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dobu gabu maru

The DWmegawad Club plays: Scythe

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dobu you forgot to put Vile Flesh in Old Threads.

MAP05 Slimy Tunnels My Time: 2:03

Action start, the barrels help kill the lot of imps there. You can straferun to get the chaingun and straferun back, and can cross a line to trigger the cacos early. I did use some guns here, but most of my action remained in close combat still, with either chainsaw or berserk cutting down foes. Not much damage accumulated either so I think it's still easy.

BaronOfStuff said:

more often than not, SSG's are freely thrown around like so much confetti.

Spoiler

if I remember, the SSG first appears very late in the wad.

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MAP05 - Slimy Tunnels

As I play continuiusly, at the start I already had selected shotgun. One shot and boom, almost all monsters on the other side were dead, except the one chaingunner. I enjoyed this moment when the map finally forced me to move and react faster, to kill the zombiemen on the ledge behind me at the start. Another such moment was at the cacodemons. Still nothing very intense, but I like to observe these steps up in the difficulty.

The layout and aesthetics were well done again. I had to revisit the right branch after getting the yellow key, but didn't mind it really. Once again, I don't understand the secrets which aren't really secrets. Scythe gives me a nice experience. So far.

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Thanks for bringing scythe up, it's been a while since I last played it and it's held up pretty much as I remember it. Unfortunately the early maps are so short I just shot up to 10 in no time, and then decided to keep going. So I don't really have any map specific thoughts for where the club is at so far, besides they were fun and made me think about working on some shorter maps as a bit of an experiment.

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Yeah, I don't blame you. The maps are short enough I'm having trouble figuring out what to write.

MAP05: Slimy Tunnels
100% kills, 2/2 "secrets"

I actually enjoy the use of barrels here... nice to make things go splat. A nice little bit of E1-style window design, too. The cheeky false door was cute. The zombiemen immediately behind the player are annoying.

MAP06: Pressure Point
100% kills, 1/1 "secret"

Like last map, there's some barrels provided for easy monster-splattering, and a chaingun sitting in plain view that's a "secret". I find this map to be a bit boring to play, mainly because shooting hell knights with the regular shotgun is a bit of a drag. The drop down at the end is actually decently dangerous, as the barrels and lack of room to move make it easy to take damage, and its tough to kick out damage quickly without using the rocket launcher in close quarters.

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I think I'll do up to MAP09 today so that I can do one-map-per-day (on average) the rest of the month. I remember Fire and Ice being an epic and I'm sure one or two other maps provide stiff opposition.

Anyway, Lost Warehouse, with it's Doom II music and noticeable darkness, provides a slight departure from the previous 3 maps and introduces the Spectre and Lost Soul as opposition. Still very easy and compact. I'm fairly certain the "not secrets" are just marked in places that the player is highly likely to go so that you'd not see 0% secrets in vanilla - a lot of older maps did stuff like that when they had no proper secrets and as the whole "ding" thing is a recent-ish phenomenon, it caused no harm at all.

Slimy Tunnels felt like "The Waste Tunnels Abridged", what with the cacodemons, chaingunners and trench. Still flying through only just about registering the opposition. At least the green armour "secret" sort of qualifies as you don't need to go up those stairs to beat the level. Evilution music and the debut of a new exit door texture expands the range of resources slightly for Scythe, which is nice.

Pressure Point keeps up the "Doom II Abridged" idea with a crusher and also continues with the new exit door and TNT music. For some reason I decided that I was enjoying having 100% health too much and melee'd a sergeant with my newly acquired rocket launcher. Genius move there, but I survived and scraped through the rather close-quarters final encounter too.

And now it's "MAP07: Abridged" (although just barely) with Deadly, which in no way lives up to it's name playing continuously. I took a few hits when adjusting position against the Arachnotrons in the relative safety of the central bit, but was otherwise completely unthreatened and had more than enough in the way of health supplies to laugh my way through.

Garden Base is actually a step up from all but the ending of MAP06, as we're now facing heavier enemies mixed in with the zombies and imps of yore in areas where you may actually be hit from multiple angles. It's still easy though, especially when you find the secret (a real one, this time, with two scoring parts) and have a backpack, rocket launcher and blue armour all in normal play. The ending corridor is a bit mean, but certainly easy enough to handle!

And now on to MAP09: Computer Storage which feels an awful lot like E1M7 (I imagine the music doesn't help my perception there), but with a mancubus, three non-secrets and a few revenants to beef up the otherwise-entirely zombies and imps action. I'm very heavily supplied for what I'm facing now, although there's still three weapons to get. Continuous play with mouse look in ZDoom is probably making things pretty easy though, even by the standard of the maps. I like the square, stony grey STARTAN style texture that's been introduced here as well as the unorthodox lift, but felt like the blue or yellow key was almost entirely superfluous - as things stand you need both to progress, but one leads to the other without incident.

