What are you playing now?

[T-Rex]

DeathevokatioN said:

Map22 of Evilution is awful...

Designed by the same guy who designed Map01 of Icarus, which was a fun map. All I can say about the level design of Evilution, is that whoever designed those stupidly large maps (Maps 20, 21, and 27) must either be a sadist, or an escaped lunatic.

[DeathevokatioN]

T-Rex said:

Designed by the same guy who designed Map01 of Icarus, which was a fun map. All I can say about the level design of Evilution, is that whoever designed those stupidly large maps (Maps 20, 21, and 27) must either be a sadist, or an escaped lunatic.

Map01 of Icarus is awesome. I guess the author improved since his ugly Evilution map. Map20 was pretty cool IMO, atleast it's polished, and Map27 is ok, had some interesting fights atleast. So far I personally prefer Plutonia to Evilution, although I think the worse maps are starting to get to me. :)

[Katamori]

T-Rex said:

whoever designed those stupidly large maps (Maps 20, 21, and 27) must either be a sadist, or an escaped lunatic.

MAP27 was quite epic for me, when I played it at 12.

[elic]

T-Rex said:

All I can say about the level design of Evilution, is that whoever designed those stupidly large maps (Maps 20, 21, and 27) must either be a sadist, or an escaped lunatic.

All three were designed by Drake 'O Brien, which explains their similarities. I actually like the oversize-ness of those levels (The only part of MAP21 I like is the huge outdoor area at the end.) I really like MAP20, and as Katamori said, MAP27 is really epic.

[valkiriforce]

T-Rex said:

Ever tried his Titan wads?

Absolutely, I did a YouTube play-through of those Titan levels a year ago.

As far as the whole TNT thing goes: I actually really enjoyed it. I think the later maps are just a little lackluster compared to the earlier ones. MAP22, 23 and 25 are my least favorite maps; but even then they're not that bad. MAP22 and MAP25 are oddly detailed; MAP23 wasn't all that interesting to me, but I still had fun. Overall, as different as TNT: Evilution is compared to The Plutonia Experiment, I feel they belong with one another in Final Doom. I can't see Plutonia without TNT and I can't see TNT without Plutonia; Final Doom just wouldn't be the same to me without either one of them.

[Clonehunter]

I'm going through some stuff with Brutal Doom. The light version. I love blood.

[T-Rex]

Processingcontrol said:

All three were designed by Drake 'O Brien, which explains their similarities. I actually like the oversize-ness of those levels (The only part of MAP21 I like is the huge outdoor area at the end.) I really like MAP20, and as Katamori said, MAP27 is really epic.

To be honest, I don't hate Drake O' Brien's maps. I meant to say that the maps are lengthy that it's good. Yeah, Map27 was a bit more simple and entertaining than 20 and 21, which were still fun maps despite their immense size. The one thing I remembered is how those three maps have a tendency to trigger the infamous Savegame Buffer Overflow apart from the VPOs.

[kmxexii]

Finished H2H-Xmas, rounding out Doomworld's best of '95 excepting Dwango5 and Boothill, which are deathmatch, and beyond my purview.

What I liked: Sometimes really tough gameplay; MAP02 kicks out the love with a pretty brutal enemy trap and it only gets crazier with some of Dave Swift's maps. Also, many of the maps are short, so even when Doom kicks sand in your face you can pop right back up and kick back. Hodek put together some really nice more traditional maps, too. I also like the graphics replacements and while some of the new textures aren't much to look at the falling snow (cribbed from XMASDOOM) looks very nice.

What I didn't like: Many of these maps are thinly-veiled deathmatch arenas filled with monsters. If you cut them into four quarters, they look pretty much the same. This ties back into the difficulty, though; fire one shot, every monster catches your scent and you're under siege. It giveth and it taketh away. Most of the maps also lack detail and interesting architecture, with a couple of really bad offenders. And, as some (if not many) of these maps are reskins/converts, they resemble their given titles less than say Doom II's second episode.

Now playing: Chris Klie's and Bob Carter's Lost Episodes of Doom. I'm actually liking this more than on my previous run-through, though that certain death trap in E1M4 is still utter bullshit.

[T-Rex]

DeathevokatioN said:

Map01 of Icarus is awesome. I guess the author improved since his ugly Evilution map. Map20 was pretty cool IMO, atleast it's polished, and Map27 is ok, had some interesting fights atleast. So far I personally prefer Plutonia to Evilution, although I think the worse maps are starting to get to me. :)

Yeah, Christopher Buteau designed Map22 of Evilution and Map01 of Icarus. I liked Evilution for its mostly tech designs, but I also liked Plutonia, cause they're fun, yet challenging. The Casalis were just insane with their mapping, and Maps 18, 28, 31 and 32 had that style that we associate with Plutonia.

