The DW megawad Club plays: BF_Thud! (Join us!)

[molten_]

Ooh, this is a great idea. Count me in!

I've already played a bit of BF_Thud, but it's been a while so it's not very fresh in my mind. I remember getting up to ... I think MAP03 (?) before quitting out of boredom. It's weird because I distinctly remember the starting room in MAP01, despite me not being very fond of the first 3 maps. Something about it's simplicity is very memorable.

Anyway, I should probably write down my thoughts.


MAP01:
There's a lot to hate about this map ... I think the worst thing is the crushers at the red key. They are extremely cheap, and it's almost impossible to grab the key without forcing yourself to get crushed. Bad design. I also really disliked the abundance of health. I mean yeah it's the first map, but it was a bit too much.

There were a few things I liked though. I really liked how the blue key is completely optional, yet it's placed in a spot that is extremely vulnerable. I also liked you how had a chance to grab the key at the start of the level, with the dipping platforms. Another thing that interested me were the drops into the lower sections, for some reason I like it when mappers do that. Nice little fake 3D effect.

Overall I'd say it's decent, slightly above par when it comes to most 90's maps I've played (Barring the gems).


MAP02:
Oh boy ... where to start. Well, I like how it started out. The map showed a lot of promise, the floor lowering was unexpected and kind of cool.

It's just too ... cramped. Like seriously, you would think that this is a 1024 map. There are tons of little things that got on my nerves, but I don't really feel like listing all of them. Most notably:
1.) The maze for the blue key.
2.) Having to use a random wall to get farther in the level. Okay, it's not really "random" but I didn't think to check it (I'm talking about the spot near the yellow key wall).
3.) The god damn lift spot that splits into 4 paths. That was really annoying.

Overall I'd say it's a pretty huge disappointment. Not that good.


I'm still pretty optimistic about this wad, but I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed the first two maps.

[Ribbiks]

well it's midnight EST, so onto maps 3 and 4 for me:

map03: 4:16

Now that I've gotten over the fact that some maps are switch-hunty, this really wasn't that bad. The absurd amount of health allowed for some super casual one-handed keyboard playing, aww yeah.

map04: 6:48

This one was pretty straightforward. same routine: kill enemies, wander around mostly empty map grabbing keys. I do wonder what that invul sphere was for, there were more than enough medikits strewn about as is.


Not a whole lot else to say really, just some pretty fun quick maps.

[elic]

Map03: Didn't like this one. Way too symmetrical, and the gameplay was completely forgettable. The switch hunting was also much more annoying than in Map02.

Rating: 5/10

Map04: Nice design, but once again the gameplay never rises above the "meh" level. At least the layout was pretty cool... Guess I'll give it a 6.5/10. But shit, I remember accidentally exiting when I didn't want to. I fucking hate when that happens. Just because of that I'll bring it down a whole point.

Rating: 5.5/10

[NaturalTvventy]

Sweet, on to 03 & 04 then...

Map 03 started strong. Nice opening slugfest with plenty of baddies to kill. Inside the main structure was very interesting architecture. I like the tiered design a lot. And the doors opening multiple doors. I'm always a sucker for slightly unusual use of actions.

The switch hunting was garbage though. Pointless. After maybe 4 or 5 of them I IDDT'd it and just ran around the various 32x squares on the map to find which one was raised.

My guess is these switchhunts are supposed to draw out the level, like we're supposed to be hitting switches as we go perhaps? In the end though it's just a boring time suck after all the baddies are dead.

Map 04 was a nice one. I liked the nukeage to add a little tension.

I think the strongest aspect of the map design so far is the compactness and use of space. All the maps save 02 so far have had the player basically in the same area. I like that, makes it feel more like an authentic real-life place and not a video game.

I also liked the three door-light doors leading to the megasphere, though I still couldn't get it after opening 'em all. Not that you need hidden powerups for these maps, with all the excess ones lying around.

EDIT: More comments. I liked the OPEN on the floor in map 04, it was kind of silly. I was expecting less to open, but the whole room opened up.

