 'good strategy' and 'cheese'. 

[baja blast rd.]

Night on Doom Mountain (#3)

 

 

I'm noticing this map has an unusual structure to it where it feels like the main temple part on its own a traditional three-key map, but then there was an intro phase and a long second phase added to it. No complaints, but the three key temple and heresiarch boss fight feels like it would normally mark the end of a map.

 

In the second half, this whole phase is a banger. It's not even just one setpiece -- even if the big imp and cacoswarm with accompany cyb turret and viles might be the best setpiece in the map -- but it's also the way they all play off of each other. I love how you're graciously allowed to leave before taking out everything, which lets me go and grab the BFG and come back to clean up the cyb with it. Leaving isn't free though as this time the cacos wandered into the BFG area and followed me. By triggering the post-BFG fight before dropping down, I ended up with some chokepoint clearing, but even that wasn't bad because they're all easy pickings for the ample rockets and cells we'll have at this point. This map continues to make a case for a lot of the ways setpieces can be separated from each other without using timed lowering bars. 

 

Also that cyber-vile trap at the end is mean lol. Totally forgot about that one.

[baja blast rd.]

Night on Doom Mountain (#4)

 

 

 

Probably the last one for this map.

 

This secret fight taught me something.

 

The encounter is pretty much a pure infight brawl featuring nightwatch cacos, the heresiarchs (basically a big slow ground-based afrit -- this comparison is not entirely serious :P), and a cyb. You'd think that pure 'dance around and watch infight' battles with no real danger level beyond the opening phases are not a good archetype. But the key is this one features mostly custom enemies (and a cyb). It's very fun to watch just to satisfy my curiosity about who will win! (Turns out to be the nightwatch cacos, which amazing at infighting.) That's a big difference between a low-danger dance with a group of HKs and a cyb in a big open space, and this setup. It's a silly concept to take your wad's heavy-hitting monsters and throw them in an infighting moshpit, but that makes it a good fit for a secret fight.

[LadyMistDragon]

Hundreds and Thousands

by @finnks13

 

Ok, it was probably a stupid idea but I played every map in one sitting. I was originally going to do Garden of Plagues but thought it might take longer and perhaps it would have but who cares.

 

This, basically is a wad where the player's health is set to 1 no matter what with occasional gimmicky dickishness rearing its ugly head at certain points where its unwelcome. On the plus side, it's unlikely that we'll suffer an unavoidable Cyberdemon death. That death animation looks pretty nice and kind of reflects a certain blanking-out feeling, complemented by the blue blood that comes out when we expire, probably symbolic of how near death we are but also complementing the overall aesthetic. Still, monster placement exists in such a way that it can be hard to find safe locations (not impossible though). The ammo is pretty tight however.

 

Speaking of, the visuals seems vaguely Crumpets-inspired, basically just a mix of natural landscapes with some rather spare temples and futuristic architecture like rings and metal constructions comprising the environments. Complementing is a futuristic electro-dance dubstep adjacent soundtrack like something that gets played in the average Meowgi stream.

 

How well does this gimmick work? Well, only one map has 100 monsters so it's hard to see too many chances being taken. Let's find out!

 

Map 01: Morsel

 

Oh Finn, you cheeky bastard! Putting the name aside, this is the first of 2 maps where RNGjesus decides whether you end up being killed by former humans or not. Nasty shotgun placement, but we can probably pick it up. Entering the temple here, we find a Mancubus in the middle we should probably ignore. The path on the left leads to a green key and darkened room that doesn't contain significant challenge besides the two Revenants here we need to be careful with our chaingun on while the blue key path takes us out to a courtyard with Hell Knights, pillars and a Spider Mastermind at the end. Dodging the latter isn't terribly difficult, and there's even enough shotgun shells to take her out, but I wouldn't recommend it because the teleporter here doesn't take you out but instead deposits us on top of her....and in any case, we use both keys to access the central pool. At this, the Mancubus platform lowers it and in our case, the Mancubus teleported....to some odd invisible path above that a rocket got itself stuck in, and three Arachnotrons attack. Infighting might be a good idea here, but that wasn't going to work here and we had enough ammo to dispose of the Arachnos handily. Past this point is the void of the exit