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Map04: Lost Warehouse

More of the same, a short map which doesn't provide much of a challenge. Aesthetically the most memorable part is the gloomier lighting, which is nicely done indeed. Gameplay is, well, shotgun this and shotgun that. There's also a chainsaw but there's no real need for it.

Map05: Slimy Tunnels

Yes, you guessed it, more of the same with the exception of the chaingun making a debut. I didn't exploit the straferun skip so it wasn't much of a debut but anyway. What I did do however, was skip by the Spectres in the "slime tunnel" on the left and took care of them later when I literally packed more punch. Berserk didn't steal the show completely though because of the delicious barrel placement in the right side of the tunnel.

Map06: Pressure Point

Shoot shit n stuff. Or punch since the berserk is right there. The crusher area was pretty neat and it's always fun when there are other ways to dispose of the opposition other than traditional shooting and punching. The finale is also cool and at least looks a bit threatening. Still marching onwards with no deaths though.

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Quick one...

Map 05
Slimy Tunnels


This is a real quick map, even compared to the previous ones. It intros the chaingunner and chaingun. I fell trying to straferun across the ledge and had to fight the spectres in the nukage. Not a big deal with the berserk close by to get me back to 100% health. The secrets that aren't secrets are kind of odd. A minor trap when you go to open the door on the right side of the map, but nothing dangerous. For some reason I find the intro scene pretty memorable, but the rest of the map is fairly forgettable.

e:

Map 06
Pressure Point


Another quick map. This one introduces hell knights and rocket launchers and has a couple highlight setpieces: the imps that can be taken out by judicious barrel explodings, the eponymous map 6 crusher that protects the rocket launcher, and the final drop into a pit with cacodemons and yet more hell knights. On continuous play there wasn't much need for the berserk pack, but I did take advantage of the crusher to take out a couple hell knights. I again enjoyed the use of darkness and demons. The final fight is fun with rocket launching in close quarters and minor exploiting of infighting to take the pressure off.

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MAP06 - Pressure Point

High tier enemies are getting more important roles. But the raise in difficulty is just very, very slight. No real surprise or change from the previous maps, except that now I have the rocket launcher. Glowing nukage doesn't do any damage, which is kind of weird, as is the secret-nonsecret chaingun. I know that glowing sectors can't have applied damage, but the author could solve the problem by either getting rid of the glowing, or setting a different floor texture than nukage, or making just the walls to glow and the middle to be damaging.

Simple and pleasant aesthetics and gameplay, no other complaints than what I've mentioned above.

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I remember playing Scythe a year or two ago. Good times. Levels were short but always sweet and well-thought. I guess I'm ready to relive the experience - on HMP difficulty - and share my feelings with rest of you. I just want to warn that I consider myself a pretty lame Doomer so please forgive me all mistakes I'm surely about to make.

MAP01 Get going
Very easy chainsaw level with my favourite Doom tune playing along (intermission). It consists of two small buildings with an equally small outdoor area between them. Architecture is simplistic yet "doomy" enough so it sets the tone for rest of levels. When it comes to gameplay, it's basically few zombiemen and imps pretending to break your chainsaw dance.


MAP02 Punchline
It's half-green, it's half-gray and has lots of toxin pools (well, those are green as well). Feels a bit like a E1M1 to me. It has a Berserk pack though and pinkies that are kind enough to show up just when you pick the thing up. Collect a yellow keycard, find a free secret and extra chainsaw (which I guess it's for coop and those of you who didn't want to grab it in MAP01) and move along.

MAP03 Up and around
This one's visuals made me feel like playing Evilution. It's more action-packed than it looks as it relies quite heavily on teleport/closet traps. You're facing shotgunners now and their drop-off weapons become very precious: architecture and monster attacks are making for some good pump-action fun! Also don't miss the free, final shotgun in the end. Overall, a really great level - the one that sums up Scythe perfectly IMO.

