Tristan

Absolutely amazing. The detailing/architecture, the atmosphere, the gameplay, the music selection.. everything is spot on here. Each level takes at least 20 minutes and you can expect to get lost a bit but at no point does it feel boring. I love maps like these.

 

That was 2 hours well spent, fantastic WAD.

Make a normal map, balance it accordingly, then replace 95% of medikits with sergeants and you've basically got my experience of Infinity. My overall view of this wad is that it's just annoying. It's definitely more difficult than its predecessors, but for all the wrong reasons IMO, which include the overabundance of sergeants combined with a real scarcity of health, with forced nukage runs coming later on; I had to put give health in the console at one point because there was no other way past it. E1M2's narrow corridor/lift maze was the first sign of trouble where sergeants could kill me before I even saw them, but after decent maps in E1M3 and 4, it started becoming a major issue again, to the point where I pretty much never had over 20 health and was getting increasingly irritated. Quit about halfway through E1M8 because it was just doing my head in.

 

While the progression through levels wasn't as obscure here as in some of the maps in Serenity and Eternity, some of the secrets were even more nonsensical, and the general design of this WAD felt like step back from Eternity, but still quite a way better than stuff like Serenity's E3M6 and E3M7, it's just a shame that the actual gameplay here was a royal pain in the arse most of the way.

 

Interestingly, I come away from this trilogy with the opinion that the weakest episode is the one not made in 1994. Eternity was definitely the best of the three, Serenity was ok, I could happily replay those two. Infinity? I'm glad it wasn't.

The sequel to Serenity, and a better WAD all round. By this point the authors were obviously more experienced mappers and it shows in both visuals and gameplay, with both these aspects being of generally better quality than even Serenity's better maps.

 

Overall, this is more challenging than Serenity, but once again the difficulty progression is a bit backward, with E2M2 reaching borderline bullshit territory with its scarcity of ammo, health and forced damaging floor runs, making the map more frustrating than anything else. After this the difficulty drops off, and although it does start to climb slightly over the remainder of the WAD, I feel that this is the same as Serenity in that the hardest maps were at the start.

 

They still haven't got the hang of secrets either, and there's a couple of instances of the infamous E4M3 earrape - as well as mandatory secrets but there were less of those here than in Serenity, and mostly easy to find. The worst offender for me was when I spent a good 10 minutes searching for the blue key in E2M3 - only to find out it was in an unmarked secret behind an inconspicuous looking marble face.

 

As a result I think my least favourite maps here were E2M2 and 3. This had me worried about the remaining levels, but they turned out to be pretty good. Particularly liked 5 and 7.

An E3 replacement from 1994. Map order seems off here, the first two or three levels felt the most difficult to me, the rest were very easy.

A fair bit of quirky design here, with a lot of maps containing secrets that are mandatory to progress through the map, though most can be forgiven as they're pretty easy to figure out, some can't really even be considered proper secrets, there are others though that may be a nuisance to people.

The maps are mostly quite small, with some medium-sized offerings in the middle, and a larger map in E3M7. In total the WAD took me just over an hour.

 

E3M3, 5 and 8 are probably the best maps here, all decent maps, though I had to noclip in E3M5 after getting stuck in the blue key room due to falling off a raising floor which could not be lowered again. 8 in particular looks pretty cool with its stained-glass windows. 1, 2 and 4 were good enough, but don't stick out in the memory as being particularly special.

 

6 and 7 are easily the worst maps here, though I can't decide on my absolute least favourite. 6 is a couple dozen of small boxy rooms filled with monsters, connected either by more boxy rooms or narrow corridors and staircases, with no variety except some of them are green and some of them are brown. 7 is ugly as sin, gameplay is a bit of a slog in places, and it's the biggest map in the set so it's not like it's all over in just a couple of minutes.

 

Overall this WAD is decent for the most part, despite some strange design choices. 6 and 7 do drag the quality down though, and unfortunately those are the maps I'm most likely to remember.

Cool map. Not the prettiest map, but it mostly avoids being outright ugly, though the weird panels in the metro station are a bit questionable :D

Quite fun to play, though maybe a bit too much focus is placed on the shotgun - I didn't feel there was enough ammo to get as much use out of the chaingun and rocket launcher as I would normally like, but the sound replacement for the shotgun is actually pretty decent and makes it quite satisfying to use. The other sound replacements are ok, save for the pistol/chaingun which sounds awful.

