Worst official level?

[wumbo]

2 hours ago, Maximum Matt said:

There is one baron on HMP and UV levels, in the south-western room

 

Okay well...

the map still sucks

thanks for correcting me though

[CapersOnSalad]

Fortress of Mystery.

 

I can admire the worse levels of DOOM II for their experimental nature, they had nothing else to compare to at the time. Fortress, however, does literally nothing with its base gimmick. It's peekaboo in video game form. Yay, I made the monsters fight! Now what?

[AdministrationCenter21]

Never understood the hate for Nirvana. It's a rather short and experimental map introducing the warped, abstract hell of the levels beyond it, even more than before with it's sandstone pillars cast adrift in a lake of nukage, each teeming with hell spawn likely to be reduced to nothing as you step onto the final teleporter, the strange pocket dimension nature of the map melting away as you enter The Catacombs, almost like awakening from a lucid nightmare, one full of shotguns, health bonuses and and cold stone... 

 

 

[june gloom]

Yeah I like Nirvana a lot. It's weird and abstract but there's some interesting ideas and visuals.

[danidf96]

Master levels, all of them

[Gez]

On mardi 27 août 2024 at 1:34 AM, NoWits said:

E2M5 is utterly forgettable. In fact, so is most of Doom 2.

The central room of Command Center, with the nukage pits to the side and the baron face cube in front, is one the first images that come to my mind whenever I think about Doom.

[yakfak]

Scythe MAP05

[zokum]

I think e3m7 is an ok map. It has a cohesive design and it isn't a straight-forward shoot until exit type of map. It has tons of atmosphere. I think it conveys that hell is a large place, desolate, dangerous and in no ways designed for humans to navigate. It feels like a place constructed by demons, not by humans to guide the game play. It isn't a rail shooter and with 27 maps, there's room for this.

It has 47 monsters. 17 of those are demons, 9 are cacos and there is a baron. E3m6 has a single baron as well, and most of the maps in E3 have like 0-4.

To me that map has a lot of build-up, when you finally find the exit, you are close to finishing the game. It's an exploration map, rewarding memory and using the automap mark functionality efficiently.

I like how you see the exit somewhat early on, and from multiple angles. You know where you are eventually headed, you just don't know how to do it. What would have made it a lot better was to have subtle clues on that indicate which teleport pillar goes where. If each area had a specific gore decoration and each teleport structure had the same decoration. That way you could eliminate them quickly when looking for a specific one.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

It is still Habitat. Most of my issues with the map are also what Dario hated about it when playing it in this video; and he noticed it instantly the millisecond the map starts to the end. I played it more than one time though so I can write an essay about everything I hate in it but I'd rather not since it is clearly unfinished.

 

[RataUnderground]

36 minutes ago, Cruduxy Pegg said:

It is still Habitat. Most of my issues with the map are also what Dario hated about it when playing it in this video; and he noticed it instantly the millisecond the map starts to the end. I played it more than one time though so I can write an essay about everything I hate in it but I'd rather not since it is clearly unfinished.

 

I've been thinking about writing a long defense of Habitat for a while now, but regardless of what I think of the map for subjective issues, I think Dario here is coming across as a real reconorous prick with no respect for other mappers and the work they did 28 years ago. This is the first time I've heard him speak and now I can't help but dislike him.

[AdministrationCenter21]

18 hours ago, danidf96 said:

Master levels, all of them

Incorrect, try again.

[AdministrationCenter21]

I love Habitat, it's one of the few official doom maps that feels mutated and warped beyond reason.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

9 hours ago, RataUnderground said:

I've been thinking about writing a long defense of Habitat for a while now

Don't think you can defend the full brightness, terrible texturing, copy pasted sewer. Blue key fake wall, teleporting vile in giant open room and being randomly in the hell section of maps without the map quality is subjective excuse. 

 

Hell Dario liked Barons den and that map is usually the one that gets unjustified hate, unlike Habitat.

[danidf96]

A wise man once said: To be fair, you need to have a very high IQ to understand Titan Manor. The progression clues are extremely subtle, and without solid deduction skills most of the hints will go over a typical player's head. There's also the Manor's functionalistic style, which is deftly woven into the map's architecture- it's visuals draw heavily from bauhaus, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depth of this map, to realise that it's not just brilliant- it says something deep about GAMING. As a consequence people who dislike Titan Manor truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the inventiveness in lowering a pillar through a passage inside the fireplace to get the blue skull key, which itself is a cryptic reference to Goethe's German tragic play Faust. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Jim Flynn's genius wit unfolds itself on their computer screens. What fools.. how I pity them. And yes, by the way, I DO have a Master Levels tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid

[Agent Strange]

I don't particular enjoy these maps.

