whirledtsar

What a shame. The atmosphere and visuals of this wad are very well-done and are perfect for me, a big fan of the game Blood. But unfortunately the actual gameplay is a huge letdown. It's just not fun. You're given so little ammo that even if you begin with perfect aim, you'll undoubtedly run out and be faced with hitscan cultists and zero ammo. So you need to use the pitchfork on the poisonous enemies in the beginning (unfun) to have a chance against the cultists later on. This sums up the entirety of the mod's progression. You need to take EXACTLY the right path and make EXACTLY the right moves or you will be fucked. Which is really stupid since the city is so non-linear. It's punishing players for exploring. Just started exploring the city and feel like checking out this warehouse? Nope, here's two mini-bosses you couldn't possibly defeat at this point! How fun. And also due to this non-linearity, one is liable to get lost, trying to find the way to progress or remember exactly where to backtrack to. Some would say "it's supposed to be ammo-starved & punishing like Blood". Well really only the first few levels of Blood are ammo-starved, for most of the game you are given a reasonable amount of ammunition. Which is good, because running past enemies like a headless chicken or making painstaking effort to melee them is not fun.

Fantastic wad. The level design is very 90s - people today would scoff at the abundance of mazes & corridors. But to me it's still fun despite not being fancy & curvy, with very large and labyrinthine (yet simple & rewarding to navigate) layouts with plenty of creativity. Most of the maps have original music, which is all great and fittingly Egypt-esque. Some of the weapons have been reskinned, and look quite nice. The weapon sound replacements are a bit hit & miss (for example the single-barrel sound is oddly... crispy), but not all bad. Almost all of the enemies have been reskinned as well, and some have been altered with Dehacked. The sprites look very cool, especially the spooky Pinky replacement. Unfortunately there is a ZDoom bug where if you gib a soldier, they will spurt out ammo endlessly. Also there is a loud sound effect used in a couple of levels that will annoyingly repeat infinitely (I had to replace the relevant sound with a blank file for my sanity). Whether that's the wad's fault or ZDoom's, I don't know. Overall a great TC, especially for its age - I'd consider it a forgotten classic.

Excellent wad. The visuals of course are very unique & colorful. And they're not just purple - there's so many vibrant colors. Purple, red, yellow, and green pulse and glow in contrast to the dark black metal architecture. But beyond the visuals, the level design is great. It's very interconnected and full of neat surprises, and progression is intuitive and rewarding. It reskins the classic Doom weapons, and all the sprites look great and are aesthetically cohesive. It also includes an MP3 synthwave soundtrack, which is very fitting to the neon colors and fast-paced gameplay, although I disliked that one of the tracks had vocals.