The DWmegawad Club plays: Back to Saturn X E2

[punnyone]

Map 25 - Unstable Journey - 91% Kills, 71% Secrets, HMP Skill.

Once upon a time, lengthy epic doom maps were lauded as some of the more impressive works ever created. From Eternal Doom's massive maps, to Alien Vendetta's Misri Halek, these maps absolutely stretched the limits of what the vanilla engine was capable of. Then, as source ports came along, making these size maps became almost trivial. Sometimes, maps were long just for the sake of being long with no sense of flow or progression. Small/shorter maps were the new preferred style, and for all of the fans of good epic doom maps, it seemed all hope was lost. Then, along came BTSX and one Mechadon...

Alright, enough cinematic backstory, Mec has managed to create a level that is one of the largest purely vanilla maps I've ever played, but is also a decent challenge, and most importantly, has excellent flow. Essel once said that this was the largest non-linear map he failed to get lost in, and I agree 100%. For such a large level, there are never any of those "Where the fuck do I go?" moments. Yet at the same time, you are given multiple ways to go from the very beginning, and almost WANT to get lost.

Much of the level can be broken into two halfs, the northern "basement base" section with its gothic/satanic/medieval architecture , and the southern tall canyon section. The red key lies far to the south and the yellow/blue ones are in the dungeons. The order I found I like was in terms of collecting them was "Y, B, R". This choice of progression adds to the replay value.

The yellow key area features many of the level's hallmarks along the way such as red stained glass windows and fireplaces galore. The trap after picking up the key is a bottlenecked challenge, that is made extra difficult if one doesn't have a better arsenal at hand.

The blue key path takes us through a cool looking library area, a trapped megaarmor room with four teleporting revenants and lots of shotgun guys, and a huge caco-hoard once the key is picked up. I like the contrast of the green viney walls and the red cacodemons. Kinda looks like a bunch of giant tomatoes growing on a vine, but I digress...

The red key path, as mentioned, occupies the whole bottom half of the map, and features the most deadly opposition. Lava, rocky canyons, red hellish rocks, and lots of snipers are the flavor of this zone. Long-distance rocketplay ended up being my preferred method of clearing this area out. Even with the added megasphere, the red key battle is absolutely brutal, but very satisfying to complete.

Finally, there are a few minor areas to backtrack through, and a mastermind battle in an oblong-shaped courtyard, and one more final brutal battle after the three-keyed door. Unfortunattly, I missed two secrets, although one of them might be a bug. When I got to the area in the north/east with the blue key bars, there appears to be a lift below me, but it won't raise up properly, or at all. Unless I missed something, this area might be broken.

Possible bug aside, I highly enjoyed this map. It is very lengthy (I clocked over an hour of playtime), but it never overstays its welcome. Helped along by some epic cinematic music and nice contrasting lighting, I'd even go as far as to name this as my favorite of BTSX so far. I'm personally hoping for a map even more complex and large in E3. Only time will tell if that remains to be seen...

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP25 Unstable Journey

Another example of a long map that totally works. This is definitely one of those maps that feels long, but doesn't necessarily get you lost. Too bad there's not a whole lot of memorable moments (or actually, my reluctance to post really long reviews). The map is nonlinear and has many weapons, so don't worry about missing one cuz you'll likely find another one later. Combat manages to be pacing too. The key fights, plus the optional BFG fight in the northeast with the invulnerability sphere, were memorable. The blue and yellow key fights were interesting, with the yellow key harder than the second (I admit I hid in the corner where the plasma gun was.) but the red key battle stole the show. Before the red key, this whole rock/lava section was pretty much part two of the entire map, as it engrosses the whole southern half. Figuring out how to get the red key didn't take too long, but the fight once I got it did. That was intense, and you can't just rely wholely on infighting since they had surrounded me when I did that. Unfortunately, that was my last key, so it was a long way back to the exit, in the far north. One more ambush with two archies and some other enemies and I was done. This map was very coherent and consistent, much like esselfortium's MAP10 and 20, and manages to not overstay itself. Grand kudos for making this.

[Dragonsbrethren]

MAP22

More striking contrast between this and the previous maps, the garrish hell gets thrown out for a dark moody interior with great high contrast lighting. The detailing is fairly realistic looking and the layout flows pretty well. I really like how you hit deadends and then backtrack to find changes in the larger room.

The only real complaint here is, for a map named Bite, it seems to lack teeth most of the time. When it finally does sink its fangs into you, it feels totally out of character. The trap before the red key was particularly brutal and I had to save scum there until everything actually worked out for me. Apparently I threw the switches in the wrong order?

[Worm]

MAP25 - "Unstable Journey": And it's a long journey, which is fitting for the penultimate map (not counting the secret level). I got a real Quake 1 vibe from the aesthetics--lots of brown stonework, support structures, height variations, and crossovers. I actually didn't get along well with the nonlinearity here. Unlike MAP15 where everything loops back into another area, here I felt like I was picking random corridors and just doing my best to fill out the map, poking my nose into various offshoots and branches, usually with the worry that I was making bad decisions and leaving something important behind. Some things about this map make me feel like it's presented as an optimization challenge for the player, such as the journey to the red key with the bars that lock you inside that path once you enter it. Sucks for you if you get to the RK fight without having found the BFG, but moreover it seems to be a clearly non-optimal path choice if you do that one first, unless you purposely want a greater challenge. I ended up doing YK-BK-RK, but only because those one-way bars scared me off (I loaded an earlier save). Another thing that was kind of weird was the blue switch wing back near the start that gives you a backpack and RL, but only if you remember to backtrack there early enough that it's not pointless.

Positive comments: I certainly can't fault the quality of the mapping. There are great-looking areas and details everywhere, and lots of ominous splashes of red. I wouldn't exactly say I enjoyed the yellow key trap, but the "respawning" chaingunner was an interesting way to deny the safety of that corner. The red key battle is fierce but there is just the right amount of room so you always feel like it's your fault if you get trapped. And hey, I managed to find all the secrets.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 23 -- Tower in the Fountain of Sparks IV - FDA, again for no real reason.
Last look at the hub, and it's probably the niftiest of them all. Not only do you get to see a few new sights (seeing the above-ground portion of the cyberdemon battle room from 'Bite' is a particularly nice touch), you get to take a last reflective look at most of the old ones as well. I still don't really get what the juxtaposition of the animated lava flats with the static orange sludge-pillar and weird plant-lifey midtex is trying to convey, but maybe it's just me being thick. I continue to maintain that while the intermission hubmap concept is cool, there's room to suddenly throw a curveball by invading the player's fortress of solitude with monsters at some point, which didn't happen this go-round despite the area being arguably more suited to it than the tram station from E1....E3, perhaps?