 

Ultimate Doom - Halls of the Damned

Doom II - Downtown

Plutonia Experiment - The Final Frontier 

TNT Evilution - Mill

[tatsu91]

On 8/27/2024 at 10:48 PM, CapersOnSalad said:

Fortress of Mystery.

 

I can admire the worse levels of DOOM II for their experimental nature, they had nothing else to compare to at the time. Fortress, however, does literally nothing with its base gimmick. It's peekaboo in video game form. Yay, I made the monsters fight! Now what?

It's pretty boring too like the keys are all just hit switch get next key

 

[giwake]

Does Legacy of Rust count as official? If so, Soul Silo can eat shit and live to tell the tale.

The balance on UV is completely fucked. 1 box of shotgun shells for 50 Revenants?

I tried playing it co-op with a couple of friends and it was just completely insufferable. We ended our playthrough after getting to the room with all of the imps and getting team-wiped for the 6th time. It's absolutely ridiculous and I have to wonder how anyone could complete it from a pistol start.

Visually, it's nice, but gameplay wise? Complete clusterfuck.

[Gifty]

I'm replaying TNT for the Kex port 'cheevo and every fucking time I get stuck on Mill for like, half an hour. The final fight's ok but the progression in that map is balls. Eventually someone needs to pen an essay on how Plutonia represented the purely arcadey and mechanical shooter ethos, and TNT represented the lingering Ultima Underworld dungeon-crawl ethos that hadn't yet split into the immersive sim space. Both of those are perfectly fertile ground for a first person game but the execution in TNT is just so lame.

Edited August 29 by Gifty

[Obsidian Plague]

Sewers. Probably been said a million times in this thread by this point, probably not the most original thought but oh my god i hate Sewers

[Verna]

I would go with TNT for that

[JustHeziel]

1 hour ago, giwake said:

Does Legacy of Rust count as official? If so, Soul Silo can eat shit and live to tell the tale.

The balance on UV is completely fucked. 1 box of shotgun shells for 50 Revenants?

I tried playing it co-op with a couple of friends and it was just completely insufferable. We ended our playthrough after getting to the room with all of the imps and getting team-wiped for the 6th time. It's absolutely ridiculous and I have to wonder how anyone could complete it from a pistol start.

Visually, it's nice, but gameplay wise? Complete clusterfuck.

 

My thoughts exactly, but with The Coiled City. At least Soul Silo has more ammo variety than just fuel cans, from what I remember.

[Spectremint]

Having at least played a good chunk of every classic Doom game (except Doom II, which I do own but have never gotten around to playing), I distinctly remember struggling with some of the maps in Doom 64. That game is very, very dark in terms of brightness, and some of the later levels feel like mazes. Could just be me, though.

Also, I tend to struggle with a lot of the levels in episode 3 and 4 of original Doom. I don't know if it's because I haven't played them as much as the first two episodes or what, but maybe one of these days I should revisit the latter half of OG Doom.

[Xaser]

11 hours ago, giwake said:

Does Legacy of Rust count as official? If so, Soul Silo can eat shit and live to tell the tale.

The balance on UV is completely fucked. 1 box of shotgun shells for 50 Revenants?

I tried playing it co-op with a couple of friends and it was just completely insufferable. We ended our playthrough after getting to the room with all of the imps and getting team-wiped for the 6th time. It's absolutely ridiculous and I have to wonder how anyone could complete it from a pistol start.

Visually, it's nice, but gameplay wise? Complete clusterfuck.

 

Have you tried the map in single-player yet? The ammo issues you're running into are either caused by one or more players hoarding all the resources, or missing one of the essential weapons in the map -- e.g. the Calamity Blade is impossible to miss in singleplayer, but in MP only one player actually has to enter the room in order to open the path to the west/YK area. The imp horde is trivial with the Blade, and probably impossible without it. :P

 

The Kex port doesn't (yet?) have item respawn as an option for co-op, so you may have a better time giving it a go in a port like Odamex that adds the option.

[elf-alchemist]

On 8/28/2024 at 7:09 PM, RataUnderground said:

I've been thinking about writing a long defense of Habitat for a while now, but regardless of what I think of the map for subjective issues, I think Dario here is coming across as a real reconorous prick with no respect for other mappers and the work they did 28 years ago. This is the first time I've heard him speak and now I can't help but dislike him.