Also, the use of FLOOR0_3 and FLAT18 is classic. I'm pretty sure those were the default DEU floor/ceiling flats, so you saw them a lot in early WADs.

[dobu gabu maru]

See, one thing I like about BF_Thud! is that you're always wondering what Klie is going to do for the next level. Because each one is different from the last, I'm always excited to see what bizarre gimmick he'll throw my way.

MAP03 starts strong, but seems to be heavily underutilized when it comes to monster placement. The outside and inside scuffle are neat, but I felt like there could've been more projectile-heavy monsters on the three "floors", to make them harder to fight through. And it's wayyy too easy just to snipe guys in the center room and use the wall for cover. After that, all the challenge is gone, and it becomes a switch hunt. Also, WOW lotsa ammo

MAP04 is alright, I liked the center/main room, but the level layout in the nukage was a bit confusing. More unnecessary powerups. At least the pathways weren't razor-thin.

[DooMer 4ever]

Awesome idea for a thread. Count me in, even if the wads chosen aren't that enjoyable. I'm always interested in the history of Doom mapping so I don't mind having to play through bad levels even. Besides, it's only two a day so it's not like I have to use that much of my free time. I haven't played this wad before either.

Map01 and 02:

There's not much to add to what has been said already. Quickly and quite effortlessly killing 90-100% of the baddies in a minute or two and then switch hunting for several minutes to find the exit is terrible gameplay. In some cases I don't mind large amounts of switch hunting if the areas are at least interesting to look at (the city map in CC4 was a lot of fun) but these being 1995 maps there understandably isn't too much of that.

Luckily I somehow avoided the red key crusher trap on map01.

EDIT: I played map03 and 04 right after writing this so I'm just editing my post.

Map03: Too symmetrical and the switch hunting is again stupid.

Map04: This one I actually liked better. Best map so far, though still not too good. It's still ridiculously easy to kill the monsters but at least you still have to worry about your health while switch hunting as there's nukage and limited amount of radiation suits. Switches are less annoying too, as most of the time you see what each one does and you don't have to search around too much to find out what has happened. Still too symmetrical though.

[cannonball]

Map03 - Time - 4:23 (no deaths, all secrets found)
Don't know how I got the secret here, which one of the dozens of switches caused that. Due to the nature of the map, expect a pacifist run in the miscellaneous demo section.
Edit here it is UV Pacifist in 2 seconds
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1093792
And a UV Max in 0:59
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1093841

Map04 - Time - 6:06 (no deaths, 0/1 secrets found)
The design of this level was pretty good in my opinion, just giving a clue of where to start would have been nice, you have a 1/4 chance of going the right way with those lifts. I didn't know how to get the megasphere behinds the 3 key bars which was the secret and gave up after losing a chunk of health in the slime.

[DooMer 4ever]

I replayed map04 on nightmare difficulty and I have to say that the gameplay is actually quite good this way. In fact, it almost feels as if the gameplay was designed with nm in mind: the relatively small number of monsters, having to visit each area multiple times and huge number of powerups all support the nm gameplay. Much more enjoyable experience and I really liked playing the map this way. Try it!

[Ribbiks]

a great idea actually!

also lol at 2-second map03 demo

[ComicMischief]

MAP03
This one starts off well enough, handing out the SSG and giving me some fodder to mow down. Except after a quickfire run-the-gantlet (what I did there? It is visible) of said fodder, this turns into Switch Quest II: the outdoor back-and-forth. Felt like it was leading up to some awesome encounter that never happened, and half of this map was running around in silence cleaning up those little switch boxes. If I'd have known short maps like this were acceptable for more than just MAP01, I'd have been cranking out a megawad a month. 4/10 - where is the action?