Map 24 -- Perhaps Now the Vultures - 156% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA, 0 deaths. Uses beta 2.
A couple of significant things about this demo (note that it's -cl 2). The first is that the barrels around the mancubi on the upper level didn't explode for some reason on the first runthrough--I've played the map three other times since (on the same settings), and this has yet to happen again. Secondly, not dying in the blind run was a fluke, as I was killed in two of those three additional playthroughs, both times in the same place (once almost instantaneously), that being the return to the lower yard after picking up the blue keycard. More on that in a bit.

Anyway, this is Tarnsman making an arch-vile map (surprise surprise). The concept is quite straightforward--a chain of barrels and preplaced monsters is used to populate the level with viable monster corpses for viles to resurrect as the gameplay unfolds. This is a really cool idea that seems to be slowly gaining traction of late (others have pointed out its use in map 06 of BTSX E1, my most recent personal encounter with it was Xaser's map 31 from D2INO), although apparently it's inherently slightly buggy. How relevant the resurrected monsters turn out to be varies noticeably from play to play, a function of variance in the viles' pathing and to a lesser extent in the resting location of the corpses themselves after they're created (only really relevant with small enemies). If your luck is in the viles busy themselves rezzing zombies, making them easy targets while also conveniently padding out your ammo reserves by way of the dropped clips/shotguns; if your luck is poor they resurrect a lot of meat-demons who choke up the action, make it tougher to get an angle on the viles, and can seriously strain your ammo reserves if you're not comfortable using the berserk fist to stretch your ammo budget.

It's not one-note, though, there are also a couple of fights that focus more on the arch-vile's spell attack than on its resurrection ability, ala the initial tussle for the SSG, and of course the ambush after picking up the blue key, which is the single most difficult encounter in the game by a wide margin. Fighting like a man in this scenario is a very dicey proposition with no small amount of luck involved (and I maintain that I am one the last players you'll meet to play the "it's luck-based!!!one" card), mainly pertaining to how fast the additional viles show up from the upper level and where they happen to be standing if they all try to attack in concert. Resurrection of some of the monsters in the yard can actually be a blessing in disguise in that errant attacks on their part can help to take some of the heat off you--in my most recent play of the map, where I successfully beat this fight without retreating to the upper level, I was helped out in a big way by a hapless arachnatron. In the demo, I kill one vile and seriously weaken a couple of others while fighting in the yard, but then the shifting enemy positions compelled me to flee to the upper level, where I end up taking a nasty hit anyway on account of the unpredictable sectional nature of the lift, and of course there's always the possibility of meeting a commando or a mancubus or some other unexpected malcontent on your way up, so I'd say this particular avenue of player approach has been accounted for adequately in the design. Anyway, generally speaking, this is a highly intractable situation that, depending on the vagaries of pathing and RNG, can almost instantly turn extremely nasty without any particular mistake on the player's part, and so it's a rare case where I'd actually say that softening it slightly might be worth considering. To do this, what I'd propose would be the addition of one soulsphere to the map (perhaps in the plasma secret, perhaps in the yard itself)--assuming a player has done well up to that point in the map, this boost of health would allow him/her to survive one major mistake (e.g. getting thrown by one vile attack into the effect of another) or a couple of minor ones in that yard ambush, which makes fighting it out down there without retreating (or without reloading a saved game right before it over and over) a more viable proposition. It might also be worth considering using a monster-blocking line to prevent one (or hell, both) of the guys in the tower from teleporting down to the yard to add to the general clusterfuck, but truth be told I actually kind of like that potential for extra disaster, personally (a million bonus points if you manage to telefrag one of them as a result).

Aesthetically, the texture selection is quite reminiscent of Tarnsman's earlier map (guess he really likes the corroded green/black metal plating), but the mood is entirely different, beginning with a tableau that is equal parts melancholy and creepy before the proper action begins. Instead of molten vistas of lava and jagged rocks, the shroud of darkness just beyond the playing field gives the impression of being in some nighted subterranean expanse--I found the view of the great slow river of blood fading off into blackness to be particularly evocative. The music track is again excellent, although a bit of an unusual choice in some respects. I think its mostly downcast aspect suits the mood of the map just fine, but the track has a long and fairly subtle development that's somewhat out of step with the map's theoretically short length....I guess the selection operates on the assumption that players will be saving/reloading a lot in this one.

Good appetizer for the main course that is map 25, even if might need its spice balance played around with a little bit.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP23: Hub Map IV

I actually found this one the most boring of all, though I think I've found each one successively more boring, so maybe it's just the hub map idea wearing thin for me. I do like seeing the top of the final battle room from last map, though. The real hero here is the new sky, with it's blood-red color and large visible planet (ruined a bit by the Doom engine's insistence on stretching skies as the player turns, which can turn that planet into an egg).

I've commented on the lava textures before seeming out of place, and I stand by that... the pillar texture looks like pasta, and the dried lava (?) just looks like burnt shredded cheese to me. Great, now I'm hungry...

MAP24: Perhaps Now the Vultures
100% kills, 1/1 secret

A short map, which is nice before the behemoth that MAP25 promises to be. Concept is simple, just straight arch-viles with some pre-killed monsters for them to play with. For me, though, I'd say that the corpses might as well have not been there, as almost none of the resurrected monsters provided any threat, aside from the cacodemons in the blood pool area (since they can float out and attack you from a different angle while you try to get the AVs) and a revenant one time after the blue key (which was quite annoying teleporting into blind). Aside from that, just the odd imp or former human at the end of a hallway, nothing much difficult to take care of. So most of the map just felt like a less mazey version of "Hunted", just working on Arch-Vile mechanics.

Not sure how I feel mixing in corpse decorations with actual corpses... maybe this is on purpose to surprise the player when the AVs ignore the first batch (decorations) then start actually resurrecting monsters later on (actual corpses), but for me it just seemed to make the rooms that the AVs wouldn't resurrect feel like they were lacking something.

Not much else to say, AVs are a monster that can kinda create their own good gameplay. The map sets up a few decent encounters and some blander ones. The blind teleport after the blue key, as mentioned, can quickly turn into all kinds of BS, but that's what the save game button is for, I suppose.

3/5

[esselfortium]

Magnusblitz said:

dried lava (?)

It's flesh.

[Magnusblitz]

esselfortium said:

It's flesh.

This stuff is supposed to be flesh? Now I'm even more confused...

[Velvetic]

Magnusblitz said:

This stuff is supposed to be flesh? Now I'm even more confused...

Never heard of seasoned flesh?

[Demon of the Well]

That it's organic matter of some kind becomes more obvious in a forthcoming map. In this last hub, I think the use of the lava flats is supposed to simulate the effect of the flesh writhing and seething and such as it apparently eats its way through the earth, seeing the two used together is probably where most of the confusion comes from.

