The /newstuff Chronicles #109

Yay, your friendly neighborhood Cyb is doing /newstuff this week as a special guest...reviewer...yeah. Anyways, I've taken a break from playing GTA3 long enough to review these maps. Fortunately I stole deathz0r's week, so the volume of maps isn't too great, but I still had to deal with that lousy Alien Vendetta re-release and a few other crappy maps like the latest from Chris Hansen. Man, it never frickin ends, I swear. This week we have a total of 59 maps, though I could not get 18 of them to work. You'll see. Also, I've taken this opportunity to break the usual /newstuff review format because I'm a jerk like that. Now, let's get to those reviews.

• fen boi's 3d examples - Lee Szymanski
  (wad) (txt) - Boom Compatibility and ZDoom Required, Doom 2
  Three small example maps showing various methods of how to do room over room type effects. One shows the old doom2.exe method, another using Boom's deep water effect and the third using ZDoom floating bridge things. It's pretty straightforward and good for anyone who may want to learn how to do these types of effects.
  Score: N/A
  
  
• Fear Stalks The Land - Kenny Coughlan
  (wad) (txt) - doom2.exe Compatible -
  As far as I can tell from the text file, this is the author's first map. And I must say, for a first map, it isn't bad at all. It's certainly better than anything I ever released when I first started mapping. That said, the map itself is painfully underdetailed. There are so many bare walls and ceilings that I was hard pressed to find some architecture for the screenshot. Monster placement is well done however, and ammo balance is quite good as well, though I found myself running a bit thin at the end, I did I have enough to kill off everything. All in all, for a first effort it's quite good (the textures on all of the many staircases are even aligned), but it would have been a lot better with some more detail. As it stands it's a pretty forgettable map.
  Score: 5/10
  
  
• The Hunger - David & Kathy Bruni
  (wad) (txt) - doom.exe Compatible -
  In many ways this map is worse that the last one. It's got the same big open, undetailed rooms, but it also has stupid hidden doors that are necessary to complete the map. Call me crazy, but running around a map like a moron and pushing on every wall is not what makes a map good. In fact, it's what makes a map annoying. I suppose I could be more forgiving, seeing as how the map was first released in 1994, but damnit, this is what updating is for. To make better. Furthermore the authors are former members of TeamTNT and even contributed a map to Eternal Doom, so why this map is like it is I understand even less. Skip it.
  Score: 4/10
  
  
• The Omen - David & Kathy Bruni
  (wad) (txt) - doom.exe Compatible -
  More of the same from the above authors. Like The Hunger it was originally made in 1994 and revised, though I'm not sure exactly what was revised. Just a bunch of bland rooms stuck together with no real theme or order. Also one to not bother with.
  Score: 4/10
  
  
• Rip it, Tear it, Smash it! - Chris "c-cooper" Hansen
  (wad) (txt) - doom.exe Compatible -
  I must admit I was never really a fan of episode 2. It always came across as sort of ugly and lacking any sort of design for the most part. However, the author of ch-retro has brought us another excellent map in the theme of one of the original Doom episodes. This time of course, episode 2, and not one map, but two. The maps are very well laid out and remind me very much of the style of episode 2. That would be, not quite as techy as episode 1, but nowhere near as hellish as episode 3. I think Chris nailed it right on the head with these two maps.
  
  Going into each one slightly, the first map is pretty short and straightforward. However, it's not easy in a sense since you'll don't have enough ammo to miss too much. The second map is much larger and more of a challenge with cacodemons thrown in many places and two barons in a fight at the end. The architecture of each map is beautiful and the textures all work very well together. The only problem was I couldn't find the red key on the second map right off, but that's more of a 'Cyb is stupid' error, though in my defense the texture behind it is red... Grab this one.
  Score: 8.5/10
  
  
• WADHEX - Javier Fernando Almenara Otoya
  (zip) (txt) - Editing Utility
  An editing tool of sorts that allows you do view files (though the main intent was wad files) in hex format. So essentially it's a hex editor. I already have one, so I didn't bother to check it out, but I'm sure someone out there can find a use for it perhaps.
  Score: N/A
  
  
• I Don't Know - Mark "JACKASS" Dravich
  (wad) (txt) - Boom Compatibility Required, Doom 2 -
  Ugh. A map consisting of three areas which seemingly have nothing to do with each other. You start off in a huge room with an assload of crates and a bunch of monsters trying to pick you off. Next after opening one of those doors that goes all the way up to the ceiling, you enter a dark area with a few sloppy lights. Next a big brick area with some sort of giant stupid looking tree and a bunch of lava. Once you get to the top of that mountain thing, run towards the lamp as the exit is completely non obvious. Don't even bother with this one.
  Score: 3/10
  
  
• Torment and Torture 2: Armory of Pain - Daniel "Tormentor667" Gimmer
  (wad) (txt) - ZDoom (1.23b33) Required, Doom 2 -
  Okay, first off, with the latest build of ZDoom 2.0 (which is 27 I believe) this map crashed with a "ZDoom Very Fatal Error" for some reason. However, it will run in the last build of 1.23 just fine (beta 33).
  