 

 

Map 02: Blueberry Muffin

 

So here, we have former humans at the central entrance, along with some curious blue stripes and respectively, a Revenant and Mancubus we must dodge. It's possible to provoke infighting here, but really, we'd have better luck just shotgunning them. Even counting the Lost Souls that appear when the green key gets picked up, but luring them into infighting is easier anyway. From here, a temple reveals two Revenants it should be easy to sidestep, then a teleporter to the middle of some falls that will promptly lower and reveal some Mancubi and Revenants in addition to Imps and pinkies in the water. We then return to the central courtyard, kill some more Revenants and press the blue key switch to reveal another outdoor area, containing Arachnotrons, chaingunners on pillars. It's certainly not over though. Press the switch at the other end and an Arch-vile and two Revenants appear, along with some Imps on ledges. Having enough rockets for the Arch-vile is really nice, but from that point there's far more room to hide so take them all out, ride the newly-revealed lift and press a switch guarding the exit, and sitting right next to it is a sweet, juicy, blue berry muffin and like real life, does squat for your health! D:)

 

Map 03: Giver of Life

 

A Tyson map because there has to be one. Which leads to some tomfoolery where Revenants definitely killed us all the time. Vines are starting to work their way in, as well. Lure the Imps to the Revenants or fail at it. Beyond this initial alley, please follow the arrow unless we want the next section to be completely impossible. No one likes going toward an Arch-vile but there is room to hide below. And we'd better use it because nasty traps await in the areas surrounding it where knowledge of what comes from where is key. When this is done, a teleporter will deposit us right on top of the Arch-vile and send them sliding off the platform in a most hilarious fashion! We'll also have the plasma rifle so we'll use it in the above rocky area we didn't head towards, against some Pain Elementals and shotgunners that can really mess us up! There's also a Revenant pair around the corner up on the ledge. Past this is a room with chaingunners and Revenants that's still easier than anything else, then finally, get the blue key and prepare for some stupid Arch-vile nonsense with wasted ammo.

 

 

Map 04: The Cherry on Top

 

Ok, it's funny that there are several stimpaks hiding in an untagged secret, but it doesn't really help matters we failed to find either of the secrets here. In either case, this is where we're glad enemies are often locked away from us at certain times because things would otherwise end up wholly unfair. Anyway, the initial gauntlet is rather tricky, especially since we can get clipped and thusly, destroyed by Imps on the side blue platforms but no matter, the SS will soon belong to us and we can exit to an outdoor area with vines platforms and Ancient Aliens-esque floating lights, where a Pain Elemental immediately confronts us and we have to act judiciously against both them and the former humans. Shotgun shells aren't really a problem here though. Then we can drop down, hit the switch here, then rocket one of the Arachnotrons, blast our way through the demon pack in the front, and hopefully get the other Archnotron before we run entirely out of rockets while taking care to keep the Hell Knight turrets at one end in mind. With the green key in hand we can exit, miss some shotgun shells that might have been unnecessary and wander around stupidly before realizing we could reach a certain unobtrusive ledge running paralell to a series of Mancubi could be accessed from a light platform nearby. Grabbing the key at the end teleports in some Hell Knights. Rockets feel a touch unnecessary here. Then we can return to where we just passed some bars, drop down, hit the switch whilst backing up immediately while rocketing an Arch-vile and Lost Souls and we'll have the gray key! Once it's used, the central Cyberdemon will teleport away and we can continue on, immediatelyt carving a path through the Revenant mass which just teleported in, Behind them, a teleporter takes us to a central structure and here, the Cyberdemon will reappear, along with the 4 Arch-viles we saw at the beginning! There's enough ammo to use on at least three of the Arch-viles, more if one can two-shot the Cyber!

