The DWmegawad Club plays: Tangerine Nightmare & UAC Ultra & Realm of Shades

[tmorrow]

map04
zdoom2.8.1, uvmax, pistol start, no saves, first time played

An amazing, epic map, the highlight of the wad. This map is more difficult than the earlier three. You start the map with a ton of hitscanners trying make short work of you. Super shotgun and the rocket launcher are early pickups with the plasma not coming along for a while. You need to use all your weapons against the onslaught of mid tier enemies you run into. There are problematic archviles you need to deal with at each of the 3 key traps. Each is guarded by a nasty trap, especially the final red key which has 5 archviles to take care of as well as pain elementals and barons. Fortunately all 3 traps can be managed if you play carefully.

There is a fair amount of non linearity to this map and the blue and yellow key sections can be done in either order. The toxic waste section can be tackled starting from either end as well. You need to be quick in the toxic waste area to clear enough enemies and get to the second rad suit before the first runs out.

The secret hunt is quite fun and well worth it for health and ammo, there's a soulsphere and megasphere which help out quite a bit, almost essential pickups in my opinion. One of the secrets to a rocket launcher is not obvious.

 

I agree with @memfis on his criticism of the monsters on 3d bridges in the second large room, they don't work properly.
 

[Phobus]

MAP03

I really like this music, so the map probably benefits from that. All the same, I thought it was pretty good. The initial nukage pool not being damaging misled me into believing that the later pools would be safe too, which obviously didn't turn out to be the case. Coming into this continuously it felt very easy to begin with, but once I got into the meat of the level I found my health fluctuating wildly. Perhaps my confidence from a smooth start was a weakness later on? Once again I found all but one of the secrets. As a side-effect of my continuous run, I'm now running around with a full stack of ammo for every weapon aside from the plasma rifle at the moment. That's filling up, though, and saw no use, although it could've been a big help in the large metal room with the trench in, as clearing all of the Revenants, Cacodemons and Arachnotrons after having my armour whittled down by the shotgunners on my side of the trench as pretty dicey. The cage trap near the plasma gun with the soulsphere on a pillar also nearly killed me, as the chaingunners that came in behind didn't register in my attention until they'd lined up like a firing squad. I survived, though, and enjoyed myself as well.

 

As a side note, I killed the five enemies in front of me at the start of MAP04 before saving, as I'd only be setting myself up for a fall if I loaded the game and then tried to do it.

[gaspe]

MAP04: The overall design improved quite a lot here, and the cool stuff from the previous levels like optional areas and the non linearity are still here. Fights also got more difficult, with arch-viles used in the key moments. Those 3D bridges with the monsters were awkward, and there's not so much health initially. Stepping on those blue squares to reveal the closets was neat.

[baja blast rd.]

Voting should start, as this month is shorter than usual. 

 

+++ Super Mayhem 17

[Catpho]

+++ESP

I mean,Mayhem17 is cool and all,but lets try weird tod maps for once :P

Edit:changing to ESP :P

Edited February 24, 2018 by Catpho

[Memfis]

[OLD]

Edited February 26, 2018 by Memfis

[Roofi]

+++ Super Mayhem 2017

 

Edited February 24, 2018 by Roofi

[rehelekretep]

+++ ESP

+++ Super Mayhem 17

 

yes i used 2 votes, whatcha gonna do about it? (ง ͠° ͟ل͜ ͡°)ง

[NuMetalManiak]

26 minutes ago, rehelekretep said:

+++ ESP

+++ Super Mayhem 17

So we are voting already? Hmm, oh wait, it's the shit month of February, that's why.

I get a runtime error running your vote, gonna try something different.

 

+++ Super Mayhem 17 and Combat Shock 2

 

MAP04

 

I was hoping it would get better.

 

BUT
IT
GOT
WORSE

 

Right from the first door you open, shit's already fucking up with the 3d bridge and the shotgun guy's just appearing next to me. Now getting the two keys, blue and yellow, is a non-linear outing, and nothing really offensive has shown up, yet. The yellow key has some sector trolling, but that's fine. There's a few homages too, one to Nuclear Plant and its staircase area + the outdoor secret, as well as one for I think Open Season. There's even a toxic pool similar to the one in Refinery, except this time the bigger meat are outside and the shotgun guys inside. The areas with the nukage can be a whole lot better, but are they the most troublesome part of this level?

