What a crappy week to do newstuff reviews. Linguica is gone, everything is grey, everyone is a little sad, and Helioth releases nine wads all at once (some of which were originally created in 1994) only as a personal attack on me as newstuff reviewer. Yes, he knew it was my turn and he knew I had a busy week and not enough time to review twelve wads, and he did it on purpose!
What also makes this a crappy week is that my third therapist this month is telling me that I'm "paranoid", whatever the hell that means. I think he's working with Helioth.
To tell the truth, I actually had more than twelve wads this week, but one was a new beta of a level we already reviewed here (so not much point, is there?)
Plus, our good friend the Ultimate Doomer was nice enough to carry over three of them over to his week to lighten my load.
So for those who want the latest beta of the Zdoom TC/Megawad Underworld, it's here.
Oh, and tell me what you think of the format. 
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The Underground Base by AlexMax    |
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If you're starved for deathmatch wads, get it. It's probably the best one this week.  |
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The Spring Ballad by Helioth    |
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If you must know why I suffer from it; Spring Ballad is horribly under-detailed, with large open rooms with simple, and in some cases, copied and pasted architecture, such as a room full of identical pillars. It also has no theme that I can see. At first you're in an outdoor area, and step into a wood/brick building (I have no idea if it's a mansion, military base, or a brothel) that quickly turns into marble/hellish and oddly enough you soon come across a tentacle wall formation with a big-ass UAC logo on stainless steel right in the middle of it. And for some reason there's one room crammed full of computers, stacked to the ceiling. You'd think the people who occupied this strange whatever-it-is would space out their computers a little rather than stick them all into one room and then leave the rest completely bare. Monster and item placement might as well be random. You'll have no trouble fighting all the small/medium monsters with health and ammo littered all over the place. You get the rocket launcher really early on and I barely ended up using it because of all the bullets and shells I could find. And if that wasn't bad enough, there are switches in every third room to make what's left of your relatively undamaged brain cells join their siblings in eternal agony. A lot of guessing and re-exploring will go on. One room has four switches that open the same door--behind which is another door requiring a key--in the same room. After hitting the first switch, I hit the other three to find out what they do. They made a clicking sound. That's pretty much it. I must have hit those switches twenty times or more, running around to see if they opened a timed door that I had to find before time ran out. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that they were completely pointless, until I opened it in a wad editor. It *technically* proved me wrong, but I still think in many ways I'm right. I am heavily under the impression this is the author's first release. And from the number of other wads dumped into newstuff by Helioth this week I'd say he/she/it is not likely to be discouraged by bad first tries. Let this wad be yet another testament to the concept that you can only get better after your first level.  |
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The Imp Fiesta by Helioth    |
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It starts out with a hallway with a shotgun and a switch. Hitting the switch raises the whole hall into an arena full of enemies. It's been done before, but it worked well this time around. It would have been better with enough enemies to make an adequate ambush, but still not bad. Gameplay is more or less straightforward and a little boring, but the author created a nice sewer effect by arranging the sectors to create a circle effect (the closest you can come without slopes). (Note: This annoyed me a little because I did the same thing once and now I find out it's already been done.) The text file admits there's not much aesthetics, but I think there's more than you would give him credit for. If the transition from Spring Ballad to Imp Fiesta is like this, I anticipate all the other wads he's released this week. Kind of a spoiler here, but I liked the ending where you hit a bunch of switches and end up fighting six barons. |
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Cleaning Of All Kind by Helioth      |
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A miraculous transition. This one, Helioth's third release, actually has some nice detail, and the new music replacement gives a nice feel to it. (His other two wads just took other music from doom.) It's challenging, too. I actually ended up getting hit several times from enemies I didn't know existed. That means some great monster placement. Now and then, I think we all try to create this effect, but it's hard to do, as most doomers are very good about checking invisible corners and behind boxes. There's a decent ammo balance too. In one battle, I ran out of chaingun ammo and ended up having to kill two cacodemons in a cramped stairway with a shotgun. Easier said than done, children. Especially if you suck like I do. COAK impressed in every aspect, not like that caffeine-free COAK, which really . . . sorry. Lame joke, but I couldn't resist. |