"Is this this guy's very first Doom map or something?"
I know that constructive criticism can't always be made out of positives, but he really didn't need to sound like an asshole here.
As MAP01 of Icarus: Alien Vanguard proved to me, it's an actual tragedy that Habitat gets so much shit, but Christopher Buteau never gets nearly as much props for improving significantly by his next public contribution. It's unjust (even if such is life), TNT being an official IWAD would have more people looking at and criticizing it, it still frustrates me to see it.
_Certainly_, Chris was still an amateur mapper at the time, but everyone has already pointed out the negatives, too many damn times, and I think that he really needs a break.

[AdministrationCenter21]

16 hours ago, danidf96 said:

A wise man once said: To be fair, you need to have a very high IQ to understand Titan Manor. The progression clues are extremely subtle, and without solid deduction skills most of the hints will go over a typical player's head. There's also the Manor's functionalistic style, which is deftly woven into the map's architecture- it's visuals draw heavily from bauhaus, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depth of this map, to realise that it's not just brilliant- it says something deep about GAMING. As a consequence people who dislike Titan Manor truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the inventiveness in lowering a pillar through a passage inside the fireplace to get the blue skull key, which itself is a cryptic reference to Goethe's German tragic play Faust. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Jim Flynn's genius wit unfolds itself on their computer screens. What fools.. how I pity them. And yes, by the way, I DO have a Master Levels tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid

No, no you don't have to have a high iq to understand Titan Manor. It's confusing, but it's not THAT confusing.

[Maximum Matt]

Habitat is not that bad because you can literally finish it in twenty seconds without even needing to press the space bar, so even if that was embarrassingly unintentional, it still saves it from being the worst map in TNT.  Baron's Den, however, forces you to fuck around in it for a goddamn hour with no shortcuts, and is Steve Buscemi ugly

[Cruduxy Pegg]

2 hours ago, elf-alchemist said:

Christopher Buteau never gets nearly as much props for improving significantly by his next public contribution

 

People talk about the map not the mapper. I don't think they intend to personally attack him; Also his map in Icarus is indeed a much better map (1st map worthy) than Habitat, kinda a shame we didn't get more maps from him but I really hope it wasn't because of Habitat reception. Habitat was also a commerical map so it is going to be slammed harder than most other wad maps. David's issues with the map could've been ironed with more time to fix it. I know for sure the lighting issue could be because he wanted to do it last when everything else is done but never got the time. You know like how Egypt needed a fix to the yellow key.

 

I am not sure what's so bad about Titan Manor? Think it is one of the most memorable master levels.

[Devalaous]

On 8/13/2024 at 1:47 PM, Venom5157 said:

E1M10 isn’t available in the official release, and was limited to the Xbox port of Doom 3. It’s very maze like and the sewers, are boring and tedious to navigate. This map has rooms that are useless to visit also. Feels more like a prototype map, that needed more work. 

 

Map 33 is exclusive to the Xbox doom 3 port too, but you can tell it was at the time made by a less competent dev. A lot of the rooms have differing textures, and nothing fits together well. The section with all the switches doesn’t make any sense. Once you get the bfg, this map is stupidly easy. Like E1M10, it was a less fleshed out map that was kind of forgotten. 

 

I swear I responded to this earlier, but apparently I never pressed post.

Those maps are from 1994 and 1995 respectively, and were easter eggs snuck into the ports, likely without permission given how they are accessed and hw they were stripped or disabled in every release after, it was basically two guys on the dev team at Vicarious Visions who were high fiving over having made amateur levles for the game way back in the past, and now they were porting that very same game onto new systems, the maps are basically 'look how far we have come' hidden files. They aren't in any way or form, official. As an enjoyer of '94 early works, I can appreciate the maps for what they are though.

 

5 minutes ago, Cruduxy Pegg said:

I am not sure what's so bad about Titan Manor? Think it is one of the most memorable master levels.

 

A lot of people are too impatient for 'thinking'

[Gez]

3 hours ago, AdministrationCenter21 said:

No, no you don't have to have a high iq to understand Titan Manor. It's confusing, but it's not THAT confusing.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/to-be-fair-you-have-to-have-a-very-high-iq-to-understand-rick-and-morty

[Maximum Matt]

5 hours ago, Devalaous said:

As an enjoyer of '94 early works, I can appreciate the maps for what they are though.

As another enjoyer of '94 early works, I find both levels utterly hideous and their inclusion in that particular release of Doom being the equivalent of stapling your childhood finger painting to the Mona Lisa.  The fact that these crap levels can be accessed in the first and second levels is the biggest insult - if you're gonna pull crap like that, put the secret level exit switch some random wall in the back of Gate To Limbo or something