 

Map 05: Hundred 

 

This initial area is a long series of knolls with several enemies and a couple of tagged secrets that are easy to find for someone who wants to wander around the island. Traveling to the middle here nets us the green key, reveals a nearby trap with chaingunners and an Arch-vile that shouldn't be too hard to handle, unlike the below Arch-vile that drained all our spare plasma ammo due to the several enemies they resurrected before reaching the green key switch outside and lowering the subsequent teleporter.

 

Here, tic-counting becomes a necessity, not like I know completely what it is but going "dah-dah-dah" can keep track of how long one is spending here because the slime in the following area will, in fact kill you. Things were just that much worst given our lack of heavy weaponry, which is a real problem because 1)There's a non-slime spot where a Rev will attack from each side and 2)Once we acquire the key here, two Arch-viles and a tiny amount of trash spawn at the other end, though at least we get two rad-suits. It was deemed not worth it to SSG them so we escaped as soon as we could though.

 

Blue key path is not too hard to deal with. Well, that's not true necessarily since two Arch-viles WILL spawn very close to us but there should at least be enough rockets for them and the Mancubi.

 

The last key will take us to a rather intimidating seeming arena. There's Hell Knights and Barons on either side, along with Two Cyberdemons in front. Pushing the switch here causes several enemies to teleport in and eventually, the visible enemies will be revealed. There's just enough room to move around though and certainly easy enough to trigger infighting if we can't two shot the Cybers. We still fire to reduce the crowd and reduce the revenant threat but there's otherwise little need to do anything else. Then we can take the teleporter here to a long hallway that ends with a pair of marines which sort of begs the question why we were in our unfortunate state but no matter

 

 

Conclusion

 

This gimmick was definitely showing some of the limits of having a single person responsible in some ways toward the end. Still, Finn succcessfully went all out in the final map in a largely enjoyable way beyond the idiot slime pits. This was a nice challenge, albeit perhaps one that took longer than I would've liked. I'll probably spread out Glaive 3 much more than this though. Very nice stuff by a student of the Plutonian school with an AP Course for six weeks in Ribbkisian architecture.

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by LadyMistDragon

[LadyMistDragon]

Garden of Plagues

by @Sneezy McGlassFace

 

Here we have yet another map with a combination of a slime/cave environment where the menace is slow-burning, yet always there in the background, as the quietly grinding midi in the background underscores. Death will come for us at any moment, presumably.

 

From the very first room, it seems quite open-ended, though it turns out to be an illusion as they all go to the same place. And although we have plenty of room to explore afterwards, there is a certain linearity regarding the correct path, although we can snatch things like an early berserk pack at one point, at least one area will prove impossible without the rocket launcher.

 

But anyway, the pool of damaging blood and the cyberdemon that roars when we press the first switch is all too indicative of what we're in for! As we enter the central cavern here, Arachnotrons on ledges and Barons which already heard our first shot attack. Since there is no nearby shotgun, we end up heading to the north end of what proves to be the central cavern, plunge down, and run through a series of pools with a couple of channels running through the middle, one containing a supercharge and a switch we didn't notice until later, with the other having some other supplies. We collect several shell boxes here and also spot a backpack sitting on top of a high pillar because it is, then walk up to the Super Shotgun.

 

This triggers the first main ambush. Since there are Imps on ledges here, we completely fail to notice the mass teleport seemingly ocurring in the location we just came from, containing Lost Souls, Imps, Cacodemons, Pain Elementals and not long after Mancubi, with a Cyberdemon also putting in an appearance later. Probably not the one we heard earlier but no matter, keep cognizant of other threats, fire when we need to, and there's easily enough ammo to kill the Cyberdemon, even if it's quite unclear if he took decent damage from infighting.