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DoomsDay'95 by Andre Christen    |
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If that wasn't weird enough, someone seems to like using light textures in very inappropriate places. Also, there are six maps in this one wad, and yet every single one of them is exactly the same! Why? In case someone accidentally hits the exit switch five times? It's not to vary the music, that's for sure. Every single one of these maps uses the same one (from map18 originally). So for no reason that I can think of, this wad is six times the size it had to be. Happy downloading. That said, it's not such a bad wad. Just weird.  |
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DoomsDay'95 One Player by Helioth   |
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Anyway, I'll say this much; It's much much uglier and squarish, and it's a much more awkward shape. The flow was greatly improved for this. However, I did also notice a couple of things that were actually better about this wad before it was "helped". First: There are more pillars. That means something to hide behind. In the basement shot--Screenshot 1 of both wads. See Doomsday'95 above--you'll notice that there's only one way in and out. That means in the revamp, if someone gets cornered they have nothing for cover. Why did they take out what was perfectly good? Second: There are less dead ends. A deathmatch philosophy for me is that most (if not all) of the rooms should have at least two exits. This one has a lot of dead ends, but not as many as in the "fixed" version. Hey! Let's make it more annoying! Third: There's no BFG or plasma rifle. Whether or not to include these weapons usually is an author-to-author judgement call. Some prefer it, some don't. The author seemed to not want them, but apparently his helper monkey says they're a must and insists he change them. Way to take him under your wing, Mr. Guru. And one more thing, that's not so important: I kind of like this super-shotgun-hidden-inside-a pillar idea. There are two switches inside, to open and close the pillar door so you can hide and wait until someone comes in, then open the door and fire away. It would probably be better if it was a turbo door, but it's still not a bad idea. Another good idea (I hope)that comes to mind is putting a few weapons in front of the pillar, so if you're hiding and you hear the weapon pickup noise, you know someone's outside and you can sneak attack. In the finalized version, the whole pillar is discarded. I would say that the final release of Doomsday'95 probably is slightly better, but there were a lot of potentials this wad had that could have been improved upon but instead were just trashed. Wonderfun.  |
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The Twin Brothers by Helioth    |
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Whatever Helioth is on, he's slowly upping the dosage as he makes levels. Marijuana and beer while mapping; Just say no. Still a good level, though. |
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Caesar by Helioth     |
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Helioth, on the other hand, thinks they are and created a fun albeit strange level with the same idea. The text file says: This time you will play the role of a brave gladiator fated to die under the fangs of dozens of ugly and starving monsters. You will be lucky if Caesar, who is looking forward very much for your death, applauses. However he doesn't, don't worry because hundreds of spectators will enjoy to see your blood spilling on the ground of the amphitheatre. Sounds interesting to me. Just a couple of things wrong with that little scenario. All the spectators are UAC marines, and you fight with plasma rifles, rocket launchers, and super shotguns. You don't think Caesar is going to applaud when he sees weapons from a thousand years in the future, tearing apart one-eyed spherical monsters and rocket-launching skeletons? Weirder still is the textures. Is that the corpses of babies I see in screenshot number one? And as mind-warping icing on your psychadelic cake, the spectators are mannequins, aka voodoo dolls. That means stray fireballs that hit the spectators will hurt you. It also means one of the big doom bugs might come into play (and it did for me) where you can end up with 0% health and no weapons but are still able to run around like a chicken with its head cut off. P. S. The music replacement is nice, but really really repetitive.  |
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Tenacity by Francois Coppex (Helioth)     |