 

Not hugely difficult, but there are a number of situations which presented some mild challenge - I guess the most difficult section was supposed to be the masterminds in the prison cells, unfortunately though all but two of them were stuck and couldn't shoot (played in QZDoom with Doom strict), so that was cheesed. I did pick up on the intention though with the one-time lifts as I used it to get past the two that weren't stuck, and it is a cool idea, just a shame it didn't work. Overall pretty good map.

 

There's also an E1M9 included, but this is just short Tyson map in some narrow corridors - maybe a nice little reality mode challenge but otherwise there's not really anything to see there.

Although it looks bland in some parts, there's a lot of cool ideas on display here, and apparently this the first known use of self-referencing sectors, I can imagine how they were pretty mindblowing back in 1994!

The absolute standout area of the map is of course the red cave with the invisible stairs, which would probably hold up well even if it were in a modern vanilla WAD, let alone one from 1994.

 

Sadly the gameplay doesn't match up with the visual aspect. The map can start off pretty rough with the numerous sergeants dotted about the first area. After that it's all very easy, and at times even dull, which is a shame because the visuals here are very impressive for the time it was made.

Competently made, easier to navigate than the sequel, Crossing Acheron, but the combat here actually seemed more difficult, with some of the chaingunner usage potentially causing a lot of damage. Pretty moody with the dark lighting though the atmosphere doesn't seem as strong as in the sequel.. Overall I preferred Crossing Acheron.

Liked it. I was surprised by how atmospheric the map was given its age, and it reminded me a bit of Virgil from the Master Levels, also by Anderson. As I suppose was to be expected, gameplay here is very easy, and health and ammo are given out very generously, but it's all engaging enough to avoid boredom. Good stuff.

7 pretty large maps, with numerous opportunities to be quite lost - MAP05 had me completely stumped for a while. Fights here are very easy, and even when things get a little more hectic, it's offset by very generous supplies of health and ammo - soulspheres are a common sight throughout, and I'll never tire of the surprise when finding a huge supply room like that of MAP07's. In fact, the main danger here is from either falling into inescapable nukage pits, or breaking the map by doing things like accidentally falling off a rising platform which can't be lowered again from the outside. 

 

These nuisances aside, the maps play decently enough on their own merits, but the consistently long length straight from the get-go makes a continuous playthrough a bit of a drag, even despite the fact that MAP03 can be skipped entirely. There's a lot of sound replacements present too, some are ok, others are not so good, but nothing offensively bad - I got used to them.

 

Favourite map: MAP02

Least favourite: MAP04, maybe

it sucks

In most cases, the weaker maps of this WAD can only be described as such not because they are bad, but the majority of this WAD is just absolutely fucking solid. Fantastic visual design, fantastic music, and fun gameplay with an equally fun story that doesn't take itself too seriously. 5/5

Echoing comments that the map could really have done with more health. Solid map otherwise, with fairly fast and challenging gameplay.

Agreed with Memfis, though this way of monster placement didn't really bother me as much. Cool stuff o/

Excellent

Too hard on UV

Thanks for this.

Basically what josh said. MAP01 had some pretty stupid shit in it, but through to MAP03 it was just about bearable. I lost my patience after that. By the way, the choice of MIDI in this is just so bad.

Too difficult for me even on HNTR, but a great set of maps regardless. MAP31 and it's MIDI go together perfectly, and is now definitely one of my favourite doom levels. Cacoward winner for sure.

I thought the escape part was pretty bullshit, but I guess I can blame that on my piece of shit laptop that had my framerate in single figures for that whole section, which made basically everything damn difficult. This map was just amazing. I hope I get to play this again with a decent system, because this is easily the greatest map I have ever played. Big, BIG thanks to everyone involved for creating this.

Great levels, great soundtrack. One of my favourites. 5/5

It was a pleasure working on this, and it has really got me started with MIDI sequencing. I look forward to working on more projects in future. MAP03, 11 and 30 are probably my favourite tracks in this pack, but on the whole, this is a great set of tracks, and I hereby nominate it a second time for an NME award (hurr hurr hurr)

I can't believe I'm seeing essel's name on this list, 0/5.