maps that broke you, for better or for worse!

[rita remton]

for the better, [advent]. i was a complete newbie with slaughterwads back then, and still is to this day (i'm no skilled player). it took me 4.5 hours on map2 of the mapset to complete it, whereas the par time was just 15 minutes :P

[Woolie Wool]

"In The Womb" from Sunlust broke me to the point where I started cheating at points, and "Inverti in Darkness" was where I was like "fuck this, I'm out".

[Daytime Waitress]

Definitely Dark Dome from Alien Vendetta. I'd never powered through a megawad before, and this map made me think I just might not be able to. Like maybe finishing a full 32 non-id maps was something the big kids did, and I wasn't going to be in that club. I'd played a lot of the AV maps in a stretch before hitting this one, so fatigue was definitely creeping in, but this felt like a gut shot. Up until then I'd had tricky points to deal with, but map 26 felt like, no matter where I started my approach from, it was going to rail me.

 

But I eventually broke it down methodically into manageable sections ran screaming from sector to sector, dragging every fight three-quarters of the way across the map in the hopes of having everyone else kill each other, and limping to the exit with absolutely jack all resources left.

 

That experience fundamentally changed how I approach combat encounters in Doom: it definitely taught me the value of using resources and tactics wisely and how invaluable infighting is, things I still, consciously or otherwise, utilise in every map, big or small, today.

 

Buggered if I've been back to it though.

[RICHIE B]

EVITERNITY Map 12 - Brisk

 

For years I had been religious about no in-map saving, which came to bite me many times in the ass - especially that bloody final room in Plutonia Map 09 - Abbatoire. Would keep falling in the pit then start the whole level from the beginning every time.

 

I would do this with every map until my first experience of Brisk. After 26 deaths, including after I'd finally reached the final room, it broke my long tradition as I just couldn't take it anymore.

 

Now I save, within reason, as I now play the custom wads in the last couple of years which are harder than the PWADS. There's just not the time or patience in life for doing without anymore.

[Jimmy²]

Update:

 

Have actually beaten God Machine.

 

Spoiler

good christ man

 

[Lila Feuer]

@Jimmy How'd you go about it? I played all of Sunlust on HMP and it's harder than most thing on UV so I think that was the right call for a first-time playthrough. I never save during fights (unless I can break line-of-sight and get into cover for a guaranteed breather) so needless to say that was probably the craziest battle I've had since MAP30 of Scythe II, which I totally had to savescum because that wad's difficulty went off the rails in the last five or so maps, at least on UV. Doing the final battle with the barons and arch-viles in the last room one by one in one go after like six or seven tries felt legit good but I was almost beginning to wonder if I'd met my match regarding skill ceiling lol.

[Skronkidonk]

"Refueling Base" and "Suburbs" were probably the first two maps that stumped me when playing Doom.

"Fire and Ice" is definitely one that took me a while to beat.

I honestly always found "Go F*ck yourself" to be harder than "God Machine" but both of them definitely destroyed me".

"Dark Dome" from Alien Vendetta is not only great but also pretty insane and it took me a while to beat that one. Also "Stench of Evil" was pretty brutal, a 30 minute map that doesn't give up. 

How can we talk about maps that broke us without talking about Scythe II? "Whispering Winds", "Gaia's Temple", "Forgotten City", and" Afterlife II". Insanely beautiful and insanely rude maps for sure.

Some honorable mentions are Hell Revealed 1 & 2 and Sunder... Too many maps to name.  But to name one specifically "Beyond the Sea", one of the few maps in Doom that I genuinely dislike.

[june gloom]

On 6/7/2024 at 10:16 AM, Jimmy said:

God Machine.

 

  Hide contents

Still haven't beaten it.

 

 

Sunlust taught me how to be a better player, period.

[Li'l devil]

There were many maps that made me quit megawads and many maps that made me change the way I play Doom, but there were no maps that left permanent changes to the way I play it. So far I kept changing my playstyle constantly. I kept jumping between all skill levels, kept changing my mind on saving, on what port features I should enable or not, etc. And every time I thought that I was permanently settled, it turned out I wasn't.

[Bobby :D]

Back when I was baby lurker, dead.air was one of the wads that got me back into Doom modding. It also whooped my ass, I was not ready for anything remotely close to "slaughter", let alone a map of that magnitude. I could barely beat Doom 2 on UV. That, combined with Scythe 2 and Sunlust gave me huge challenges for a few years.

 

[Raith138]

Bastion of Chaos kicked my ass. It being my first modded experience it made me enjoy slaughter to this day and is still an amazing map.
 

