This is a rather interesting week of /newstuff. A lot of the wads that I'll be reviewing were made with the recently unveiled Doom Builder. Looks like Doom Builder is sweeping the Doom community by... uhh... anyway, there's eleven WADs to rip apart and review this time around. Six single player, four deathmatch and one music wad awaits you!
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Cybmapping!! - Various
59kb - ZDoom - SP
Yay, speedmapping! As I did the last time I reviewed a speedmapping compliation, I shall perform my ingenius speedreviewing techniques:
MAP01: Shit
MAP02: BAHAHAHAHA
MAP03: Crap
MAP04: Decent
MAP05: Excellent, Cyb rocks!
MAP06: OMG Boris map!
There we go. Got any complaints? Shove them up someone else's ass.
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Dark/Hard music - Chris "Mr. Chris" Pisarczyk
159kb - ZDoom - N/A
A bunch of MIDIs that Mr Chris found from various places. What else can I say? Ok, I do have to admit that he did pick a good choice of songs. There, now stop complaining about short reviews.
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.Void - Dennis "Exl" Meuwissen
81kb - Legacy - DM
I don't particularly like void maps, but this one actually seems to be decent for your standard 1-on-1 action. The map layout is quite nice, but the ungodly small amount of weapons and ammo decrease the overall score somewhat greatly. However, since those Legacy DMers use insanely low respawning times, I guess it wouldn't matter much to them. I really can't think of anything else to say about this, so if you're the type who enjoys falling off ledges, I command you to play this.
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DTCA - Map 17 - Military Operations - Cyber-Menace
293kb - ZDoom - SP
WORST DETAILING EVER. Who the hell is literally crazy enough to release something as fugly as this? The start area is really monotonous, and the somewhat long hallways are really dull, but the mission objective is one of the most original things I've seen in a Doom map. You have exactly five minutes to defuse six bombs that are "scattered" all over the map, but since the author was too dumb to really scatter them, it's a rather linear quest. Other than that innovative idea, it sucks badly.
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Heathen - Dennis "Exl" Meuwissen
40kb - Doom2.exe - DM
Exl's other map for this week, and I actually like this one a lot. It has a E1/E2-ish theme to it, and the layout and gameplay are really smooth as well, though I don't really like teleporters in deathmatch. Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't really make it fast-paced and whatnot. Still, the overall flow in this map is extremely fast, although the lift and the teleporters I mentioned earlier slow it down a bit. If I have to pick out a bad point about this, it'd be that there is no music replacement, nor an exit. Just because it's a DM map, doesn't mean you don't have to include an exit! (says me)
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Hell Keep II - Owen "Sarge Baldy" Lloyd
21kb - FreeDOOM - SP
Designed for the FreeDOOM project, this E3M1 tribute created by our favourite non-newstuff reviewer guy, Sarge Baldy, is a rather interesting piece of work. Another wad this week that was built with Doom Builder, this map keeps the E3M1-theme rather strongly. However, it's incredibly cramped and a bit short. With that in mind, it'd also be horrible for deathmatch, having to move around in such confined space. Another thing I have to nitpick about is that Baldy didn't include the rocket launcher secret! Argh! Oh well, grab it if you're the type who is closely following FreeDOOM development.
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Installation B - Alex Parsons
75kb - Enhanced Port - SP
I finally get to review an Alex Parsons map. I keep hearing about how great they are, and now I finally have the chance to review one, I must say that its... great. I really love the E1-ish feel that Alex has made. The gameplay is not overly hard, but you will be running out of ammo quite often (I did, but I suck at SP). The non-linearness of this map makes it real fun to explore. A few areas are a bit cramped though, but since nobody cares about claustrophobic people anyway, I overall rate this as a really great single-level wad to play. I would give this the "SP wad of the week" medal, but unfortunately...
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Internal Reaches 2 - Samuel Villarreal
126kb - Doom2.exe - SP
...this claims the medal this week. If ZDaemon's co-op was finally fixed, I would tell someone to host a server of this right now. It just oozes in gameplay, not to mention that the theme suits this map perfectly. It's a bit hard for lesser-skilled players, but I got a real blast out of playing this. Apparently, this was made entirely with Doom Builder, so if Gherkin needed to have some screenshot to show what it can pull off, I'd tell him to use this map. It's also quite big, so those speedrunners who like recording long demos will definitely enjoy this. Since I'm pretty much speechless, I can't seem to say anything more but download it now!
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Kaiser's stupid deathmatch maps - Samuel Villarreal
106kb - Doom.exe - SP
Nice name, although I think differently about these. Well, at least MAP01 anyway. There are two maps in this wad (MAP01 and MAP02), and I would have to say that MAP01 is about twenty billion times better than MAP02. MAP01 has that really strong exec.wad feeling to it, and the detailing is superb. MAP02 however, is a piece of symmetrical garbage. Ok, I didn't hate it THAT much, but it was still quite pathetic compared to MAP01. The new textures are nice (some stolen from Quake 2, I believe), but the lack of music replacements also fails it. If MAP02 wasn't bunched up with MAP01, I would say that this is excellent, but I'm really shocked about it.
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Sample Deathmatch map - Chris "Mr. Chris" Pisarczyk
7kb - Doom2.exe - DM
This map was made with the second released version of Doom Builder. It's a small, crappy symmetrical map that you shouldn't play. I guess it was a decent example map for when Doom Builder wasn't as advanced, but compared to kaiser_1... Nope.
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Stylin' 2 - John Wantland
59kb - Enhanced Port - SP
Here it is, the sequel to MAP01-Style! I haven't checked out MAP01-Style yet, but this is an excellent tribute to MAP02. It stays true to it's overall feel, and the intense amount of hitscan monsters also strengthens that feeling to it. At this rate, John will be able to make Doom 2-Style in about two months! Get it, it's worth the what, five seconds of download time that it'd take? Yeah, excellent.
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