  That said, this map may just be your greatest fears realized for some of you. It's Quake. The map is brown, ugly and very repetitive. Many of the rooms look almost exactly the same and at times it's hard to tell exactly where you are. Plus it's really, really brown. In case you can't figure it out, I am not a fan of Quake's color scheme. Not that I have anything against brown, it's just that when it's the only friggin color I get annoyed.
  
  That out of the way, this map isn't really all that bad. If you can get past the utter, utter browness of the entire friggin thing (with some orange thrown in for good measure) then you may just find yourself liking it. In fact, when the map first loaded I quite enjoyed the lightning effects and the nifty sky reminded me a lot of Unreal. It's quite cool. Monster/ammo balance isn't too great as I found myself running away a lot, but if you're better than I am at Doom (as you probably are) then you shouldn't have too much of a problem. Saving your ammo is also a good practice, as there's an arena area to the map where that ammo will come in handy. Also the two new monsters are fairly tough in their own right.
  
  Bottom line? Well, it's definitely not a bad map, it's just way too brown for my tastes, and many areas leave you with the feeling that they were simply pasted from another area and then just edited slightly. However, if you can deal with that, then you should go and check it out.
  Score: 7/10
  
  
• codename HYENA killermachine - Unholy Software
  (wad) (txt) - Magic Needed to Run, (Ultimate) Doom
  Okay, I'd review this if I could actually play the friggin thing. The text file says it can be played on all ports, but it's a bloody lie! ZDoom won't even load it for some reason (it says it loaded it in the console, but there is absolutely no evidence of it being loaded), Eternity crashes with some sort of pallet error, Legacy loads it, but it crashes when I tried to play the maps and when I tried it in prBoom it loaded it fine but it severely messed with my controls somehow so I couldn't move. So, in conclusion, this is a piece of crap that breaks every source port I have on my computer. Your results may vary.
  Score: N/A
  
  
• Alien Vendetta: The Compet-N Edition - Various
  (wad) (txt) - doom2.exe Compatible -
  Well it figures that the one week I decide to do reviews that those crazy bastards re-release the hardest megawad in recent years. Oy. Anyway, since there are 32 maps, and that's far too many to go into detail about, I'll just make a couple general statements and stuff.
  
  First off, if I had to describe AV in two words, they would be "fucking hard". These maps are not for the average Doomer. Or even the above average one. To get past these maps you need to have some sort of Compet-N record, or at least be a contender for one or something. There's a lot of damn monsters all over the place. It's nutty. Of course, I'm sure you already knew that.
  
  Okay, so the theme of the maps vary a bit, though the majority of them are a brown brick sort of theme. My major gripe is how some of them maps were brick themed yet there was a small tech type area thrown in there which felt severely out of place. This didn't only happen on the first couple maps (not all of them, mind you, but a few) but also in one of the hell themed maps there was a tech area that stuck out like a sore thumb. Also as a whole, there are two or three tech or base themed maps in the middle of it all which seems a bit weird to me. The text file of course explains why this is the case, but I figured that I'd point it out myself anyway.
  
  The maps are in general very good. There are many excellent lighting effects and some of the detail is really great. If you get the chance, I recommend running through a couple maps with -nomonsters just to check out some of the neat architecture. It's hard to check it out with monsters, as looking around while sixteen Hell Knights try to rip you open is not always a good idea.
  
  All in all, Alien Vendetta is quite good, as it always was, and the minor fixes and changes make it even better. Also, map24 is completely new (well, map25 was removed and map24 was switched to map25) which right there gives you something to check out. And of course, I'm probably being unnecessarily picky in the review, as really, Alien Vendetta is probably one of the better looking megawads ever made. Just the fact that it got made deserves some attention. Enjoy this folks, megawads of this quality are few and far between, and this very well may be the last of its kind. Grab this without a doubt.
  Score: 9/10