[mouldy]

MAP23 - Episode Hub by Xaser

Another short visit to hubland, very scenic as usual.

MAP24 - "Perhaps Now the Vultures" by Tarnsman

I had to skip this one, it was way too annoying. I started off dying over and over trying to figure out where I was meant to run to, then gave up and switched on god mode. Turns out there was a lift which didn't look much like a lift, not that it helped since everywhere I went after that just had more viles, and more trial and error and luck to get anywhere.

MAP25 - "Unstable Journey" by Mechadon

That was a long one, took and hour and 20 minutes by the game clock. Thats probably about the same as actual time, since there wasn't a massive amount of dying going on, a lot of the action involved clearing out monsters where ever they happened to be standing, but there were a few juicy fights tucked away too. The most memorable was the red key fight, which I ran away from and watched from afar, then went back to pick off the stragglers once the cybers had been killed by their mates. For the most part the fighting and the exploration were quite uncomplicated, despite the expansive layout, which allowed me to get on with the business of enjoying the scenery. I have a feeling there were a few alternative paths to take, seeing as there were duplicate weapons dotted around. My hat goes off to the amount of work which goes into a map like this, not just the visuals, the playtesting must be a gigantic task as well. Impressive stuff.

[kmxexii]

MAP25 COME ON THE UNSTABLE JOURNEY AND LEARN ALL YOU SHOULD KNOW

why yes this is a mechadon level. it has an enormous, sprawling layout that is ridiculously connected. you can set out in most any direction you like, but theres one route in particular that will save you some time and effort. i like that you can get the keys in any order, tho theres kind of a preferred sequence to things, or really just get the bfg before you go south into the big ass canyon area, tho you won't even know youre in there until youre locked in, probably. i got the yellow key first, which has this really cool fight with revenants coming at you on the left and this commando sniper on the right and you have to split your cover fire so you dont get totally murdered by both sides. then i started exploring south and wound up locked in the ginormous red key segment. i dont think you can get out unless you get the red key, and for the most part this isnt an issue. its a fantastic segment with lots of monsters to kill and things to look at and the normal weapons will keep you p much safe. but then you grab that red key and hooooly shit i got consistently wrecked. i didnt have any problems staying alive until the viles popped out but once that happened shit was on. theres only so much work i could do with the rocket launcher against all those barons and revenants and viles and the cyberdemons only helped so much that i realized, fuck, there has got to be a bfg in this level somewhere. so thankfully you dont actually have to kill all the monsters, just survive until you get taht elevator switch cover open and then try not to die on the way out.

i eventually found that elusive bfg in an optional area gated off by the blue key, which was cool even though i really wanted it like a half hour ago. the fight that comes with it would be p insane but for the fact that your invul should last you through the worst of it, at least enough to zerg down those archviles. the blue key itself has a good ol mob fight vs imps and cacos. the height difference makes the cacos kind of nasty since theres so much ceiling room for them to fuck around in but i didnt get overwhelmed so it didnt bother me. all the stuff in between is lurking monsters, snipers, and cool stuff galore. the main area has a sweet layout with tons of great architecture constantly changing theme as you move from area to area. it will end up like a slow play no matter how you slice it since there are so many enemies to go through but you have a shit ton of ammo and health. oh and some cool secrets. thank you mechadon. make more huge maps plz

rating: uhhh 9 i guess, or maybe a 10, or maybe a 9, nah maybe a 10, or maybe...

[Crusader No Regret]

map 15: Theory of Broken Circles

Could it be? A backpack? The first one in the sequence so far?

This will take a larger time commitment to digest than the hour or two I've tried it so far. Like what I see with the open ended layout. The gimmick become noticeable quickly; lots of circular room shapes and other architecture.

map 31: Fireking says No Cheating

Will be back for it later. Test plays have me putting the cybers to work.

map 17: Steeple of Knives

This falls into the category of play it until I beat it and then lose all interest. It actually feels difficult. Green, yellow, red was the sequence I chose. I opted to get the archviles out the way first even if it involves risky scrambles for ammo. Found things simpler to tackle pain elementals separately from the cyber. Did have a close call on my winning attempt where I thought I was boxed in by the cyber and a mancubus. Somehow lived and got the cyberdemon to kill the other monsters for me.

[dew]

Playtester's War Journal, day 416: Speedtraps for the Bee Kingdom (esselfortium, Tarnsman)

The colossal one. It was also a very late addition, at least compared to most other maps in e2 and if you can say mid-2013 is a late addition. If I understand the creation process correctly, essel had the mysterious underground temple lying around and Tarns took it and added the surface areas. Not sure who did what about texturing at all.

It's one of the loveliest and quite possibly the largest vanilla map ever, I think. I know it is JUST under the blockmap limit, which Tarns struggled with immensely. This of course led to problems we were painfully aware of since the beginning. Almost nothing can be added structurally without ripping other stuff out, so the surface areas are quite empty and the opposition there is almost entirely incidental and often marginal. There cannot be more teleport ambushes because of the blockmap and adding more monsters to fill the areas up would just make it a long and exhausting slog.

In this state, I called it a "tourist map" and I think it's rather appropriate, heh. Another term that floated around was "plasma surfing", because you just run & spam your way through the map, mowing down mid-tier monsters at a casual pace - and that's actually intended. Now, I believe the temple part works fine enough. It's not really hard, because the space given is ludicrous, but some fights can surprise you and the arachs seem to fill the place up nicely, especially when fought with plasma. I'm not entirely sold about the ambush right in front of the lift up, it feels a bit tacked on. And well, then the surface. The beach is gorgeous, but needs more teeth. If I recall correctly, it was originally emptier and spiked with viles and it didn't work too well, but I don't think we got it entirely right the second time either.

I would like to see some teleport ambushes, even at the cost of removing even more meat and going really light on incidental opposition in the surface part. Possibly sacrifice some "connecting" areas. The very first cavern? The first mountainous bit between the beach and the village? Those are a bit fillerish, but they might be necessary for that feeling of "a place". I'd also like to see masterminds on the beach I think. Oh well, I'm ranting. Basically, the map got polished to look superb and feel dreamy, but we slacked on finetuning the gameplay and then there wasn't any time left. Derp. Changes should happen so this beauty doesn't draw mehs along with wows.

Fun fact: the beach crusher was very prone to producing ghost nobles. It's actually really scary when a ghost baron starts chasing you around, but it probably isn't the sort of "added teeth" we are looking for, heh.