[Varis Alpha]

I just completed the first level of Mek's Vela Pax.

Most fulfilling hour of dooming EVER.

[kmxexii]

Finished my replay of The Lost Episodes of Doom. I enjoyed it more than my first playthrough maybe a year ago, but all the criticisms remain. Klie's maps are usually short and easy and not that great to look at while Carter's maps are huge, generally featureless and lacking in enemies. There are some good ideas in there, though.

[HippyJonny]

I'm playing call of chutlu dark corners of the earth, a flawed but brilliant suspense horror game.
also playing quake 2.

[kmxexii]

Tons o' stuff!

-Arachna, by Bjorn Hermans and Holger Nathrath. I think the difference in quality between Nathrath's Doom II levels and the Serenity trilogy is astounding. Arachna is a great single level that's actually kind of tough, though there are a few tricks to it.

-Trydent, credited solely to Hermans. One of the levels from the Serenity IV project, I think? It's based around a clear gimmick but the imagery is top notch and there are some cool encounters to be had, like one which puts you in a makeshift bunker. Very short, though.

-MAP11, accredited to Nathrath, not Hermans? Odd, since Hermans was indicated as the mapper between the two. It was supposed to be the 11th level in Serenity IV, but as the project had effectively been cancelled, Nathrath gave it to someone for use in their own MegaWAD, but they decided to upload it to the archives as a single level. It's a fantastic Doom II map that's very hard due to tight control on ammo and health. It's very beige and brown, but it looks great and plays well. It wouldn't be out of place in say either Memento Mori project.

-All Hell is Breaking Loose. I played it before but I replayed it for a better post on my blog. It's still just as fun and bullshit as ever, but the quality of the maps really drags it down somewhat. MAP04 is probably the best in the bunch, with MAP05 only skating by due to the absolute madness that goes on while you're sweeping streets and dealing with the satanic helicopters. Like someone said, it would be really cool if someone grabbed the base dehacked stuff and graphics and made something with a bit better mapping quality, but the new stuff is so fun I really forget about how banal some of the architecture is.

[Birdbrain]

I'm struggling to get through Memento Mori 2. Some of the maps are really fun to play while others are annoying beyond belief. There's only little progress I've made in the two weeks I've been playing the wad.

[kmxexii]

MAP13-15 is the first big bottleneck I encountered. The run from 23-29 is also pretty brutal, excepting MAP24. They're all great fun though. MAP20 is one of the few I actively disliked.

[T-Rex]

Map20 of MM2 was just ugly. I had to admit, the author's Map10 of MM was not that bad compared to this map, but it's still an eyesore. Yeah, after Map12, there's like a giant leap in difficulty once you start Map13. I think Map22 is where the brutality starts because that map is the most difficult in MM2, while Map24 was the breather.

[kmxexii]

That's very true. I just remember MAP23 smacking me around for a much longer time.

[gun_psycho]

I played a bit of Scoredoom with Scythe 1, without the add-on pack this time since the new one's coming up.

Edit: Moved on back to Hell Revealed once again on Scoredoom without said pack, and it's a little easier so far. (Made it to map12)

[aldiboronti]

I'm on map 06 of Jenesis 2. Color me impressed! This has to be one of the best new mapsets (there are 20) that I've played in a long time. Wonderful design, challenging gameplay, tricky secrets, this has the works and reminds me very much of TNT's housestyle. One of the things that particularly endears me to a wad is that no matter how seemingly insurmountable sometimes the odds seem there is always a tactical way, if you can find it, to take out the monsters. This is by no means a brute slaughterfest.

Back to the fray!

[elic]

After a few weeks of on and off playing, I finally beat Eternal Doom MAP12. Dying after spending about an hour on the level a few times was really frustrating and discouraged me from trying again.

Around the time when I started playing PWADS I went through some of the levels in god mode, and now I'm eagerly awaiting a city level I went through.

[Foodles]

I gave up on Icarus on MAP12, made it to the end... then died twice, so I rage quit forever. Found MAP08 to be almost unbearable, I seriously considered giving up when I got stuck on a teleport puzzle, Doom was never about complicated puzzles with weird solutions. Frankly I found Icarus to be ugly and with lots of hitscanners and limited resources, I know it was made back in the 90s but that doesn't mean I'll spend my time playing it.

Started playing Doom Core but I don't hold out much hope of getting it finished, I just don't play Doom wads anymore, from the maps I did play it looked alright, simple but entertaining.