 

You know how there's always that one area in any map that is memorable? Well that's the red key area, and it sucks hard. Even getting to it is a right pain in the rear, having to press a switch in a courtyard. That switch was two-sided, one side actually opens a secret, but a plasma gun is not enough. And to think, it's easy to forget that you have to go through that teleporter that was barred, the same one with the megasphere. Then you realize that is the only source of health and armor when getting to the red key arena once you finally open that door which I really don't think needed to be opened by simply walking through a teleporter.

So yes, problem #1 with red key arena, no more health and armor exists once you enter it. Problem #2, get trapped in once you enter. Problem #3, ARCH-VILES IN AN OPEN FIELD, also pain elementals and barons. Those are the only three enemy types you fight, but obviously you have multiple arch-viles in an open field. Also no BFG9000. Speaking of which, problem #4, no cell ammo. There's a lot of shells and rocket boxes, but no cells for my secret plasma gun. But the absolute WORST problem of all, problem #5. Yes, those bars to the left of the key. Here's what you do. The east door conceals the switch needed to lower those bars. But this is one of those bars that takes, what, FIVE minutes to go down? The actual height of those bars (sector 423) is 6400 units. The worst part about problem #5 is that the monsters are obviously gonna get your attention before those bars, and having the door in front of it is worse. Of course, you NEED the red key, because this level's exit is behind three key bars, but honestly, this one red key arena COMPLETELY RUINED THIS MAP. Remove it and this would've been decent.

[Poncho]

Considering how these WADs aren't exactly very long:

 

+++ Sector 666 (11 maps)

+++ Aeternum (3 maps)

+++ Scythe X (10 maps)

 

That should be enough for next month.

[Phobus]

I should be about next month and I'll probably participate as long as we don't play a slaughter map set. I'm content with Super Mayhem 17, but I was thinking it's been about 6 years since the last time we played a Community Chest, so I'd rather play any of those three again. However, as nobody else has bought one of those up, I'll echo Memfis and support an older community project.

 

+++ Heroes' Tales

[riderr3]

+++ The Standard E1 Community Project
+++ Master Levels

[Nine Inch Heels]

+++ ESP

+++ phmlspd

[Snikle]

I saw Memfis put this a few months ago and it has intrigued me ever since, so

+++Master levels

 

The other 10 days can be anything else. E1 is fine, but I wouldn't be able to do it since I don't have the Doom 1 IWAD. I would do MLs for sure though. I need an excuse to play them.

[Roofi]

I love ESP but the levels are hard and sometimes extremely long . Considering that I challenged myself to finish them without saves , I will definitely not have enough time to write daily reviews. So I will not participate if ESP is selected despite it could be a very interesting wad to review.

[Memfis]

Blah, I probably should apologize for many of my Megawad Club comments. I typically play it very casually ("coffee break" style) and don't feel like trying hard to beat everything. So if I die once or twice, I just quit and write a quick, biased and angry reaction. I'm not good at calm analysis, my posting style on Doomworld is very much based on instant emotions. So yesterday I bashed a great map, for example. My favorite maps are these I can beat on a FDA without dying (except if I get killed near the start: that is OK). :D

[Grain of Salt]

+++ ESP

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP11: Sick

9:52 | 100% Kills | 100% Items | 0% Secrets

Finishing up UAC Ultra, here. Starts out with a mob of barons, but they're a piece of cake with an SSG and a million shotgun shells. I was happy when I didn't get touched through that fight, and then less happy when I looked down and realized I had entered the level with only 22% health. Which made the next section interesting. My first instinct was to hit all the switches and then run away, which got me killed almost immediately. Second attempt was to hit one switch, shotgun the baddies, then retreat behind an interior pillar and rocket the vile. (I went shotgunners -> imps -> chaingunners.) Easy enough, and finally getting some health was the reward. The next segment of the level is hardly worth talking about, though I did get careless mopping up the chaingunners, so I went back to get my health back up...only to find the megasphere waiting for me afterwards. The final arena immediately put the Haymaker right up in my face to the point where I couldn't move left/right (I hadn't gotten far enough out into the arena yet) and so I just gave him three BFG blasts but in the meantime he took me down to like 40% health. The rest of the arena was pretty easy, since you could get out of the way of most of the snipers without too much trouble; I hung out in the corner against the wall under a manc platform, chaingunning the lost souls and then cacos. (This obvs would be far different on pistol-start!) Then it was a matter of chugging up the ramps, taking out the imps and manc (which the hell knights had mostly done for me) and then using a couple rockets to take out the knights. I do love that it's a sector boss and not your usual IoS BS, but it is a little underwhelming since priority one is, like, shoot everything that's shooting me, and then figure out the boss puzzle, and by that point there's really nothing to it. The way to improve that, in my mind, would be to have Mr. Sector Boss be a threat from the start: then your conundrum is, do I try to figure out this big thing that's blasting my face in, or pay attention to all these other dudes taking potshots at me? Maybe have it fire the imp blasts from the dangly bits, and manc blasts from the mouth? Or maybe put some revvie rockets in there? (Even though I have rather a loathing of dehacked bosses that shoot homing missiles.)