Playtester's War Journal, day 417: Bulldog Skin (Khorus, esselfortium)

Yes, it's a Khorus speedmap. Yes, he did it around the same time as ksshit. Everyone who guessed it gets a pat on the head. The hellish theme obviously put it late into e2 (e3 isn't exactly hell as we know it), but the size meant it would be a short break map. Which we did need sorely anyways, so that was fine. Over time it became apparent that the map would need light sprucing up, though, because due to its quick birth it started lagging behind the peers in general, uh, polish. Read: It was raw and we needed to ruin it with our meddling. Khorus gave essel a permission to brush over it visually and I tried to fix the biggest gameplay woe - the opposition in the BK segment was super-easy to cheese/camp/hamstring.

Yeah, I added the cliff cyb and made everyone's favourite temple cybs teleport, so now you know in which direction shit should be flinged. :) The reason is simple - the cybs really struggled with the ledge there and it was too easy to run past them and plink them to death from above. You can still do it from the BK room, but it's not as easy and if you made it that far evading them, be our guest anyway. The cliff cyb adds presure, because otherwise that area is pretty weak, but we had to make him teleport, because you bastards would just spam him to death even when you're not supposed to. To anyone who wasted tons of ammo on him: heh. The fights could be made harder with extra monsters and whatnot, but I dunno, is it necessary? It's about the telegimmick. The start area is all Khorus as it always was. Oh and I like the idea of having another way out of the double-locked room to facilitate the Gotcha fight and have a better angle for watching it.

Oh yeah, fun fact. When essel took over managing the map, he missed my gameplay edit and the two branches, both blessed by Khorus, only got merged like a week before the deadline, heh.

I probably made a ton of factual errors because I'm writing this from work without the resources for checking.

[esselfortium]

dew said:

Playtester's War Journal, day 416: Speedtraps for the Bee Kingdom (esselfortium, Tarnsman)

The colossal one. It was also a very late addition, at least compared to most other maps in e2 and if you can say mid-2013 is a late addition. If I understand the creation process correctly, essel had the mysterious underground temple lying around and Tarns took it and added the surface areas. Not sure who did what about texturing at all.

Nah, all the parts were designed specifically for this map. The first area I built was the swamp ledge jump just before the first bamboo hut you see.

There's a bit of intermingling here and there, but I did the underground temple, the aforementioned swamp ledge jump and the following cave with the bamboo hut where you get the yellow key, and the ending (everything from the steep downhill water cavern onwards to the cliff climb and exit). And of course the rope bridges, which were a very late addition: I kept putting off their creation because I expected them to be much more difficult than they actually were.

I actually had to ask Tarns to stop building at some point so that I'd have a chance to catch up with him and have more than one room in the map, because he's so speedy. It was around that time that the underground temple came into existence, I think.

Tarnsman has discussed the possibility of rebuilding some parts of the map for a later release, to more efficiently use the available blockmap space and thus allow more teleport closets and such to be implemented without breaking the size limit.

[Tarnsman]

dew said:

The colossal one. It was also a very late addition, at least compared to most other maps in e2 and if you can say mid-2013 is a late addition. If I understand the creation process correctly, essel had the mysterious underground temple lying around and Tarns took it and added the surface areas.

Completely and totally 100% wrong. Also the intended gameplay is not plasma surfing but running past everything as V1 had supreme ammo starvation the girth of cell ammo was added for UV Max to be a possible thing.

[dew]

Tarnsman said:

Completely and totally 100% wrong. Also the intended gameplay is not plasma surfing but running past everything as V1 had supreme ammo starvation the girth of cell ammo was added for UV Max to be a possible thing.

Yeah that wasn't going to work, heh. My excuse for getting the contribution parts wrong is that I've never seen the WIPs and the thread was started with basically a working version. :P

[40oz]

KevinHEZ said:

Never heard of seasoned flesh?

Saturn X is made of orange spaghetti.

[j4rio]

Yeah, I added the cliff cyb and made everyone's favourite temple cybs teleport, so now you know in which direction shit should be flinged.

That setup with teleporting cybs would be a little less lame if there were visual indications of teleporting lines and destinations on floor.

[Tarnsman]

dew said:

Yeah that wasn't going to work, heh.

Too bad I'm removing all the ammo.

[Steve D]

Map13 – Nation Gone Dry by Jimmy/Tarnsman – Kills – 112, Items – 100, Secret – 100. End Health – 100, Armor 10. Death Count – 7. Shells – 15, Bullets – 96, Rockets – 0, Cells - 100

UV pistol-start, Risen3D, frequent saves, keyboard-only

Damn, but I fell far behind. I'd like to apologize to the BTSX team for this, and can only say that the last few months have been the busiest period for me in the last 2 years, so I keep falling behind on everything. I do hope my lengthy rantings and ramblings are somewhat helpful to the mappers, and in order to not deprive you of a SteveD Skyscraper of Text, I WILL finish this mapset this month, even if I have to not play whatever the club picks for the end of the month. My vote was the same as Memfis, for Serenity, as I'd like a bit of olskool Ultimate Doom action after porking-out on 85 million fucking Revvies in BTSX. ;D

Anyway . . .

This map is a bit more like it. It has a nasty start, because it goes back to the BTSX E2 obsession with Revvies and snipers, and Revvies as snipers, and all you get is the single shotty to deal with them. This led to almost all my deaths occurring at the start and up to the SSG, making the map very front-loaded. The Chaingunner snipers in the big open area were the deadliest monsters in the entire map. In some ways, it reminds me of one of my maps, where I love to pounce on players with shitloads of hitscanners. I've read that the idea is to force the player to run into the building and keep going, but I frankly have no desire to play that way, especially when I have an Archie in front of me inside that building. So I was bound and determined to kill all the Revvies on the ground in the start area so they couldn't follow me, and to do that and have more than 5% health left over, I had to kill those Chaingunner jagoffs first. And all with a single shotty. This could be made at least more bearable with an SSG and/or a Chaingun at the start. As it was, I went inside the building to kill Chaingun Charlie and take his weapon, then went back out to get those damned snipers. A few deaths and many savescums later, I finally succeeded and began eliminating the ground Revvies, leaving most of the overhead meat snipers alive, dealing with them later when the map looped to their positions. Then I went back inside, figured out the strategy of drawing Archie to me so he could teleport into the “dry fountain,” as DotW called it, where I resorted to corner abuse to kill him with the single shotty – a drag and a half, to say the least. I'm furious with the map at this point since it seems purposely designed to be as anti-fun as possible. Just dreadful so far. Further, I found the architecture annoying here with all of its weird stairs and small height variations, and ways blocked behind you, and, just ggggaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Then comes the SSG battle, but first Revvies teleporting in behind me as I go down Archie Hallway. So I draw them back to the teleport lines. Thrills and chills, y'all. But at least teleport traps are being used and pressure is being put on me by having them teleport in behind my back, so I'm happy. This time, I leave the Revvies to play in the dry fountain while I move ahead, and find more snipers every-fucking-where. Just a camping and corner-abuse spectacular so far as I carefully run around up and down the stairs to first clear out the overhead hitscanners and Revvies before plinking-away at the damned Arachnotrons.