MAP04 Lost Warehouse

Title says it's "lost" so that's why none of technical team bothered to fix that broken, flickering light in the room you're facing on start (kudos for a mapper on that one - an easy trick that sets you in a right mood). Level features lots of grey textures, some shotgunguys and stupid lost souls that couldn't reach me from the other side of window as I was chainsawing them to their fire'y death, yaryaryar! As usual, map is short, fun but didn't provide me with shooting pleasure I found in the previous level. Plus it didn't featured as many crates as I would like to :'-(


MAP05 Slimy tunnels
Those tunnels are not only slimy and pinky-infested, but they are also dividing playing field into two halves. Moreso, it has two cacodemons AND a berserk pack which means you can play a caco-tennis if you have jumping enabled - with a tunnel being a "net" - as those stupid monsters fly-back when punched. Size of the level - as usually for Scythe - doesn't make for the best tennis court out there but can provide you with some unusual, retarded fun for about 5 seconds. On a more serious note, you're getting a chaingun here and an even one more extra chainsaw.

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MAP01
Well it's short for one point and cramped for another but that's what you get when you play the 1st map of a wad. It is techy-bricky and E1 style.
This map is later remade into a slaughter map in scythe2s super secret level.

MAP02
I quite see the 'punch'line in this one :P
Yet again, a simple base map with nukage tunnels going through

MAP03
Where things heat up and Eric learns how to use traps and uses a pillar to tease the shotgun on the top of it, I quickly go and push the two switches next to the shotgun.

MAP04
This map is very circular and reminds me of the underhalls of DOOM2.
I never understoof the point of making the armor and the shotgun a secret, it could be just the armor instead, but it's good, I don't hate it.

MAP05
Most memorable base map in the wad, its begining also gets reused in Whispers Of Satan.
This map made the radiation suits very mandatory, which is the reason for its popularity.

MAP06
Grey and metal are a great combination and I had fun with that crusher smashing various monsters, the deep cave part was such a crampy painful and unfair challange but it's possible to survive.

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MAP10: The Lords - The four barons of hell in close quarters fight did do me a fair bit of damage as I tried to balance my ammo usage across the chaingun and rocket launcher in such a tight space. I'd say I didn't die, but the map has a death exit (oddly enough, straight after a mandatory berserk pickup), so that'd be a lie! I quite liked the simple challenge and build up in the tiny map, especially as there is scope to take some real pain, considering there's only six monsters in the whole map.

And that's Episode 1 complete. Definitely my kind of map size - reminds me of Khorus' Speedy Shit and Mini-Level Megawad for bite-sized challenges in solid, cleanly-mapped levels.

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This is one of my favorite wads, though I never finished it. I just rushed the first episode these days before realizing megawad club was playing it, so I replayed the first three maps, making some mental notes this time. Playing on UV with ZDoom without mouselook.

MAP01 get going -

Not much to be said, just chainsaw everything. I am the master of getting lost and missing switches, so I liked when some bars close the building entrance to make sure you will at least see the red card when getting out.

MAP02 punchline -

Another short easy map, basically chainsawed this one again. I managed to almost die by wondering around on slime.

MAP03 up and around -

Had to slow down the chainsaw frenzy due to shotgunners, but, again, short and fun map. I really like how this first episode flows.

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Woah, Scythe?

I haven't been Dooming much lately, and I've played this fairly recently, but I may have to join in when you guys get to the later maps, if only to sing the praises of maps 24, 27, and 29.

EDIT:Also, for the dirty continuous players out there: don't. Especially not in Ep. 3. Scythe's maps are almost conceived as single combat scenarios much of the time, and they tend to have frantic starts; you'll ruin both aspects if you carry weapons from earlier maps.

(The good news is that I doubt most people will even have the option of ruining map 29 -- IMO, the wad's crowning achievement -- in such a manner.)

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MAP07: Deadly
100% kills, no secrets

Meh. This one is too small. Tiny little Dead Simple ripoff. Standard STARTAN too, pretty boring aesthetically as well.

MAP08: Garden Base
100% kills, 2/2 secrets

Much better. This one feels like it could be a continuation of MAP03, with the outdoor/BROWNGRN/green brick motif. The theme of this map is apparently "brown monsters that shoot fireballs" since most of it is imps and mancubi with a side of zombies and a couple hell knights. An actual secret this time around, which is nice. Nothing too difficult although the ambush at the end might catch a non-cautious player off guard.

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Map 06 -- Pressure Point - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
By far the best thing about this map is the barrel-based mass-kill opportunity that's there in the opening moments for a quick or quiet (or both) player. The final room, gated by a dead-drop, is the other highlight, a marked step up in the relative intensity of the danger the player faces, thanks to limited leg-room and some tricky thing placement, but a cool head should prevail without too much trouble. Beyond these two bits, the rest of the map's a bit drab, and drags a fair bit near the end before the dead-drop, when the player gets to shotgun some Hell Knights that are confined to some little alcoves. I guess there's a bit of an architectural setpiece in the form of the bridge-corridor with the crusher, but honestly monster placement here is too lax to really make any of this leave much impression....using the crusher to kill something substantial is both patently unnecessary and perhaps more trouble than it's worth, although I suppose you could mass-kill some zombies if your luck with the blur sphere (which I didn't actually take in this playthrough) held out.