[kmxexii]

Foodles said:

I gave up on Icarus on MAP12, made it to the end... then died twice, so I rage quit forever. Found MAP08 to be almost unbearable, I seriously considered giving up when I got stuck on a teleport puzzle, Doom was never about complicated puzzles with weird solutions. Frankly I found Icarus to be ugly and with lots of hitscanners and limited resources, I know it was made back in the 90s but that doesn't mean I'll spend my time playing it.

I don't think MAP08 was that bad. That boobytrap at the opening of MAP12 is pure sadism, though. I was incredibly happy when I found the secret megasphere squirreled away in the supercomputer.

[elic]

Foodles said:

I gave up on Icarus on MAP12, made it to the end... then died twice, so I rage quit forever. Found MAP08 to be almost unbearable, I seriously considered giving up when I got stuck on a teleport puzzle, Doom was never about complicated puzzles with weird solutions

Heh, I really like the puzzles in that level. They didn't take a long time to figure out, but still weren't obvious.

[Nems]

Been playing a lot of WADs that require full Boom compatibility lately, so that means a whole lot of GL/PrBoom+. It's an odd feeling switching between ports. You can't play a WAD in GZDoom and expect to play that same WAD the same way in PrBoom+, Doomsday (heh), Legacy (double heh), etc. It's a bit disorienting, but not too much.

Last WAD I played was Demonized by NokturnuS for Doom II and a Boom-compatible port. Nice mini-slaughter WAD.

[kmxexii]

As recommended by a fellow Doomer, I played INVADE1.WAD and INVADE2.WAD. Both have little prologue and epilogue movies as separate downloads that are easy to get up and running in Dosbox.

YOU MUST PLAY THESE LEVELS. This is the best '94 has to offer. I mean, I love everything I played from Doomworld's top 10 of '94, but these maps put the Icarus ship levels to shame IMO. Not that I don't like Icarus's ship levels, it's just that the Invasion maps are...exponentially better. My heart is pumpin', these levels!

[Nems]

kmxexii said:

As recommended by a fellow Doomer, I played INVADE1.WAD and INVADE2.WAD. Both have little prologue and epilogue movies as separate downloads that are easy to get up and running in Dosbox.

YOU MUST PLAY THESE LEVELS. This is the best '94 has to offer. I mean, I love everything I played from Doomworld's top 10 of '94, but these maps put the Icarus ship levels to shame IMO. Not that I don't like Icarus's ship levels, it's just that the Invasion maps are...exponentially better. My heart is pumpin', these levels!

Those were some of the first WADs I ever played on an old DoomGate CD I used to have and I agree. While it's a shame a full episode was never completed (though planned), it was a fun romp and I still go back and play them from time to time.

Got done playing Diet 32-in-24. I chuckled. Fun little mapset.

[DeathevokatioN]

Played through SoD. A really fun mapset with great gameplay, Map29 is a bitch from pistol start though, hehe. And Map30 is surprisingly easy once you know what to do.

Now I've blasted my way up to map20 of MM. :)

[kmxexii]

Icarus: MAP28

What the hell, Steve.

Steve Phares said:

I play tested the level until I was completely confident that you pretty much only had enough ammo in the level to half whatever supplies a standard player had leftover from map 27.

The concept was more along the lines of removal of any significant gain made by the player up to that point in the game. Hence the name, Excavations. The setting of the map reflected this concept. I never really made this public to the rest of the team at that time, it was more of a private joke. I was constantly told by the others on the team that there wasn't enough ammunition in the level, and against my wishes, my father eventually doubled the amount on the map before release, to my cries of, "screw em, real men punch shit to death!"

[kmxexii]

Okay, I recant my whining on Excavations. There's more ammo than I was led to believe. After punching some of the safer stuff to death (Demons, Lost Souls, Pain Elementals when possible) I wound up with like 27 shells and maybe a snootful of cells. That's after I punched the yellow key baron to death, though.

I got really good at punching stuff to death this map.

[Grazza]

kmxexii said:

Okay, I recant my whining on Excavations. There's more ammo than I was led to believe.

Also, if you use the standard trick strafe-jump to reach the coop areas (see Kristian's UV Speed/Pacifist demo), then you can get some extra health, a couple of dropped shotguns, and reach the BFG early. Just be careful which teleports you use! (Since you're breaking the intended sequence of the map, a couple of them lead to areas that leave you stuck.)

It would be nice to see this idea used in a Max demo - there aren't any recent ones on this map (link to Icarus table).

Edited February 19, 2020 by Grazza