[Jimmy²]

18 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

@Jimmy How'd you go about it? I played all of Sunlust on HMP and it's harder than most thing on UV so I think that was the right call for a first-time playthrough. I never save during fights (unless I can break line-of-sight and get into cover for a guaranteed breather) so needless to say that was probably the craziest battle I've had since MAP30 of Scythe II, which I totally had to savescum because that wad's difficulty went off the rails in the last five or so maps, at least on UV. Doing the final battle with the barons and arch-viles in the last room one by one in one go after like six or seven tries felt legit good but I was almost beginning to wonder if I'd met my match regarding skill ceiling lol.

 

I had no small amount of help from savescumming, plus a friend (@KeaganDunn) playing the map alongside me on Discord, who was already intimately familiar with the workings of the Divine Contraption. He was giving me pointers on each fight's hyper-specific criteria for survival and how best to conserve resources. It was a considerable test for the both of us.

[Lila Feuer]

24 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

 

I had no small amount of help from savescumming, plus a friend (@KeaganDunn) playing the map alongside me on Discord, who was already intimately familiar with the workings of the Divine Contraption. He was giving me pointers on each fight's hyper-specific criteria for survival and how best to conserve resources. It was a considerable test for the both of us.

That's awesome I'm glad you beat it finally, it's a genuinely good wad and I think its reputation as this Dark Souls-esque terror in the Doom scene is misrepresenting it, it's just very good arena combat and it never feels truly unfair.

[PsychEyeball]

Lately a map that broke me was Gutter Grave from The 3 Heures D'Agonie series. What especially broke me was that so much of it revolves around the same kind of infighting-based encounters that I happen to find flavorless. I hate massive encounters that force you to be a spectator to the action and punishes you for actually engaging with the enemy. I want to shoot enemies, not watch them die from outside interference.

 

The map just really drove me up the wall for some reason.

[Cinnamon]

Hell Revealed. (Pistol start uv max)

 

MAP23 - Ascending to the Starts.

I save scummed the chain gunners. The rest was legit.

 

MAP24 - Post Mortem.

Almost broke me but I beat it spending some 6 hours on it.

 

MAP26 - Afterlife.

I quit on this one. Mostly burned out by the two already mentioned.

[SkidyBoobFish]

Final Doom : TNT Evilution

 

Map 21 : Administration Center

The first time i played this was a nightmare, I was able to get trough the inside of the building. But on the outside, i had to go into God Mode.

 

The second time i played it i didn't cheat and i found it more enjoyable.

 

[RICHIE B]

To dig this one up again, Eviternity broke me in a bad way as I broke my no saves during map tradition during Map 12 Brisk, cos it was too hard.

 

Eviternity also changed the way I play in a good way too:

 

Up until then I had only ever played with the status bar for 20 years, and could never get used to fullscreen. Eviternity broke that because it was just too beautiful to have a status bar in the way. Now I can never go back from fullscreen.

[Arbys550]

Italo Doom map17 pretty much blasted my asshole apart

[Desfar]

This one was pretty hard.
Can never remember the names of the small countries

[Captain POLAND]

Citadel at the Edge of Eternity, took me almost as long to beat using saves as Okuplok.

 

 

[N00BA]

TNT's map 21, it was a pain in the fucking ass on my first playthrough but after a few replays It's certainly grown on me and gone on to become one of my favorite classic Doom maps simply because of how huge it is.

[pcorf]

12 minutes ago, N00BA said:

TNT's map 21, it was a pain in the fucking ass on my first playthrough but after a few replays It's certainly grown on me and gone on to become one of my favorite classic Doom maps simply because of how huge it is.

 

Indeed it is so huge!!

[CyberDreams]

8 hours ago, N00BA said:

TNT's map 21, it was a pain in the fucking ass on my first playthrough but after a few replays It's certainly grown on me and gone on to become one of my favorite classic Doom maps simply because of how huge it is.

Yes (besides the favorite part lol)! Although it is far from my favorite map. I agree with you that the size is pretty nice for a change, at least in a classic map. Map 20 and 21 are still probably the ones i hate the most in TNT though. I replayed it some months ago and i got so lost in those maps. I don't hate the other maps as much as most people do but i just specifically remember those two gave me so many problems that they took me forever to get through. I'm sure if i played TNT regularly the maps wouldn't bother me as much. But i'd still take Doom II's "worst" maps over TNT's "worst" maps any day.

 

I know it was technically completed in November of 1995 so i supposed they aren't that bad of maps tbh. There are plenty of others that are worse but i have played some 1994 maps that flow much better as well. I'm not sure how much id Software changed the original maps though...Now, Plutonia on the other hand i actually quite like although the amount of chain gunners (or heavy weapon dudes) do get on my nerves. Also try playing these wads on UV (or your preferred difficulty) with a controller for an extra challenge.