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Anyway, the first part of the map is a regurgitation of his circular pipe idea in Imp Fiesta, except that it just keeps going. Now I know why the sewer in Batman Doom was so squarish. The weird shape of this pipe area makes it hard to dodge, and while this adds a little bit of challenge it can also be a little frustrating. One fun part, though, is when you kill an imp and its corpse slides along until it reaches the end of the pipe. It doesn't stay like this, though. And to tell the truth, when I left the pipes I was really relieved. It saved me the trouble of complaining about how boring a level full of pipes was. It goes on to a dark maze full of spectres (which isn't really a good thing. There's a mock2 level like that) and some ledges above a big lava pool with teleporters that help in getting from place to place. If I didn't say this earlier, I should now. Helioth loves sticking teleporters into things. I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing, but try to vary it a little, man. It would be a pretty good map if not for the big dark maze. I ended up using the automap a lot more than is healthy, and it's kind of hard to kill bad guys if you're not watching where you're going. It takes up too much of the time you'd be spending on the map, and it just keeps twisting and turning and making you step over the same invisible teleports over and over again. Do yourself a favour and IDCLIP through it. |
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Fireworks by Francois Coppex (Helioth)     |
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Also, fortunately this is a really small level. As you might guess, he used all the weird textures in the other wads. What makes this one different is that it's a big monster brawl, full of cacodemons, mancubii, hellknights, and imps. It's pretty fun if you like arena-ish wads, as there's pretty much no puzzle to it. But it's loaded with ammo (pun not intended). Everywhere you look, there's ammo. See shots two and three. I checked the level statistics just to see how much. There are 155 monsters, ranging from small to medium-sized with a couple of barons thrown in. And there are 57 boxes of shotgun ammo alone. You don't need to do a lot of math here to see that there's about a shellbox-to-monster ratio of 1:3. Even the larger monsters in this map don't require a whole box of shells to kill them. If they were all barons, you could kill a third of them with the shotgun ammo alone. But they're not all barons, obviously. And you don't just have a shotgun, either. There are chainguns, (plenty of ammo for those), a plasma rifle, and a rocket launcher. The real difficulty lies in the health and close-quarters I suppose. I just think the amount of ammo is rediculous. Here's a word of advice; Do not leave enemies behind, even if you plan to come back to them later. Kill every enemy at first sight. You'll always have the ammo to do it, and if you leave them behind they grow in numbers surprisingly fast. A good download if you like those insane shooting maps, despite the shotgun fetish. As a side-note, I'd like to say that It's been a nice journey through the years with Helioth and it feels like I actually know him, simply from his levels. See you around, Oth. Can I call you Oth? . . . sorry. |
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Doom Down DM2 by Devin Afshin   |
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PHOBOS: ANOMALY REBORN by Chris Lutz of The Chaos Crew         |
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Now, you don't have to play Phobos: AR very long before you notice the detail. Amazing is a word I don't use often, and I'm using it now. The texture use, lighting, and creative use of architecture all are incredibly done. The wad is also very challenging. Monster placement is good, ammo balance is excellent, but it's the lack of health that will really give you a hard time. The dehacked patch included limits your health to 55% and the stimpacks are so sparingly placed it's barely possible in most of the levels to reach 100%. The monsters of course will be there to help make sure of that. But what really got me was some of the effects thrown in. At one point in E1M2 I actually halted in the middle of the game and stopped and stared and wondered how the hell Chris Lutz managed to do that without scripting. I'm still puzzled as I'm writing this. I'm sure it's nothing a good swig of gravy won't cure, but I really would like the author to drop me an e-mail or at least post in this comments section if only to explain how some of the game's effects were done. Now, I did spend a lot of time wandering and looking for things and it gets really annoying when you re-explore a giant level several times looking for that one switch, or key, or door (!) but if you want a straight-forward kill-that-guy-then-that-guy-and-then-kill-that-guy wad then you can download this, Wise-ass. (ftp://3darchives.in-span.net/pub/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/g-i/iamevil4.zip) Chris Lutz also has a sense of humour. He included five of his old wads as a joke (or so I assume) that were never released. They're kind of hidden, so sorry if I ruined the surprise, but hey, that's why I'm here. Personally, I was disappointed. His description of the levels is that they're TERRIBLE. Yes, he used all caps. Yet, when I played them they weren't all that bad. Here I was expecting monsters stuck in each other and 1024x1024 rooms full of cyberdemons with a crushing ceiling and all the walls are scrolling. No, it's just a few slightly bad wads so he could make a pun about the title (P:AR/subP:AR). Well, what are you going to do? Oh well, that's not really why you downloaded Phobos: AR, anyway. So, synopsis: Awesome. Recommendation: Download now. Hitler: Still dead. Any questions? <Julian> who killed Kennedy ? <_Hyena_> Joe Pesci  |
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