MAP04
Not a switch-quest! Awesome. Kinda. One thing I really did like about this map was that the outdoor areas nestle nicely with the rest of the level (which is underground) creating a feeling almost like there are floors above floors. Almost. Thing is, first narrow winding walkway had me almost yelling "fuck you" at the wad as I wobbled on a few-pixel wide pathway whilst dodging imp fire as I took down enemies trudging the nukage. Wish I'd have left them there, because the rest of the map was pretty boring without. I flicked back and forth through the automap constantly to find teleporters nestled amongst the pathways, the rest was straightforward. I do wish more enemies were brought in as I progressed because the handful in the map weren't enough and 3/4 of it was done in silence. Another plus -- I felt the radsuits were just about right given the wandering around nukage I had to do. 5/10 - could've been pretty good with more to do than wander around nukage getting keys.

Despite these 'low' scores (actually, 5/10 isn't low. It is average. :v ) I'm enjoying these. It's kinda low-maintenance entertainment between 'meals' and that's cool with me every now and again.

[an_mutt]

Hellbent said:

Very glad to see this thing (dw-club) organized and kicked off so promptly. What a wad: very creative! It saddens me a bit that the author probably has no idea his level is being played so posthumously and he is probably not easily reached now. :-/ I hope he is now making computer games for a company somewhere.

I believe he worked for the games division of Lucas Arts for a while throughout the last decade (and maybe still works there?), and yeah he commented on kmxexii's review at the beginning of the year so maybe he's still interested in the community? He may even be reading this thread! Hi Chris!

ComicMischief said:

Despite these 'low' scores (actually, 5/10 isn't low. It is average. :v ) I'm enjoying these. It's kinda low-maintenance entertainment between 'meals' and that's cool with me every now and again.

Yeah, same here; my scores seem low because I'm working off of 5/10 as average and then weighing the good against the bad. Sadly, there's been more bad than good so far, but I'm still enjoying this blast from the past. :B

ANYWAY HERE ARE MY REVIEWS

Map 03

Kills: 68/68
Secrets: 1/1
Time: 5:18

I'm glad to see something of a progression of difficulty so far throughout this wad - that beginning was definitely the hardest thing I've played through so far. However, there's an easily accessable mega armour right behind the first door that pretty much negates all of the danger, and the placement of the arachnotron - with all the fodder around it - makes it so that it's gonna fight those guys before it has any chance of harming you.

Add all of the medkits and boxes of shells and it's a very easy beginning once you know what's up (I didn't know what was up in my first playthrough :V). All those items could have been downgraded to their smaller amounts (medkits -> stimpacks, etc.) to make things more exciting! In fact, item placement in general was awful (I'm noticing a trend here...), too many medkits/shells inside the indoor area where you couldn't walk around them. I had like 48 shells and I'm having to pick up boxes of them. Yeah, the item placement in general is my major gripe with this map - everybody else has went over the switch flipping/symmetry nonsense so I don't have to!

At the very least, it had a pretty interesting layout and Klie can think up some neat architecture.

Map 04

Kills: 37/38? I missed one guy.
Secrets: None.
Time: 6:16

At this point it's clear that the monster difficulty is picking up; that mancubus fight was the first genuinely challenging part of this wad and I liked it a lot. Similarly, the revenant/chaingunner trap may seem tricky but the revenant's placed in a great spot to let the chaingunners lay into him and start a nice little fight. Monster placement in general was pretty neat, although most of the enemies were wandering around that slime area throughout. I have no complaints about it this time around.

This is the first really "Christian Klie" style map of the wad (if you're going from his trends displayed in the Master Levels, at least), in that the architecture's tricky to navigate and you can land yourself in danger if you don't watch your step. There are a few parts where you have to navigate thin platforms (which I never like!), though you could skip them for the most part by hopping between gaps. The slime areas with lots of fodder is also a Klie quirk I picked up on straight away, along with items on teleporters (the former I don't mind - the latter I really dislike). Finally, there's a fair amount of backtracking, though rather than switches being used it's more used with keys, which is always better.

