SandGator

E1M7 -- Reactor My God, that yellow key trap was brutalizing, especially after having my health leeched by shotgun blasts to press the switch to even get into the room. I'm usually ultra-conservative with my ammo, but after dying for the tenth time in there I just started spamming BFG... E1M8 -- Particle Accelerator ...and continued spamming it here. All those Barons laughed at me when I hoarded that plasma ammo the entire episode. Who's laughing now? Loved the poison sign secret, when there was no nukage or other poison signs around. After some of the much more devious secrets, this one could have just said "SECRET DOOR." It's M8, after all, just want to kill things, not try to find some fancy shootable switch.

The same way Lost Souls and Pain Elementals do.

Some people have mentioned the gloves/no gloves thing for the melee attack, but I think a worse offender is how incredibly wimpy looking the punch animation is. It looks like Kevin Cloud, er, I mean, Doomguy is kneading monsters with his knuckles more than punching them. It has no satisfying "whoosh" sound of his arm moving, and it just seems slow. Melee attacks don't translate as well as guns as 2D sprites, I think, but by way of example the Dark Forces punch feels a lot better.

E1M5 -- Administration With a name like that, how could it not be fun? Super straightforward, not too much chance of getting lost in this bad boy. More about the fights than the level, nice mix of monster closets and teleports. I always appreciate secrets that are visible to the player before accessing them, like the soulsphere and plasma rifle here. More fun than wandering around looking for different wall textures. Plenty of rockets were appreciated with the number of Cacos and Barons. Glad to get the Soulsphere secret because I came off the previous level with less than full health, and without that I would have finished this level with even less. Although I would have appreciated more administrative tasks suitable to the level theme, such as filing and data entry, shooting rockets down long corridors into monster faces was good too.

Ha, I love that song! I used to listen to it a lot in the gym. That gleeful skeleton on the album cover cracks me up, too.

What's Doom?

The very slight delay between firing and cocking/reloading is noticeable compared to the other shotguns, there's no pause for those between the muzzle flash and the cocking. Other than that it's pretty cool. Is there a way to manually reload it?

Definitely agree -- I meant no splatter as in no blood. I think even the existing gray puff of smoke from bullets hitting walls would look okay, but the skull chips would be better.

This looks really, really fun. Doomguy must have gone to shotgun shell flair school.

The blood splatters when you shoot monsters are always red, even if their death sprites show that not all monsters have red blood -- Barons and Hell Knights have green blood, Cacodemons have blue blood. I wish the splatters matched the monsters. And I don't think there should be a splatter at all for Lost Souls.

E1M4 -- Withering Gardens I thought this map was okay, nice and hectic beginning after playing the secret level. Mopping up the rest was pretty straightforward, and there was enough space everywhere that I don't think I ever stopped sprinting. Appreciated the Baron teleporting behind me in the exit door, that was devious. This map didn't blow me away, but I still thought it was fun. I got the computer map secret second to last, so I could see the one with the shootable switch which was driving me nuts trying to figure out how to open it. I finished the level with around 65% health, which was cool -- when playing continuous it heightens the tension to have just enough health pickups in a level that you go to the next level a little beat up. I'm basically shotgunning everything, and there are so many Sergeants in these maps that I'm racking up tons of ammo without ever going much below 70 shells. Those final levels are in for some major hurting.

E1M9 When I first saw how many Cacos were in the main room with the exit I groaned, but once I realized how much ammo was in this level I made the Doomguy weapon acquisition grin. There are a TON of rockets available on this map, which was a nice workaround for having this many high HP monsters in a Doom 1 level -- I basically used my rocket launcher like I would have used the SSG for the Cacos and the Barons. It was a breezy little secret level that gave me plenty of ammo to continue with (I'm not a pistol start guy). Obviously the design of this map is pretty simple, but it has a meaty scale to it. I had a blast running around the outer ring wrecking the imps and hitscanners, and the monster closets for the key rooms were well done. Great job, Cannonball -- it's only March 1st and it looks like most of us have already played three or four maps. Like I said earlier, I'm loving playing a Doom 1 WAD, and you've captured the feel really well, with the level of difficulty we expect in these modern times. I play new stuff on HMP, and the level of challenge has been perfect so far.

Since I heard we might be doing ConCERNed I gave it a try last night -- it's a lot of fun. Like Magnusblitz mentioned, after a breezy little M1, I was blown out of the water when the challenge and monster count racked up, and I got hitscanned into Swiss cheese by shotguns. Love how classic the maps feel with their excellent use of vanilla textures. The broken acid container near the M1 exit spilling into the floor was a nice touch, I always appreciate aesthetic touches like that. The Soulsphere secret in M2 took me entirely too long to figure out, but I refused to leave the map until I got it. I'm appreciating the layouts and the secrets, from the obvious to the tricky. I'm really looking forward to playing the rest of these levels, so far I think it's been a blast to play a Doom 1 megawad (I think this might actually be the first I've ever played one).

The Baron of Hell death noise, the SSG reload, and the "extreme scream" when you die from taking a massive amount of damage. For emotional satisfaction the "secret is revealed" music (like opening a chest in Zelda).

"Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most...human." Total bummer.