Map 07 -- Deadly - 100% Kills / No secrets
Well, I think it could be fairly argued that I am perhaps the Club's greatest (by which I simply mean largest) windbag, but even I have difficulty thinking of much to say about this. Other than that it sucks, I mean....it doesn't even function well as a miniaturized Dead Simple map, since the mancubi will only harm players with the poorest reaction times, and the arachnatrons are only periodically/unreliably capable of targeting the player while s/he occupies the central dais, at the mercy of their own strange pathing routines. Pretty lame.

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MAP07
A very very and very boring map that's ridicilously crampy and boring, that I have nothing to say about it but to say it's deadly.
I like telefraging.

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MAP07 - Deadly

I admit I died the first time starting the map, as I just didn't expect such a trap, also didn't want to jump down at first as I didn't know what expects me there (-> nothing). May it also be due to my inborn laziness? Well, on the second attempt I could finish the map to the end.

Unfortunately, the maps gives too little space for a comfortable play. The optimal strategy (which pays off) is to find a safe spot and slowly take down enemies until their numbers are low enough so you can get closer to them (-> applies for both mancubi and arachnotrons). I don't really like this setup. Have to admit though, visually the map is nice and the structure shows to be uneffective only for wide-radius enemies like the fatsos and spiders are. I can imagine nicer battles in this map with hellknights and cacodemons and maybe some lower-tier enemies too, specially if they were able to climb the stairs (I assume they would). Anyway, this was definitely an attempt to raise difficulty one more step, I'm looking forward to the next maps.

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MAP06 Pressure Point My Time: 3:18

Bit generous having a berserk right at the start. Some fun moments can be had here, like shooting the barrel square near the imps, or luring hellknights to the crusher to save ammo. Another blatantly obvious secret, I think this is to ensure 100% secrets for vanilla maps or something. That last battle is dense but I found infighting and punching cacos seemed a good strategy there.

MAP07 Deadly My Time: 1:22

Up close and personal yet still typical MAP07.

MAP08 Garden Base My Time: 3:18

Pretty bland base-type level with zombies and imps as mainstays, but trying to garner some mancubi right at the beginning to odd the evens. I generally enjoy it, the berserk pack didn't get too much usage though, but it's okay. That chaingunner trap, I passed the medikits and hid close to the door and killed them one by one instead of being a dummy.

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Starting the second episode with MAP11: Sneak Peak I've rather enjoyed completely not following intended progression. Using strafe running (not the fancy one where you turn and strafe at the same time, mind) I got from the shotgun to the soulsphere to the red skull, all without the blue skull needing to be obtained. Thanks to some handy secrets I then also got out without needing the blue skull as well.

I did, however, decide to get the blue skull and rocket launcher with it anyway, as I've been 100% completing all the other maps so far and I'd only killed 58 out of 85 enemies when facing the exit. Pretty tough trap there, considering what has come before! I actually died and replayed the map, hence perfecting my unorthodox route.

Extra love to this map as it uses my favourite TNT MIDI.

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MAP06 Pressure point
Firstly I have to admit that I was utterly disappointed that none of the doors behind the starting point didn't open and greet me with a secret chamber filled with goodies. Nonetheless, level packed quite an action, both at short (thanks to yet another Berserk pack) and long ranges. Your arsenal expands even further, this time in a form of rocket launcher. But screw that, it has hellknights in! And we all know what happens when you have a hellknight and a berserk pack: a game of punching those stupid monsters in the guts and running away from their high-fives as fast as it gets! It never gets old. For me.

MAP07 Deadly
When the Doom map clock strikes 7, you know what it's time for: it's spider-time, it's fatso time.... however, this time it's not really all that fancy. Texturing is just... umh... let's say, it's very dull... hell, actualy whole level has been textured with one patch. Besides that, kill some mancubi, then some spiders and reach the exit switch. Yaaawh.

MAP08 Garden base
Now, that's what I'm talking about! There's more action, more monsters and texture variety actually exists. Level looks and plays pretty well. It reminds of some Final Doom map with those mancubi shooting at you from ramps running along the open area in the middle. Bestiary consits of aforementioned mancubi, lots of hitscanners and imps which makes for a great shotgun-totting gameplay. I have to admit that the chaingunners trap was pretty tough though.