 

We then press some switches to open a grate and exit into a small tunnel with sewage coming from the pipes and a lift that when lowered reveals an Arch-vile! Don't try to hide behind the slime here, because it doesn't work! Take the lift up, see some nobles we saw earlier, then duck into a storage room to collect some supplies including armor and several backpacks then duck out again to the right and took a lift down to an area totally unlike the rest of the map with the exception of some smaller rooms; a shiny corridor with some bloody skull walls inside some windows and several large groups of dangerous monsters we simply won't be SSGing regardless of what we might wish. Reaching the far end with the rocket launcher unleashes an ambush of some trash enemies we can rocket to an extent if we know they're there and have enough spare rockets that we don't need the ones in front of the closets right away. After this, we spin around and kill the rest of the enemies, including an overeager arch-vile, then exit.

 

At this point, we find out there seems to be Arch-viles behind the Arachnotrons that are still alive in the central cavern so we end up taking a tunnel to the right and below, run into a pop-up Baron, duck into another little tunnel, then take a lift up to grab a berserk pack sitting in the middle of some pinkies before we end up SSging the Revenants that attack soon afterward because that's a bit much. Otherwise, this tunnel doesn't lead anywhere we haven't been before, and we end up just behind the backpack on the pillar mentioned earlier that we can then leap to.

 

After some more wandering around, it turns out we entirely missed another passage leading from the sewer tunnel with the first Arch-vile, to another room seeming to be empty. But as we head to the end with the armor, something goes off, then Chaingunners teleport to the pillars on either end, along with Revenants, then Mancubi behind some far windows, as well as am Arachnotron next to a Baron behind a window with a furnace, to say nothing of the Imps and Spectres that frustrated our plans multiple times. We then waffled through a cruddy timed switch puzzle to exit.

 

The corridor which follows successfully manages to escalate the menace, as practically at the other end, a Revenant pop-up trap appears, along with some Mancubi some distance away to the right on some dark pillars, with only 8 stimpaks for health. It's bad enough there's hardly any room to dodge Revenant rockets, but in addition, the Mancubi can make our life a living hell to a high enough degree, we should only grab the stimpaks when we need them, which is probably a second or two after we just passed them. Oddly enough, that's probably only the second hardest challenge. Anyway, we kill two arch-viles in close quarters in the next series of hallways, find a hidden berserk pack while bumbling through then get out to the central cavern again where a switch lowers a ladder and also causes armor bonuses to appear which show the way to a now-open path.

 

Taking the path leads to some stairs with seriously suspicious design. And here is the hardest section of the map! So Imps teleport in along with spectres in the middle of their groups on both ends of the stairs, but in the area that just opened, there's probably around 10 Revenants on each of a half a dozen platforms, with an Arch-vile on a platform at the far end, along with some Pain Elementals behind the respective group of Imps here. 

 

The lesson is clear: be aggressive but only in the right places, like sending a few rockets at the Imps right behind us, running while trying to focus most rockets on the Revenants and the Arch-vile when we can see them, then some towards the far end, then circle and repeat. There's probably a more defined way of doing that, but no matter, kill everything, then access a passage with a Revenant and a blue key.

 

The nastiness continues from here as the blue key door opens up a cave leading to an incredibly ominous swamp, filled with several spectres in depths and Revenants that beg for rockets that should be spared until one can break out. After this cavern is a Supercharge we'll be unable to get if we don't keep to the sides, another Revenant corridor battle that proves far easier due to the little bits we can hide behind then right after that is a lift with blood on it that will most certainly boil us.

 

This leads to the final battles, several nobles along with a Cyberdemon attack, but we get a BFG, are well-supplied...and Cacos swarm from some windows around 30 seconds in. Probably we should've tried harder to avoid them in at least a couple of spots, but no matter, Pain Elementals also show up, then finally, we plunge into the central pit to exit.

 

Summary

 

Something's always eating away at us. In the case of Doomguy, it's the result of being exposed to so much shit and blood and evil. This I think touches on the slow-burning menace. While there may be several large fights, they're probably expected at this point, and besides, hearing Arch-viles and Cyberdemons in the background before they teleport into the playing area will rattle certain people. 