At this point, finally, the worst of the map is over, and it starts to become a decent series of challenging traps and looping layouts, and some good Archie action. I died my first time through the water area where you have Mancs in front and Cacos sneaking in behind you. I survived the red key trap by savescumming after seeing what teleported in, and then just running to a chokepoint where I let loose with the rockets because Archie was one of the first monsters to come after me. Luck!

The battle behind the red door was interesting but needs some tuning because the damned Cacos kept getting stuck up at the top of the waterfall, a major problem for a vanilla mapset where you can't mouselook in the intended game, and it took a long time for me to clear that room because of this. Extending the waterfall to the ceiling and reducing the amount of units the floor drops could solve the problems. It was a damned good-looking room, though. I benefited in this battle from finding the secret Soulspheres one after the other before reaching the red door, which forced me to open a save so I didn't waste one. This allowed me to stand my ground and rocket that fucking Archie. Losing the health was worth it to take him out faster.

I grabbed the second Soulsphere prior to the final battle, but managed to get killed by Mancs while trying to kill the second Archie. The room was well-constructed to give the player many ways of tackling the fight. I succeeded when I ran up the watery steps towards the exit area to evade the Mancs and Arachnotron below, and get them infighting while I dealt with the Revvies and Chaingunners. Killing that Archie standing on the exit took a long time.

So the map is split into a horrendous opening followed by a challenging, but relatively mild set of traps and room battles. The omnipresence of Revvies, spiced with a lot of Archies and Mancs, does force you to keep moving, though, so it's quite a workout.

The map is a looker overall. Loved the arches, and as you progress and see a few more colors than grey-green, the installation becomes more attractive. The rising and falling water levels worked great for progression, and it was fun to see the opening areas transform into flooded arenas. Jimmy's “Scattered Ashes” was even better than his “Mist At Dawn” from the previous map, though Jimmy's tendency to use those high, squonky keyboard notes continues, becoming a signature of sorts.

In the end, I give the map a provisional thumbs-up. I'm not sure what Jimmy has in mind for possibly replacing this map, but altering the opening by giving the player an SSG, and replacing the current SSG with a Rocket Launcher, and eliminating the Chaingunner snipers at the start, would make the map more to my taste, at least. Note my end-ammo counts, also, because ammo gets tight in this map, though I rarely felt any strain on that score. And hey, I think this is my first UV-Max for the megawad. Cue the fireworks! ;D

[Steve D]

Map14 – Shocker In Gloomtown by Mechadon/Vader – Kills – 97, Items – 89, Secret – 50. End Health – 100, Armor 200. Death Count – 22. Shells – 50, Bullets – 50, Rockets – 19, Cells - 40

UV pistol-start, GZDoom, frequent saves, keyboard-only

Well halle-fucking-lujah! This is the map I've been waiting for! Look at that luscious death count of 22, meaning I was happily greased in many locations of this intricate and challenging map. I very much liked Mechadon's E1 map, and this collab with Vader has me salivating for the completion of Vela Pax. This is ginormous Doom mapping done right. I really loved everything about it, including all kinds of shit that pissed me off in earlier maps, like snipers. My fave sniper moment was the SSG trap, with new Chaingunners teleporting in as fast as I could kill them. Oh, yeah, “Fuck you, player!” :D

My reaction to this map is a good example of how subjective things can be. Why does some kind of vicious sniper placement here thrill me, when in the previous map I was infuriated? Maybe it's because I at least get an SSG after I die enough – 3 times -- to conquer the snipers, including a Spider Mastermind in this case. Mechadon and Vader did everything – except for one thing – the way I like it. I mean, I like to get kicked in the teeth, I like to get killed. I like that better than some middle ground where the fights are only hard enough to be irritating instead of potentially fatal – aside from incidental combat, that is, which is always needed for a large, pacey map.

Oh, that one thing they did which I didn't like? It's when you open the yellow door and have to slowly take out a Manc, and then you walk in and a Pinky offers a pointless attack. This is “tedious shootage,” though I'm guessing the Manc is there to be rezzed by Archie later. But that was it. ;D

I enjoyed the Rocket Launcher battle, where I ran to a corner by a fence only to get hosed by Chaingunners. Well done, guys! That was a thoughtful bit of mapper dickery. But my favorite fight was the Caged Monsters Room. I was laughing at first, all those helpless monsters in cages, all that dull-as-hell easyass room clearing. What were these guys thinking? And then I go into one of the cages and flip a switch, and get an Imp-swarm. More relaxing carnage. Yeah, these guys are really off their game with fight design in this room! And then another cage, another switch, and it's a Pinky swarm. Oh, such larks! And then . . . I'm surrounded by flames.

What I really love about this fight is that Mechadon and Vader – don't know who's responsible – had the balls to commit and follow-through on what amounts to a big long joke to sucker the player into a false sense of security, and then drop a small building on them. Not the Chrysler Building, but maybe the corner drugstore. The important thing is that it was so beautifully planned and executed, not just another room with monsters to kill but a structured deception. And I did die a few times trying to single out those Archies from the crowd. It wasn't the hardest fight ever, but it was a thing of beauty. Please accept my deepest appreciation.

Ah, and then we have the ending. I'm so glad I never found the BFG, because it was easier to appreciate the sheer, gleeful cruelty of the set-up with nothing but the PG and SSG against all those hitscanners and Herr Cyb himself. 7 deaths here, IIRC, including 3 oh-so-close, down to the last shot and coulda survived last-second deaths. It was the perfect capstone to a super-fun map.

Yeah, the map was good-looking, too, and wildly interconnected. I wandered around aimlessly a bit, and found the Mastermind Crusher ages after I had SSGed her to death. So this is the second map where I wouldn't change a thing. And cheers to Jimmy for his excellent Enigma track, which kept the momentum going. He's on a roll with the last 3 tracks. So yeah, this is my new favorite.

[mouldy]

MAP26 - "Beneath A Festering Moon" by Xaser

Very cool map with lots of character, cramped and awkward navigation in places but it never gets in the way of the fighting. The star of the show is the fancy new textures and quirky architecture that really gives a sense of a functioning alien world, rather than just an abstract place where monsters hang out. Not sure what the secret spider battle was about, since I guess you could just grab everything and run away (and the rev snipers were too much of a pain to clear out anyway), unless the exit was locked for a time and i didn't notice while I was killing stuff. Anyway, like a fool I took on the final archvile bonanza with only a rocket launcher and some luck, and afterwards found the bfg and invul that would have made it a walkover, but hey ho. There were 20 enemies left alive somewhere, so I suppose I missed some more action, but enjoyed what I found. Dig the surreal ending map too.