I don't know what was up with the little exit platform in the floor and whether it led to an alternate exit or something; I took the exit that was on the star-shaped platform. I'm definitely going to play through this again shortly to find everything as I actually enjoyed it for the most part. I also spotted the enemies teleporting into the floor where the soulsphere/invul sphere area was, and I'm putting that to a source port error (I ran it in Skulltag). I seem to remember seeing something similar happening in a Let's Play of Sverre Kvernmo's Black Tower map from the Master Levels, which was ran in ZDoom.

All in all, this was the best map of the wad so far. It was fun to explore and the mancubus/revenant & chaingunner one-two punch showed that Klie can challenge the player. It's gotten me a tad excited for what's coming up~

Map 03 rating: - 3/10
Map 04 rating: - 5/10

[ComicMischief]

"Mancubus fight? What Mancubus fight? What the balls am I missing out on?" - oops.

So I restarted on Ultra-Violence, which I thought I did anyway. Musta rapid-fired through to Hurt-Me-Plenty by accident. Either way, the Mancubus and Revenant fights were neat on Map04. My scores still stand, although realising that the switchfuck on Map02 is completely optional (especially given the ease of getting the Plasma Rifle on map04) made the map somewhat trouble-free to replay. :)

[Retog]

I started a let's play:

[General Rainbow Bacon]

Okay, so, I played maps 1 and 2.

Neat little maps.

Map 1. I didn't realize there was a trap at the red key and went in the wrong way the first time. Needless to say, I died. I agree that the map has too many powerups too. I'm giving a 5/10 for the main level, but an extra point for surprising me so 6/10 for map 01.

Map 2. An okay little. The switch puzzles were fun. I didn't figure out how to get into that barred area though. 5/10 for this one.

[mouldy]

maps 3 and 4 weren't quite as painful as the first 2, I'm not sure if thats because my expectations have now been set down a notch..

map 3 started out quite cool with hordes attacking from around 2 corners at once, after that it was another case of eating a small bowl of soup with a fork as you run around a small area activating a bizarre sequence of pointless switches with no consequences.

map 4 also started out interesting dropping you in front of a mancubus and making you run blindly to find a safe spot. Then came the switches, this time with narrow catwalks and monsters down below you cant see shooting at you. Very cheap. One chaingunner was even stuck in a wall shooting at me without letting me shoot back. Maybe thats what the invulnerability was for... Also having inescapable acid pits in a map where you have a radiation suit on 90% of the time makes for a very lingering death.

Thankfully the maps are quite short, its definitely more interesting doing each one from pistol start.

[molten_]

Looks like it's onto the next two maps ...


MAP03:
I really liked the first half of this map before the switch hunt at the end. It was really fun, and made nice use of sectors inside the building. I guess in this case I can forgive the switch hunt because it wasn't that hard, but it put a damper on the rest of the map IMO. I almost feel like the developer put a switch hunt in because he felt like he needed to.

Overall, a definite step up from the first two.


MAP04:
I think this may be my favorite map thus far. The fights were great, the enemy placement was nice ... I didn't even mind the invulnsphere that much, although it did kind of make the fights in the nukage too easy.

I think my biggest complaint is that similar to MAP03, it's a total wasteland for the latter half of the map. This time, the puzzles are more involved though, so I can kind of forgive the developer.

Overall, my favorite map thus far. I hope the rest of the maps are at least as good as this.

[DooMer 4ever]

A bit early, but whatever:

Map05: I kind of like the look of this map. It's mazy yes, but with cave like areas with tunnels that aren't completely straight. The part with tons of switches is again just time waste though and especially so as the author doesn't know you can press switches that are underground, as mentioned before.

Map06: Hated this one, despite the fact that the gameplay is far more balanced than in the earlier maps as there aren't powerups everywhere. It's just so ridiculously symmetric with most of the map consisting of ugly mazes with narrow tunnels and you basically have to run through the same maze multiple times which makes the map hopelessly repetive.