 

More so, Hrnek Bezucha shows some serious artistic chops. The opening area eases us in, the central cavern with the slime falls and Arachnotrons on top touches on tropes well-established in Doom mapping by now, and the shallow water leading to the horribly bloody ending might not be too difficult as such but shows this map ain't completely out of tricks yet. More than that, great work for what's essentially an easier challenge map!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 13, 2023 by LadyMistDragon

[General Roasterock]

The Settlements

 

  I think it’s easier for me to just lump all of these maps into one.

  Where has Dashlet been for me? I only first heard about them through Maribo speaking so highly of their speedmap set that dropped not too long ago, which I hadn’t paid too much thought to aside from the speedmap quality being above the bar. The Settlements takes the quirks that I recognize from that set and send my at lightspeed across a galaxy that I have no familiarity with and simultaneously have grown up in. Every other set I’ve seen attempt to do backrooms does it the exact same way any other media portrays it, as solely a ‘memberberry so you can say “this place is like a place I saw when uhhhhhhh I was a childhood”, and that’s excessively lame. The Settlements does not do that, it’s all about making a familiarly alien Doom. It’s covered in wood, bookshelves, carpeting, but I could probably count the number of sensible orthogonal rooms on one hand and they’re all in Map 03. Everything else is a suburbia stretched across time and wrung out like a towel. Rugged corners that normally show up in architecture are all sanded into a dreamlike serpentine, windows are plastered in places where occupation seems impossible, benches and chairs are littered about the rooms, streetlamps provide no practical purpose. It’s a distortion of life, one that doesn’t look to threaten. 

  I’ll get my notable moments from Map 01 and 03 out of the way. Walking into the surrounding darkness for the sphere secret in 01 was great, the lighting is all around phenomenal and used as a pillar to keeping the world foreign. The whole section where you think you’re getting into an arena only for the opposition to be dead, replaced by a sickening blend of the map's edits is chilling, and plays further on familiarity. The leap through the mirror to the secret Armor in 03 felt downright wrong, like I had just violated the rules of that house somehow. I liked discovering the secret platforming challenge for Map 04 on HNTR, I really wish more maps would provide exclusives to difficulties like this, cause it made what was otherwise an underwhelming bookend into a gratifying exploration of dead space. 

  What really sells this idea to me is Apagado Town: the whole of liminal presented as a style instead of a bullet point. You’re constantly sprinting down a paved and painted road to nowhere, ducking in and out of shower halls, fighting in courtyards, populating a dead city. Jumping into that house locked off by the Blue Key is enough to make you feel microscopic, looking through windows that view into piping and lighting fixtures, but every inch of this map is a bastardization of society. The courtyard Cyberdemon fight is as close to a real place as these imitations construct, provided you forget the road takes a straight drop out of the tunnel and that the technology holding the map together is breaking through the seams around the Blue Key. All of this is supported by really good, if occasionally prickly combat. The infighting around the Cyberdemon feels like something ridiculous to manage without much of this map’s resources already acquired, and the Cyber guarding the exit to the Gray Key fight is an ass, but there is otherwise a completely natural incorporation of these denizens in a world that feels less like there’s than yours. The secret Meagsphere bit was really fun to work through with different groupings of gear, even if the BFG negates the entire thing, and I liked that the final fight felt balanced around the Rocket Launcher, considering how negotiating the space against one last Revenant shitstorm is incorporated. It’s a phenomenal map, put to a quicker pace by a phenomenal midi.

  Finely Crafted Fetish Film already did a lot of what The Settlements did in the sense of putting a cityscape through the kaleidoscope, but this wad takes the drowsy jazz of the Ribbiks cult classic and puts it to a more melancholic modern. For the terror of FCFF, I would still love to live in it. For the paranoid fractal of The Settlements, I probably already am.