[Foxstiel]

10x10 map 10..oh my god the fights especially the archiville one and the hell knight one, the last fight especially broke me cause its just so..cramped, no safe place just enemies from different directions making your space even smaller

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Every time I play TNT map30 does that. Not because it is hard but because it has "end of an era" ending.

[GibblyJones]

The earlier map in sunder with the crushers. I had fun with all the previous maps, and then I got to that room that locks you in with chaingunners that keep respawning from every angle. I don't think you're meant to survive that part, you're supposed to skip the orb and you don't get locked in, but I had saved it once I was locked in so I had to cheat. I was using doom incarnate weapons and it was still almost impossible, I got close a few times before just giving up. I don't know if i'll ever go back to sunder after that one which is a shame because it was the only slaughter mapset I enjoyed. I figured i'll use a slightly overpowered weapon mod to make a ridiculous slaughter map fun like a regular map, but that doesn't help when you're surrounded by chaingunners from every angle, I could take out all 12 or however many there were and more just pop again and i'm dead before I can even figure out where they're at. I'm not a fan of an unwinnable ambush trap, I shouldn't be punished for not wanting to skip fights, they should all be doable. I don't think anyone could actually beat that part without skipping the orb, I don't see how it would be possible. Then to add insult to injury, there are these little lips on the walls so you get stuck on a wall everytime you try to move and instantly die. I don't know why nobody makes slaughter maps without having a million things pop up from every angle, I just want a linear map where I don't get ambushed in small rooms with no cover. It's hard enough dealing with things to the left and right, above and below I don't need 10 chaingunners randomly popping up behind me. 

Edited July 8 by GibblyJones

[DRON12261]

MAP07 (or Dwango 5 MAP07)... in duel... I hate that unbalanced shit, even though I've never lost in the tournaments themselves on it. 

[fruity lerlups]

2 hours ago, GibblyJones said:

The earlier map in sunder with the crushers. I had fun with all the previous maps, and then I got to that room that locks you in with chaingunners that keep respawning from every angle. I don't think you're meant to survive that part, you're supposed to skip the orb and you don't get locked in, but I had saved it once I was locked in so I had to cheat. I was using doom incarnate weapons and it was still almost impossible, I got close a few times before just giving up. I don't know if i'll ever go back to sunder after that one which is a shame because it was the only slaughter mapset I enjoyed. I figured i'll use a slightly overpowered weapon mod to make a ridiculous slaughter map fun like a regular map, but that doesn't help when you're surrounded by chaingunners from every angle, I could take out all 12 or however many there were and more just pop again and i'm dead before I can even figure out where they're at. I'm not a fan of an unwinnable ambush trap, I shouldn't be punished for not wanting to skip fights, they should all be doable. I don't think anyone could actually beat that part without skipping the orb, I don't see how it would be possible. Then to add insult to injury, there are these little lips on the walls so you get stuck on a wall everytime you try to move and instantly die. I don't know why nobody makes slaughter maps without having a million things pop up from every angle, I just want a linear map where I don't get ambushed in small rooms with no cover. It's hard enough dealing with things to the left and right, above and below I don't need 10 chaingunners randomly popping up behind me. 

played that level today, you dont necessarily need to "skip passed it" per say, if you run passed the chasm quickly enough you can basically potshot the chaingunners from the portal ends. I found that map very fun, though i do think that chasm makes the idea of single segmenting it very daunting, the combat is excellent though.

[Warboss_Gegguz]

Potentially spicy:

The first time I played doom 2, I fell into the pit in MAP15 and accidentally quicksaved over my main file... And to this day I've only ever played Doom 2 from start to finish once. Amazing new enemies and weapon, several super iconic levels (Entryway, Underhall, Dead Simple, Icon of Sin, so on), but extremely mediocre and tedious level design overall. Genuinely feels like Sandy and American just got bored and started just screwing around to see what they could do rather than making a good game.

 

I'm just glad saying "Doom 2 is worse than Doom/UDoom" isn't really considered a hot take anymore. In fact it kind of seems to be the general consensus now, but I recall a time where I just kept that to myself. 

Super shotgun and new enemies? Great for modding! As a game rather than a toolset? Meh.

[galileo31dos01]

The final segment of maps 26-30 in Eternal Doom, minus 27 and 29. This was on 2018, I relied heavily on walkthroughs to get past 26 and 30, whereas on 28 I was looking for a switch for a full hour. Almost ironic that the last time I replayed the whole wad, which was a year ago, I had zero (major) issues with anything.