[glenzinho]

DAY 3

MAP05

Started in a small area with a sky ceiling, similar to the beginning of Map 01, and there's a LOT of ammo in front of me. I then dropped down into a kind of underground river system, which is the theme for this map. After a short time I found what was labelled the exit only to find a computer map inside. After wandering around the water tunnels, the yellow key appeared from nowhere, from which it was very quick to obtain the red key. Picking up the invulnerability sphere released, wait for it, 3 evil sergeants! Now I had to use the map to see where to go next and that led me back into the "exit room" where I found the map to begin the most craptacular sequence of this level. This involved pressing unmarked walls which were activated as lifts where you had to find a switch in one of the 12 rooms like this to raise another switch to progress. There were 12 switches, I kid you not, one for each room. After this lovely sequence it lead to the final part of the map where I came the closest to dying in any of the maps so far thanks to the release of about 10 sarges after picking up the plasma rifle. The level thankfully ended just after this.

100/90/0 6:25
Stop with the switches already!


MAP06

Well, well, well.. can we say tedious? You start off in a big brown room with catwalks and crushers. It's a very industrial theme, possibly some kind of factory. Around the perimeter of this area is a ledge tunnel, which when you approach opens up new areas on the N,E,W,S portions of the map. These new amazing sections are, wait for it, MAZES. The point of these mazes is to teleport into rooms with switches that open up walls in another room to go to the exit. The exit area itself was slightly clever, but you can see for yourself if you don't ragequit beforehand.

97/93/0 10:30
This was by far the worst of all the maps.


In general, the author seems to be sticking to the IWAD level themes texture wise so far. These last 2 maps have really got my goat... I'm just hanging on in case it gets better and to *puffs out chest with pride* preserve the integrity of the DW Megawad Club... heh, maybe we should have a slogan like the postal service here in Oz, through rain, sleet & snow... maybe it could be "Through switch hunts, shit & maps that blow, the DW Megawad Club always delivers..." that's not quite right, maybe someone can come up with a better slogan... or not, I don't know, my head hurts!

[Megamur]

I think you guys are jumping ahead to Day 3 a little early.

Hellbent said:

This wad could really really really use some new music. I don't suppose this could be done for the remainder of this thing? Or maybe someone could suggest a music pack to play with it?

New music would've been nice, though creating a new music pack just for the occasion seems like needless extra work. Just open up a music player or something if you really need a different soundtrack. And if the original author really wanted a custom soundtrack, I assume one would've been included in the first place.


Well, since I came up with the WAD Club idea, I might as well jump in, too. I'll be playing blind on Ultra-Violence, and running the WAD with Chocolate Doom.

No new music, and not even a new title screen, huh? Pretty barebones effort. Hopefully the levels themselves have a bit more polish.


MAP01: The blockmap does me no favors and the first shotgun guy blasts me twice while my pistol bullets sail right through him. The limited cover in the opening area with the BK (blue key) similarly doesn't help, and I end up taking an embarrassingly ludicrous amount of damage from the hitscanners camping outside the windows. I miss the BK jump and try to plasma bump the thing off its platform, but again, the blockmap scoffs at me and deprives me of my keycard treat.

And then the RK trap kills me. Boy, this WAD doesn't screw around, I guess.

Second attempt.... Okay, the RK crusher trap is just dumb. It seems like if you don't find the secret rear entrance to the RK before you set off the crusher, said crusher is pretty much guaranteed to kill you if you ever go for the RK. That's just "point-and-click adventure game" kind of unwinnable cruelty.

After that rough start, I discover that there's a mess of secrets in the map, and I leave the place with a free DBSG and plasma gun, and 200/200 health & armor. That's more like it.


MAP02: The opening area is kind of clever, how it seems like a plain little barred cell at first, but then the floor sinks and reveals a multitude of connecting passageways underground. Neat! The multi-tiered lift near the YK similarly impresses me.

I feel sort of like I'm playing Hectic from DOOM 64 with this WAD: it's really cramped and there's tasty-looking free items all around, and I'm terrified to touch any of them for fear of what horrible traps they might unleash.