Edited November 13, 2023 by General Roasterock

[General Roasterock]

Hundreds and Thousands

 

Map 02: Blueberry Muffin

 

  If there’s anything that demonstrates the dynamic of reality maps to a T, it’s the Blue Key fight. I’m rounding Mancubi and Revenants in a temperamental infight cluster, and I’m only thinking “where are the zombies?”. I survive the fight, then a zombie teleports behind me and kills me effortlessly. The best part about getting into a reality map is that the muscle memory for prioritization still takes hold, so a Mancubus, which shouldn’t be anywhere near as dangerous as a Shotgunner, still feels menacing standing over the hub with the key switches. 

  I love how much attention Imps get paid in this map, being either sprinkled around with just as much lethality as most other monsters, to being the primary threat of the last fight. I say that over there being an Arachnotron and an Arch-Vile because those are threats you can easily gun down in a matter of seconds, all the while the Imps are laying down a carpet of fireballs from multiple directions. Either you have to focus the Imps down and risk one of these threats either distributing a beam of death or reviving one of the Chaingunners from the last wave, or you have to predict the average density of fireballs heading to the back of your head while handling the greater demon. 

 

Map 03: Giver of Life

 

  This one’s exhausting, and Berserk feels about incompatible with reality running. This is the first time I haven’t completely deflated the map just from playing it through a second time on account of the fact that Berserk min rolls are completely pathetic. Relying on melee to push through a singular Imp to escape further damage is a fool’s wish, as there’s a nontrivial chance that you simply dust its face and eat the claw, which is death in a reality map. There’s also the little shimmy required whenever a Revenant gets pain stunned, or the rhythmic looping needed for the 4 to 800 punches required to kill a Hell Knight, and that’s considering the strategies in a vacuum. Putting the Imp tickling, the Hell Knight crop circling, and Lost Souls doing whatever the hell they’re doing under Arch-Vile coverage is outright wild. I didn’t even bother engaging it the second time through, I just rushed for the telefrag without being sure if that was the intended approach. The Pain Elemental rush throwing plasma ammo to the wind is a nail biter but never got to me, and the two Chaingunners are completely pistol friendly if you aren’t looking for a quick complete. The last Arch-Vile, however, is a dick, entirely reliant on reviving the Revenant at the start to prove a challenge. The cover for him is barely anything, so I just ended up stockpiling plasma. At least the secret Soulsphere fight was fun, as it allows balance between two potentially pained Revs.

  I’m still in love with the decrepitude of these meso ruins. The maps still feel like they would belong in an Ancient Aliens lost episode, having the same energy possession as that blockbuster. However, the glowing arrow pointing the player in the direction of the more balanced direction feels like a compromise. I intentionally ignored it the first time and found myself staring down three Pain Elementals with just a pistol, so I understand it’s purpose, but it feels like this setup could have been solved by simply barring it off. If you want to make the speedrunner argument, then I could point to many locked doors in this map that could use the same treatment. Harsh, but nowhere near a deal breaker. I did like the music. 

[baja blast rd.]

13 hours ago, General Roasterock said:

The Settlements does not do that, it’s all about making a familiarly alien Doom. It’s covered in wood, bookshelves, carpeting, but I could probably count the number of sensible orthogonal rooms on one hand and they’re all in Map 03. Everything else is a suburbia stretched across time and wrung out like a towel. Rugged corners that normally show up in architecture are all sanded into a dreamlike serpentine, windows are plastered in places where occupation seems impossible, benches and chairs are littered about the rooms, streetlamps provide no practical purpose. It’s a distortion of life, one that doesn’t look to threaten. 

 

Powerfully put. Loved this wad.

 

Throwing in my failed FDA for map02 from a week ago. I got unlucky with the cyb not doing enough damage to all those viles. 

 

 

 

[LadyMistDragon]

Sigma

by Didy

 

Adventure, I thought when I saw the description, that's cool. But perhaps it would be more accurate to say it's a linear map with some curious design choices and shockingly well-rendered locations.