 

So UAC Ultra kind of peters out a little at the very end there, but so what? It's still amazing. It's a funny WAD, in that, though the gameplay itself isn't that great, and level design and architecture decent, but nothing spectacular, the addition of that gorgeous custom texture set makes the whole absolutely "pop" and come alive, elevating the entire endeavor and making it a classic WAD for the ages.

 

I'll probably return to Ream of Shades here soon, but man that first level did not leave me itching to get back to it...

[Magnusblitz]

1 hour ago, Salt-Man Z said:

I'll probably return to Ream of Shades here soon, but man that first level did not leave me itching to get back to it...

Same here, I tried playing a bit of MAP02 and gave up partway through and haven't felt the desire to go back since.

 

Considering voting for ESP just to get the month off.

[dobu gabu maru]

+++ Super Mayhem '17 just so Marcaek can hold his breath the entire month in anticipation of bugfixes.

 

Total tally thus far is:

 

Super Mayhem '17: 5 votes

ESP: 4 votes

Heroes' Legacy Tales: 2 votes

Master Levels: 2 votes

 

3 hours ago, Magnusblitz said:

Same here, I tried playing a bit of MAP02 and gave up partway through and haven't felt the desire to go back since.

Haha ditto. After getting halfway through MAP02 I was like "ehhhh I don't think this set is gonna offer me anything I haven't seen before..."

 

Edited February 24, 2018 by dobu gabu maru

[Poncho]

Is ESP that TimeOfDeath WAD?

[rehelekretep]

YES ESP IS BEST - VOTE NOW! (◕‿◕✿)

[Memfis]

27 minutes ago, dobu gabu maru said:

Haha ditto. After getting halfway through MAP02 I was like "ehhhh I don't think this set is gonna offer me anything I haven't seen before..."

Try Map04 and Map05. A whole another world.

 

Also, it's Heroes' Tales. =)

[gaspe]

+++esp, so I can take a month off and you'll stop to bring this up.

[Capellan]

+++ 99 Ways to Die, The Trooper's Playground, The Talosian Incident as usual

 

Also: Please don't actively vote for WADs you don't intend to (at least try to) play.  A month where the DWMC thread is a wasteland is not a good outcome.

[rehelekretep]

as much as i want ESP to win, i would definitely support that sentiment @Capellan - if youre not going to participate then you shouldnt be voting

[Nine Inch Heels]

13 minutes ago, rehelekretep said:

if youre not going to participate then you shouldnt be voting

speaking for myself: I vote because I wanna participate and do a couple writeups. Pretty there's gonna be something about TOD's maps that's worth rambling about. So...

[bioshockfan90]

+++ESP, might as well give it a go since I like ToD

[Spectre01]

Any of the following 3:

 

+++ Super Mario 17

 

+++ The Standard E1 Community Project
+++ Master Levels

 

+++ A.L.T.

[tmorrow]

+++ Super Mayhem 17

 

map05
zdoom2.8.1, uvmax, pistol start, no saves, first time played

A large map that is fairly linear but with an enjoyable layout with unexpected reconnections to earlier rooms. There are no nasty traps but there are quite a few sniping hit scanners in places and roaming pain elementals to beware of.

The secret hunt on this map is quite large but worth is worth it. There's even an unofficial secret to pick up the soulsphere on the east side of the map in the warehouse on the way to the blue key. Finding the secrets will net you an early bfg (there is another one later on) and lots of health and ammo.