I cheat a little to get the PG in the northwest corner of the map: after pressing the first switch block on the floor and seeing it make another rise to greet me, I figure the last one is probably at the end of the room, so I tap the spacebar until I hit the still-buried switch, freeing the PG ahead of schedule. What can I say? I'm a sucker for sequence-breaking. :)

There's that soul sphere in the final maze area with the BK in it--the one guarded by bars and suspended over that "web" of metal platforms with the green sludge below. I'm not sure how you get it...or why you'd want to since it doesn't count towards your secrets tally, and it's easier to get the megasphere in the previous room anyway.


MAP03: Yikes, right to action, I see. A few moments of my chaingun blazing away thins the initial crowd, though not before I get nicked by a few bullets. I eventually have to swap back to my trusty shotgun, however, as--sorry, again, chaingun fans!--there's WAY more shotgun ammo out here than bullets.

I sneak into the rear entrance of the main building and work my way into the central room, where yet another megasphere awaits. (There's been one in every map so far.) Humorously, I wipe out half of the bad guys here while the enemies on the other side of the room just look in the opposite direction, not participating in the action. They're almost like frightened children with their heads under the covers, trying to wish away the bogeyman. (That's me!)

I almost wonder if these maps were meant for Co-op play, with the surplus of power-ups. You often tend to find doubles or even triples of items--way more than you need.

After finishing DOOMGuy's Switchmania, I grab the megasphere and RL and finish with 100% kills/items/secrets.


MAP04: Amazingly, I take no damage in the initial hitscanner/Mancubus ambush. This is why we equip the chaingun before hitting lift switches, kids! Pain chance is a wonderful thing!

This level kind of sucks, though. Anyone else enjoy running around in giant sludge pits, in the dark, trying to find switches and keys and teleporters before your rad suit supply runs out? You do? I hate you. Please don't make DOOM levels.


Total Deaths: 1

Total Quickloads: 0

Secret Levels Cleared: 0

[glenzinho]

Megamur said:

I think you guys are jumping ahead to Day 3 a little early.

Don't know about DooMer 4ever but when I posted my Map 5 & 6 it was around 8am on 3rd of August (Day 3).
The joys of the global community!
We Aussies can't be waiting around for you Americans & Europeans to catch up to the present! ;)

[Megamur]

glenzinho said:

Don't know about DooMer 4ever but when I posted my Map 5 & 6 it was around 8am on 3rd of August (Day 3).
The joys of the global community!
We Aussies can't be waiting around for you Americans & Europeans to catch up to the present! ;)

But look at the timestamp of the first post: it hasn't even been 48 hours since then.

[glenzinho]

Megamur said:

But look at the timestamp of the first post: it hasn't even been 48 hours since then.

Ok, looked at the timestamp of the first post: 1st of August at 18:16 my time.

*Looks at my posts*

Day 1: 1st of August at 20:29
Day 2: 2nd of August at 08:13
Day 3: 3rd of August at 08:40

Don't know about you, but where I'm from a day finishes after 23:59 and a new one starts at midnight.... just sayin'
After my first wave of customers in the morning I fire up BF!THUD and play the two maps of the day... pretty simple really.

[DooMer 4ever]

Yeah, different time zones. I posted an hour early myself.

[dobu gabu maru]

Megamur said:

But look at the timestamp of the first post: it hasn't even been 48 hours since then.

That's a general problem with timezones. I started the topic around 3AM August 1st EST time, but it was already 5PM in Australia. Maybe we should try and generally post 24 hours AFTER the topic has been made, but then we'd basically be going off of EST time, which will make it a tad confusing for everyone everywhere else, especially since people like glenzinho would have to play a level before 5PM, and then get to play a level after 5PM, which defeats the purpose of "a level a day".

I think it's fine as is.

Also

Megamur said:

it's really cramped and there's tasty-looking free items all around, and I'm terrified to touch any of them for fear of what horrible traps they might unleash.

I find this funny because I take the opposite approach with this megawad... mainly because there's little-to-no traps so far other than the insta-death red key in MAP01.