 

There isn't too much to speak of at first - we start in a desert canyon with a muddy river at our backs just outside a base, but the lift at the tower here will lower, first to our level, then down to the massive base entrance in the valley below. There's a fair few enemies here but there shouldn't be too many problems for anyone who just keeps moving. Although since there's no items that are visible on the left, it seems a little pointless to kill the Revenant and Imps lurking in the upper alcoves here (checking later, it seems there's a Supercharge and plasms rifle, but there's no obvious way in. The right side is easily accessible though, and I love the little grate windows blocking fire that probably powers part of the base. I think I missed the rocket launcher here though.

 

Anyway, running down the tunnel brings us to what can broadly be described as an industrial area. Wires run along certain walls and there are structures that are probably supposed to be machinery. But at the back end behind a fence lies a structure that could be an interdimensional teleporter but could easily be something else too.

 

From here, a teleporter that most certainly takes us to another dimension before bleeding out for some reason on to a nearby beach. Here, slow-moving effects simulate crouching on some sand after hearing something, then it's a trip into the water to find a beautiful sight of coral and wildlife seemingly everywhere. A trap appears at the end, but this seemingly has nothing to do with the key, which is located on a ledge to the left. The problem is that navigating around the vegetation is very difficult and it seemed at first that maybe we should try dropping from above, but the plants are too thick so we just ended up crawling along the basin here. The map concludes with the wrecked Statue of Liberty and a silly line from Planet of the Apes.

 

Combat here isn't too difficult, really. Many of the ambushes (the Mancubi on the lift dropping down behind us, the floor-dropping trap near the teleporter, or the group of enemies at the end) are expected but aren't really pressing. There was one room where just like the previous map, we could hear a growling Arch-vile that ended up teleporting in after we reached the other end, but they weren't too hard to deal with. Harder was the Arch-vile at the end, but that was just because we lacked a plasma rifle. Oddly, the largest problem was the grindiness of the multiple Barons in the first main room of the facility, but that's probably what the plasma rifle for was in part. 

 

I'm taking the perspective of this being a map that was conceived as containing some initial intrigue, yet essentially wearing the average space base clothes of Doom at first, before taking some curious and perhaps 'scientific' turns with the underwater section or how the teleporter sent us sliding through what might have been a trip forward in time. While not every element is logical, it works perfectly well within the context of Doom. And while there's not really tons underneath the hood when you examine it closely , it's clear from the custom midi (from Smashing Pumpkins apparently, although I recognized maybe 3 of their songs if played) and inserted voice clips this intended to touch on the intrigue and wonder of sci-fi, while taking some time to make concessions to absurdity as the ending indicates. 

 

I don't know if that last sentence was nonsense, but this is off-the-cuff after all. I'm definitely glad I played it, unlike a lot of dreck I've sifted through on /idgames.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 14, 2023 by LadyMistDragon

[LadyMistDragon]

Gravity

by Eternal

 

I'm always happy to see Eternal maps, and these two probably fall somewhere toward the lesser-known of his work. After checking the wiki, this actually seems to have been released between Epic and Epic 2 which might be part of why detailing has a more scattershot feel that I'm used to from Eternal.

 

I've only played the first one of his so far though. Mostly because I took a look at Map 02 and thought....'maybe later.'

 

 

Map 01: Gravity

 

Clearly, Eternal wasn't especially concerned with difficulty at this moment because despite a notable lack of ammunition, enemies are quite spread out. This, instead, appears to be a retread of the 'ancient ruins' theme so popular among the Doom community. The presence of grass and pyramids seemingly suggests Mesoamerica but architecture is vague enough that it could still be taken to be fairly generic. No matter, Eternal still adds in some unique detailing, like the sunken-in doors in the opening room and still conveys an impressive sense of scale. 