So thats that for episode 2. Definitely has more visual character than episode 1 and felt like more variety, and the story itself shines through more thanks to the sense of progression you get from the changing scenery. The gameplay was a bit up and down for me, but a lot more ups than downs for sure. I couldn't really pick any favourites as they are nearly all pretty cool despite any minor faults. There are a couple that I would send to their room to think about what they did though, mostly because of archviles (17 & 24).

[kmxexii]

MAP26 EDISNOOM GNIRETSEF A HTAENEB

at long last, the terrible secret of btsx e2. chekhov's tower, if you will. i guessed the moment i saw that monumental fucker in the hub map that id be dukin it out here and when i got inside the building from "steeple" i knew it was a done deal. xaser brings more cinematic magic with that suspended in dusk-like shot of lighted catwalk in the void, and as a perfect bookend, when you enter the optional base opposed youll see the starting area when looking back, which is a nice touch. all points between is a k-rad adventure as you navigate the tower before reaching an enormous stargate err i mean fargate on the other side following a short cavern crawl. the tower itself feels like pure unfiltered xaser as you have to navigate four floors, one of which you might not even find. a lot of it is congested yet left me feeling exposed with all those snipers, the damage floor, and dudes like the pain elementals running around. the tower has a lot of moving parts which makes it a cool bit of sector machinery. the basement is a wonderful echo of e1's final map. tango got to introduce you to the ruins of episode 2 in a bit of foreshadowing; xaser sets you up with a very different encounter, but if i had to guess, the bizarre outer ring teases a small selection of e3.

the finale is perfectly encapsulated, a mess of monsters from the fargate that are tricky to kill straight-up with all those archviles. good news, though. if you just stroll on past that ominous looking obvious setpiece, you can explore another uac installation that has a soul sphere, a bfg, and an invul sphere. the first one is kind of unimportant with the other two but you still got to fight for them through more claustrophobic firefights. that grand staircase makes using rocket power a little awkward. its all good though and considering all the setups its a pretty satisfying climax to btsx e2.

rating: 01/01

Spoiler

MAP27

"I have run out of places to climb. I will abandon this body and take to the air.

"We will leave twin vapour trails in the air, white lines etched into these rocks.

"I am the aerial. In my passing, I will send news to each and every star."

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP26 Beneath a Festering Moon

Hello Xaser.

So from the looks of it, we're ACTUALLY going to climb this thing. This grand tower of course. When I get there, I raise the bridges, then go to the side area, which is pretty cramped for encounters. Inside the tower I end up with a three-archvile ambush as I hide near the door, before exploring everything on this first floor of the tower. I cleaned out both first and second floors finding a few interesting things along the way, before finding my way through spiral staircases and teleports on what I assume is the bottom. Those pain elementals are very annoying here, especially since they don't float upwards. I find the big secret in this area, which is a spider/revenant arena on the purple floors, finding a secret invulnerability that made my life easier. This was sure a great fight.

Heading back up, I leave the tower for the final stretches of the level. A plasma gun ambush had me completely incapable of dodging shit thrown at me, and there was a cavern area with an annoying precise jump for a secret. Eventually, I reach outside looking towards the grand portal which doubles as the level exit, with some dead enemies present (there's that barrel gimmick in effect once again!), and an area off to the side. If I approach the portal, the side area is sealed off (for 30 secs) and I have a hard fight. Although I believe it's entirely optional, I went for the side area, and found a few more close-quarters combat, a BFG, and a secret invulnerability, all of which help me out for the final battle. The invulnerability even doubles as a teleport back before the side area, and now I fight the enemies that attack. Several archviles and several perched revenants. Boy am I glad I got that invuln, and with it the map. This is a damn fine concluding level to the set. A damn fine level.

[Veinen]

Map15: Theory of Broken Circles

Man, this was just huge and confusing. Felt a little too big at first to be honest and I did get really fucking lost after grabbing the BK while still looking for the other two. But after properly unwrapping this package, it is actually quite manageable in terms of complexity. The keys can be acquired in any order and at any given time; most of my time was spent in the outside "circle" doing... nothing? Stacking up on ammunition I guess. At first the outside areas were really the confusing part since everything looks very similar: brown and grey cliffs and caves with rivers of of blood flowing through everywhere. Pinpointing your location out there is very hard and the teleports scattered around teleporting you to random places on other sides of the map don't help much. Combat is really slow paced due to the nature of the map. You're literally crawling through the cliffsides sniping back those pesky snipers. Glad rockets are abundant at least. A few Cybers too, most packed in the same area once things unfold. The BK trio caused an embarrassing death on my FDA I'm not going to bother posting. Have not even played it in solonet yet so can't comment on that.

[punnyone]

Map 26 - Beneath A Festering Moon - 99% Kills, 80% Secrets, HMP Skill.

It's been teased since the megawad was first announced via Essel's first teaser screenshots, teased throughout the hub, even hinted at in an intermission text. But now we finally get to explore the tower in the fountain of sparks, that lies beneath a festering moon.

Map 17 gave us a hint at these gothic/tech hybrid textures as well as the purple ooze, but now we get the main course. This level is an absolute standout that doesn't even look remotely vanilla compatible. There's so much detail and height variations, it makes my head spin!

Before entering the tower itself, there is the matter of raising the bridge while waking up numerous cacodemons, and entering the side base, where a double archville trap awaits the unweary.

Once in the tower, there are four main "floors" to get through. The first one features three archvilles in a mad scientist-like laboratory. There is an upper battlement, and the first of many tubeways downstairs. The second floor has those nice glowing red stained glass windows, and lots of pain elementals. The third level down is probably the most impressive. I love the illusion that we are right underneith the lava, and this effect is pulled off surprisingly well. Finally, there's the hidden lowest floor, with cobwebby orange flesh and spiders galore. Very impressive stuff!

After getting through this twisted tower, we enter a temple that radically transforms into a blood-soaked place of evil worship. Then some spelunking and avoiding more monsters before finally encountering the "Rusty Time Machine". Before tackling the inevitable bloodbath, it's highly recommended to take a sidetrack into the western base. Aside from some more futuristic architecture, there is quite an armory. The final battle is rather tricky, but it is highlighted by those cacodemons coming out of the gate. Once everything's gone, we raise up to the machine and enter the unknown.

Map 27 - It appears we're not on Saturn X anymore, or even in a stable reality for that matter! This may just be a teaser for E3 but it looks amazing. Even the music is impressive. Now, onto the painful waiting for the eventual teaser shots/level names of E3 similar to the E2's April fools day 2013 reveal!