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Well, I went for an evening Walk in the Park, but the blood red sky and thick shadows mixed with haunted-house-style music rather put a dampener on it. Being attacked by a small horde of monsters didn't help either!

Pretty easy map here, as you come in pretty heavily stocked from what came before and are heavily supplied for the 43 monsters on show. Only the small chaingunner warp-ins pose a threat to your health really, as the Revenants are stuck in place for the most part and the one Mancubus is just keeping the yellow skull safe for a few seconds. I like the atmosphere of this one.

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Um...Phobus, you do know that you're supposed to give feedback on one map per day, right? I kind of jumped ahead when I first tried doing one of the club wads too.

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MAP08
Hell yeah, this map is green and brown and starts you off in a middle of a chaos in a long courtyard where you enter the right building, exploore the cave and then raise a bridge to the left bulding and do the same as to the other one. And the chain trap in the end is very easy since they infight and kill something like 70% of the total chaingunners in the trap while you have the invisibility sphere.
One of my favourite maps.
This map also inspired me to make a green and brown map, it's in DOOM0.

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Obsidian said:

Um...Phobus, you do know that you're supposed to give feedback on one map per day, right? I kind of jumped ahead when I first tried doing one of the club wads too.


Yep, I've done these clubs before ;) I deliberately jumped 4 maps ahead a few days ago so that, when we get to the meatier ones near the end, I'm only on one map per day and won't have to play catch up when we hit the end of the month on MAP28 or so.

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MAP08 - Garden Base

This map once again forced me to not stay in one place at the start. I like it. Apparently the intended strategy was to let the mancubi be for later, which I did. The map is linear, but flows nicely and I enjoyed the gameplay here. The ending chaingunner trap was shocking, and I really wonder how I could survive it, even with so much health (they took me no more than 20% health). I found both secrets, pretty much by pure luck, I was about to give up the search when a randomly bumped wall opened. I was able to straferun to the soulsphere anyway. In my opinion, the music choice here wasn't very appropriate, but I might be just spoilt by playing a lot of Memfis's maps. :)

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Map07: Deadly

This was pretty poor to be honest. Simplicity and Dead Simple-stereotypes taken to the next level in this short borefest. Highlights are telefragging the Mancs and the 1 second speedrun strategy.

Map08: Garden Base

Now this was a fine map on the other hand. It's still very much E1 but despite the low difficulty, the gameplay is pretty interesting. For some reason, this map has always been aesthetically the most memorable one on E1 for me and I really do like the visual style and the layout in this map. Didn't have any memories of the Chaingunner trap at the end but the corridor looked very suspicious so I was prepared and took very little damage in the actual ambush heh.

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MAP09 Computer Storage My Time: 3:13

Interesting name for a map, seeing as how it's windowed like Computer Station (with its music) and that it has crates and stuff. This is probably the first level where RNG can be a bitch, but there's an invisibility that helps out somewhat. I used the chaingun throughout the level except on a few big monsters. What's up with these secret sectors by the way? They're just too easy and too obvious, yet aren't necessarily trying to force 100% secrets.

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@Hurricyclone: As I said up above: "I'm fairly certain the "not secrets" are just marked in places that the player is highly likely to go so that you'd not see 0% secrets in vanilla - a lot of older maps did stuff like that when they had no proper secrets and as the whole "ding" thing is a recent-ish phenomenon, it caused no harm at all."

It also seems to be used for "keeping score" in the first episode, as there aren't many proper secrets at all. The second episode cuts down on this, from what I've played so far.

Incidentally...

Subverted Base demonstrates what I suggested about "keeping score" by having one secret area with two rewards. Each reward "dings", although back in the day you'd not have known that without looking in an editor or deliberately missing one. The map itself combines creepy Evilution music with a shotgunner-heavy approach that leaves you well-stacked for ammo and at constant risk of losing a load of health. I like this new water/rock flat being used in this episode - it's fairly realistic compared to the usual Doom liquids. I'd say this map feels more threatening than it is, as you're well-equipped to kill everything quickly, but there's potential to suck up a lot of damage if you're not careful. He also seems to be doing a better job of using limited monster numbers than I did for my first two Escalation maps, as I don't think a single map has breached 100 enemies yet!

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Forgive me for saying this, but now that I think of it, the way that some (not all) secrets are used in Scythe is akin to how video games with "mission objectives" are used. So it would be something like this.

Mission 1: Get Going

Objectives:
-Get the chainsaw

Or...

Mission 9: Computer Storage

Objectives:
Get the shotgun
Get the chaingun
Get the partial invisibility

Of course, if you "fail" the "objectives", you don't necessarily "fail" the map. Just my two cents on the secret sectors.

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