 

This becomes more obvious when we open the main gate into the massive open field and we get sights such as these/

 

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

 

 

Clearly, aliens have been here. Do you think the cliches of machines and structures like what's displayed here are baseless? Well, this is genuinely dangerous because we were killed by at least one distant Revenant, and there's also a Baron of Hell near the one structure that seems it's powering something. No matter though, the pyramid will teleport us to an alien ship perhaps? Well, that's kind of it for the interesting sights until the end!

 

To say a few more words on the enemy encounters, these feel fairly relaxed for the most part, but Eternal does pull a few nasty tricks at certain points, teleporting a couple of chaingunners behind us while crossing some pillars to a red skull key door, springing an Arch-vile and two Revenants in a middle courtyard with a supercharge in the center after pushing a nearby switch begging for us to look for a hidden rocket launcher, another Arch-vile when we're returning to the starting room, then finally, after pushing a switch near a Megasphere, our platform lowers, then when we step forward, the wall lowers and we're confronted by a sort of Jawa-like metal pavilion thingy and a whole host of enemies in front! It's not really large, but still sort of assumes we found one of 2 BFGs, one at least which is hidden and the other one near the first Baron I think can't be accessed until visiting another part of the map.

 

Map 02 tomorrow!

 

 

 

Edited November 15, 2023 by LadyMistDragon

[LadyMistDragon]

Glaive 3

by EANB

 

Ah yeah, here we go! There was only one EANB map of the past few years I was truly disappointed with. It's often listed as the third wad in the Glaive series which sort of leaves out Warglaive, possibly more inspired after a fashion than this one. But at this point, EANB has successfully established a brand which isn't terribly hard to stick to. So let's get this part started, eh? If this is short and choppy, it's because I'm literally out of time.

 

Map 01: Switchblade

 

First map. Barrel-rich, plenty of enemies to immolate and a well-organized layout with predictable monster closets but packed in such a way it's rather hard to get bored! The one secret is on a ledge below a location needed to progress and it's honestly a little confusing regarding the exact action at said secret but no matter!

 

 

Map 02: Snaking Dark

 

Titular tunnels are ever-present, along with the Spectres that most annoying evaded and tore us to bits! Despite a higher enemy count than 01, the barrels are considerably more scattered, though there's still a fair few opportunities to blow some guys up. The secret is accessed through a narrow ledge it was determined was the only way to reach it after some wall-pushing. Signs of EANB's ruthlessness really appear toward the end when we pick up a rocket launcher and open the exit up, along with a fair few Hell Knights, Mancubi, Sergeants, and perhaps even a Spectre or two!  We narrowly survive, shoot one last spectre that conveniently was behind a window near the exit and finished.

 

 

 

Edited November 17, 2023 by LadyMistDragon

[LadyMistDragon]

Ok, let's conclude Gravity!

 

Map 02

Gravitown

 

Instead of Mesoamerican, this seems to be far more medieval in conception. Lots of rubble and ruins sitting around this cathedral-type complex. There's even a series of spiral stairs leading to nowhere - but it took quite a long time to realize that we should jump from there partly because of those key switches seeming to work. From there, it's a travel through the ramparts, somewhat eye-raising though still easy encounters, then finallly, we can grab the hidden berserk pack which is good for the pinkies - but we BFG them instead! Although there aren't exactly many spare cells in this map. We then head to the obelisk where the yellow key is used, and when we walk up to said structure, a cyberdemon raises...and he's supposed to teleport away when we fire but this time around, he stayed, soaked up the rest of our cells and didn't do too much. Inexplicably, a mastermind is also at the exit, right at the entrance as it happens. We can't access until we hit the eye switch the Cyberdemon was guarding though. 

 

Speaking of, it's sort of cool to see how gravity's used here. Such as the Supercharge floating above the ground it was determined to be a waste of time to get. Or that tricky 'ol Megarmor that we do end up teleporting on top of later. Really, the floating candles on invisible platforms feel justified here because there's actually something beneath them that's powering it! 

 

Other than the garbage midi, this wasn't really too bad! Quite gorgeous where there wasn't just empty space!