[glenzinho]

I think day to day is fine e.g August 1 is Day 1 and so on and so forth...
If we start to make a universal time to play the levels I feel that interest will drop off pretty quickly, as it would be near impossible to get everybody to play the same thing at the same time.

August 1 is Day 1 and everyone should have all of Day 1 at anytime that day to complete the 2 maps at their leisure.
If people are worried about spoilers, don't look at the thread!
That's what I do... once I saw that Doomer 4ever had already posted his thoughts on Map 5 & 6 I just ignored it and waited to complete my playthrough before looking at the rest of the thread.

especially since people like glenzinho would have to play a level before 5PM, and then get to play a level after 5PM, which defeats the purpose of "a level a day".

That's true... in my case it's hard to play Doom after 5PM, as I'm married and have a RL. The best time of the day to Doom is now, when I'm at work ;0

[Capellan]

Megamur said:
No new music, and not even a new title screen, huh? Pretty barebones effort. Hopefully the levels themselves have a bit more polish.

It's a 1995 wad by one guy. Consider yourself lucky the textures are aligned. :)

Megamur said:
There's that soul sphere in the final maze area with the BK in it--the one guarded by bars and suspended over that "web" of metal platforms with the green sludge below. I'm not sure how you get it...

If it's the one I'm thinking of, you just walk out there and squeeze between the bars.

[Acid]

Shit. Missed today D: I'll do 4 maps tomorrow...

[vdgg]

MAP05 - 0 deaths, 12:44, K/S: 100/100

Positive things: these zimmer(?)/water floor tunnels I never get tired of. Like in tenements or in chord1. Also, they are laid out the way I 'm always lost no matter where I am. I figured out some switches raise from the ground in the squarish area with lifts, so I started pressing them blindly before raising. It didn't help to speed up the things, searching for the yellow key took me FOREVER. So yeah, the gameplay sucks as usual.

MAP06 - 0 deaths, 17:27, K/S: ???/0 (I typed -recod, so I have no proof/demo of that :-P )

Scary, looks more difficult at first. Boooring. Repetitions. Repetitions. I found three switches relatively fast, then which was the UNUSED teleporter which would lead me to the fourth one? Finally I stepped on the teleporter leading to an arch-vile an the exit. I had 100/100 + plasma at this time, so I could survive one arch-vile attack and I did. There is certainly some thought behind the map, but the whole idea is wrong. Cleimos II was also guilty of repetitions (MAP03, MAP12), but here they are worse. The map is probably easy when you use the automap.

So far, MAP02 and MAP04 were OK for me, the rest was below average, to say the least, though there were redeeming factors everywhere.

[Ribbiks]

Map 05: 6:38

Barbaric amounts of health/ammo, and an invul sphere right off the bat -.-. Slightly frustrating, mostly boring. The author really loves to make those series of rising switches that you can totally hit from the ground once you know where they are. Regardless, thank god for the compmap.

Map 06: 6:02

I actually kind of liked this one, the health/ammo was a little more balanced and some of the enemies were moderately threatening. After the first 2 mazes it was pretty obvious what to do so this one didn't take too long. I wonder if I got lucky at the end by telefragging the AV, because if it was stuck on the teleporter destination why put it there in the first place? I kept hearing it throughout the map and it kind of kept me on my toes as I was waiting to encounter it... ohwell.

edit: after reading vdgg's review of map06 I guess I did get lucky with the AV, neat.

[cannonball]

Map05 - Time 5:19 - no deaths, 100/100
This map wasn't too bad, it had a quirkiness of the environment moving around at random at times. This map was easy and the secret was easy to find.
Edit - I was so annoyed with map06 that I completely forgot about the switch hunt in this level. F'ing hilarious :/

Map06 - Time 11:34 - no deaths, 100/100
Hated this map, confusing and symmetrical at the same time. Want to send a bag of crap to the author for this awfulness. But got there in the end.

Bring on map07