Full review to come next -

[Demon of the Well]

Map 25 -- Unstable Journey - FDA, 0 deaths, but DNF due to map malfunction. Uses beta 2.
Right, so I managed to break this map somehow (I didn't mean to, honest!)--I was recording on -cl 2, which I don't think should have broken anything? Anyway, at the very end of the red key leg, the teleporter to the ledge with the sergeants and the switch that lets you out onto the imp ledge from the start of the quest ends up breaking because a monster (presumably from the teleporter closet just south of the room with the ledge/switch) manages to materialize in the space just before or just as I throw the switch that's supposed the lower the pad to the ground, thus jamming the mechanism and making the teleporter (and thus, the only way out of that huge southern area, or at least the only one I was able to find) inaccessible. You can use -skipsec 3965 or so + IDDT on the automap to see this in action. Fortunately, despite this malfunction, I still got to see 99% of what the map had to offer--found all the secrets, went pretty much everywhere, killed all but 25 monsters or so, etc. Only thing I didn't see was the medium-size ambush right by the actual map exit, essentially, though I also heard another spider mastermind stomping around outside the map's boundaries that I never met, as well.

Making it all the way to the end and then hitting that brick wall was a bit disheartening to say the least, but nevertheless it was a lovely journey while it lasted, one of such scope that talking about it with any kind of coherency seems difficult, as mouldy says (not that I won't try, windbag that I am). Presumably, this map takes place within the confines of that massive burning building looming over the exit of the final hubmap; after having traversed the haunted underhalls in map 24, Doomguy arrives on the surface, deep within the bowels of Hell's strongest bastion on Saturn X. Thematically speaking, the map is all over the place, and uses the majority of the episode's texture resources at one point or another (none of that Maya stuff that I saw, though), amounting to some unclassifiable gothtech/mountaincrypt/lavadungeon/fleshruin/mansionbase....thingy....with a book depository! In terms of layout and structure I don't think it's quite as intricate/ornate as 'Tricyclic Looper' from E1, opting for scale and spaciousness instead of a minutely-interwoven play area. It's all very abstract, and thus, quintessentially Doom; oddly enough, the long meandering chains of sweeping hallways and interlocking chambers put me in mind of some steroidal, bionically-enhanced and devilpact-enchanted version of something from The Shores of Hell. Fitting, to say the least, as I came to imagine the setting to be nothing more and nothing less than the greatest of the planet's lost civilization's analog to the Deimos/Phobos bases: the crucible of the horror that swallowed the world, here fueled by delving into black magic and necromancy instead of astrophysics and matter transposition, but the story is really the same--finite beings toying with forces beyond their ken in their hubris, and suffering dearly as a result.

This is again a "explore to find three keys, in any order, so you can exit" proposition. While it does appear to have a high degree of sincere nonlinearity (the commitment is apparent in the duplicate copies of mid/high-end weapons found throughout the map), the impression doesn't always come through with a great deal of clarity, since a great deal of the play content is fairly self-contained, epitomized by the huge red key leg, which seals you in until you complete it. There's some overlap/interchange between tasks you need to work on that relate to the blue and yellow keys, but generally speaking once you start exploring a particular path the map tends to keep you on that path until you're done with it--several junction areas that join different paths do exist, but generally the flow of the architecture and the action tends to subtly discourage starting 50 tasks but finishing none of them, probably accounting in large part for the map's apparent ease of navigability even by players who are self-avowedly prone to becoming lost/disoriented. I'm generally comfortable in maps where progression is genuinely unguided, myself, but I've no ill to speak of this subtly shepherding approach, either, as the sense of adventure is about as pronounced either way. I was also reminded of 'Underground Initiations' from E1 in that there does seem to be something of a basic itinerary that's significantly more ideal than the alternatives, centering largely on the blue key. While you need this key to open the exit just the same as the other two, it also seems to pull double-duty as something of a sidequest/bonus area MacGuffin, allowing access to some out-of-the-way corners of the map where the player can score some useful artifacts, chief among them the BFG (which comes with its own gratuitous invulnerability-fueled demonicidal ticktertape parade when you find it), which can prove quite useful later on down the line, particularly near the end of the red key leg. I was lucky in my playthrough, acquiring the blue key first, and accessing essentially all of the bonus items (and doing the little yellow key leg) related to it before moving into the hilly southern area to search for the red key, which houses most of the map's most dangerous scenarios.

On that note, there's generally an elephant in the room when one talks about the combat in a map of this size arranged and orchestrated in this way--the simple fact is that a majority of it is bound to be incidental, and a fair bit of it is bound to be unmemorable. Generally speaking, while a lot of it is rather simplistically staged, the action flows smoothly enough, relying on a consistently heterogeneous blend of monsters of all strengths and sizes and the natural interest afforded by minute-to-minute variations in height and scale to gloss over the fact that what you are doing a lot of the time is having a straightforward room-by-room shootout with monsters that directly obstruct your path. At its weakest, you tend to open a door or round a corner into a smaller room, and then encounter a group of 2-3 of one mid-tier monster with a couple of weaklings on the wing as distractions, which you then tend to fight either through the doorway threshold or by backstepping/strafing a bit respective of the corner, where applicable--there's a lot of this in the guts of the blue and yellow key areas. It's not a question of conservative vs. aggressive play in these cases; it's just the way very simplistic combat like this tends to play out. At the incidental action's best, by contrast, you'll often see larger/taller rooms that have threats at more than one height and that wake up and approach from more than one angle as you move farther into the area (often in an attempt to silence the elevated attackers), which naturally plays out in a more varied, kinetic way--the large yard early on where you unwittingly make a choice that sets you on either the blue/yellow or red key legs (right before I drop down and fight the vile twins for my SSG in the demo) is a good example of this. It's very Eternal Doom-ish in that while the ebb and flow of battle is digestible enough in itself, as a whole experience it relies heavily on the strength of mood/aesthetic/setting, as this kind of action would have a harder time flying in a less atmospherically-endowed map.

Of course, Mechadon's a damned savant, and so of course he knows to add spikes of action to help the map keep forward momentum over its considerable length, chiefly enshrined in setpiece battles around objects of importance. These range from largely spectacle-for-the-sake-of-it affairs ala the aforementioned BFG bonanza to more legitimately threatening affairs like the two-front brawl in the red key's arena, which I somehow managed to survive despite a great deal of clumsiness of my part. The interesting thing about these more actively staged climaxes is that they seem to vary in size/shape more than they do in overall threat--while the blue key massacre and the BFG/V-sphere fight are mild compared to the others, in a map this size it's refreshing to face both an encounter where I'm nearly killed because hordes can be tricky to manage (the red key fight) and an encounter where I'm nearly killed because I'm backed into a corner in a tight area and have to fight like a rabid dog not to be overwhelmed and torn to shreds (the yellow key fight). Ironically, I think I had the toughest time of all with some of the incidental battles in the open hill/valley area, but I'm going to chalk that up more to competence issues on my part than to bloodthirsty combat design (I guess I have to admit it might be one of those cases where I might've been more aggressive and thus ended up having an easier time in the long run if I hadn't been 45+ minutes into the FDA at the time). Overall, the variety in the action (along with the map's aesthetic/atmospheric virtues) compensates for some of the dryer stretches fairly well, I think, and the climaxes are spaced out enough that the action feels relevant throughout. Main criticisms would be that I don't really care for the way Barons tend to be used in this map (e.g. as doors made of select-grade demon-brisket), and the aforementioned room-cleary bits. Something to try in a few places instead of pre-placed mid-tier monsters might be to have the player move through a few initially empty rooms, and then introduce random teleporting floods of weak trash-monsters like former humans and imps and such (sometimes from more than one location, of course)--seemed to work pretty well for Ed in 'The Colossus Crawls West', which otherwise would've been a very rote room-by-room affair.

While it's easy to understand where this kind of thing won't be to everyone's taste, I really dig this kind of map myself (and this particular map), and I hope we see more of its ilk in E3.

[Mechadon]

Demon of the Well said:

Map 25 -- Unstable Journey - FDA, 0 deaths, but DNF due to map malfunction. Uses beta 2.
Right, so I managed to break this map somehow (I didn't mean to, honest!)--I was recording on -cl 2, which I don't think should have broken anything? Anyway, at the very end of the red key leg, the teleporter to the ledge with the sergeants and the switch that lets you out onto the imp ledge from the start of the quest ends up breaking because a monster (presumably from the teleporter closet just south of the room with the ledge/switch) manages to materialize in the space just before or just as I throw the switch that's supposed the lower the pad to the ground, thus jamming the mechanism and making the teleporter (and thus, the only way out of that huge southern area, or at least the only one I was able to find) inaccessible.

Really sorry about that! You might be happy to know that the bug has since been fixed though. I wasn't sure if I should have made a mention about it here or not, but I decided to wait and see if anyone ran into it. The bug never cropped up in my chocorenderlimits testing, and that seems to depend on timing and luck. The switch you press to lower the teleporter, and the monsters that teleport to it, can cause the lowering floor to bug out and not lower completely. And yea, its your only way out soooo...you get stuck :(. I just never managed to trigger it in testing unfortunately, and I didn't get a chance to get the fix in the latest beta release.

By the way, I've gotten some really great feedback/ideas to mix up some fights in areas so that there's not nearly as much run'n'gun gameplay (well I've made quite a few changes since the last beta, but that's one gameplay aspect that I've been meaning to polish). There probably would have been more varied encounters, specifically via teleporting monsters, but this map was a big lesson for me when it came to working within the vanilla limits...specifically the BLOCKMAP (for anyone curious, its my first true vanilla map). I got probably 90% done with the layout when I ran into the BLOCKMAP limit, which really hindered some of the intermediate monster encounters I was planning on attempting. In the last couple of updates I've made, the map has gotten a head-to-toe line optimization (plus one area has been reduced/redone entirely) so that I could scrounge up enough BLOCKMAP bytes for some monster teleporters and a few other additions. I wanted to do a bit more but I'm pretty much stuck staring at the brick wall that is the BLOCKMAP, unless I want to chop away big chunk of the layout that is.

Hopefully the changes/additions will spice up some encounters a bit more :). I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the map as well; I know big maps aren't always popular and they can be difficult to make and make interesting. You may be interested in one of my E3 maps too.

[Steve D]

Map15 – Theory of Broken Circles by Vader – Kills – 100 (495 monsters), Items – 89, Secret – 66. End Health – 100, Armor 0. Death Count – 18. Shells – 27, Bullets – 0, Rockets – 3, Cells - 60

UV pistol-start, GZDoom, frequent saves, keyboard-only

Good holy shit, what an ordeal this was! This is one of those maps that's obviously a work of genius, a masterpiece perhaps, but not something I can fully enjoy. The best I can say about this never-ending nonlinear nightmare is . . . I prevailed. I shocked the shit out of myself by getting 100% kills (you gotta be kidding me!). I found 6 out of 9 secrets, and I found your secret-fucking-exit! So, hah! ;D

And now you have to call me a cod? Well . . .

I want to shower some praise on Jimmy for his exceptional BGM Geometry. In a series of excellent tracks starting with Map12's Mist At Dawn, this is IMO the best of an outstanding batch. Well done!

So now back to this crazyass map by Vader, which I started playing back in high school and finally completed as I was signed-in to an assisted-living center. We go back to the well-trod BTSX E2 formula of giving the player an inappropriate shit weapon at the start, plus 850 million snipers – yes, I counted, and that's accurate to a level of + or – 10 – and in this case, 250,000 hectares of samey, winding caverns to achieve the maximum level of confusion for half-blind codgers such as myself. It didn't help that I started playing at about 3AM in a semi-conscious state after awaking from a mild delirium. As a result, I died 9 times within the first 127 monsters. It occurs to me that one of the reasons I haven't been as thrilled with E2 as E1 is because my schedule has resulted in several maps being played very late at night in a near-comatose state, and as a result finding myself in a very grumpy mood. When I resumed play in the afternoon, I was able to proceed without dying until about the 360th monster, but perhaps because this was also the methodical cavern-clearing section before I started running into nastier traps around the keys.

Without question the most agonizing sequence during what I'll call my Alert Afternoon State was a canyon seemingly filled with Pain Elementals. They wore down my supply of shells, bullets and even cells, until . . . there I was, surrounded by Pain Elementals and with a fuck-ton of rockets. Oh, was that nasty!

This was one of many occasions when I had the “wrong” ammo and was forced to run around the Lower 48 looking, usually, for shells or bullets. Of course, this is due in no small measure to this map featuring nothing but the dreaded Doom 2 Meat Game. No hitscanners anywhere to serve up ammo when they die, just metric tons of meat absorbing one artillery barrage after another. So many Hell Noble ammo sinks. So many Mancs. A good-sized air force of Cacos, and enough Pain Elementals spitting Lost Souls to choke a T. Rex. And it didn't help that a high sky gave the 101st Airborne tons of room to drift up and lollygag among the escarpments, adding months to the play time.

And yet, this map is so over-the-top that I confess to a genuine admiration. You'd have to put me at gunpoint before I'd play this map again, but still in all, it is rendered with amazing attention to detail and loving finesse. Vader displays an evil genius in this map, and it's mind-boggling that it works in vanilla. This map drained every last erg of life out of me. I'm too worn-out to even traipse through the hub map until tomorrow. Weirdest of all, I look forward to more Vader maps, but I'll check the maps in DB2 first to see if they're small enough for me to invest my time. This map took a lot of that resource.