LadyMistDragon

Russian Arsenal Revised (2011) by zer0 or Jekyll Grim Hyde @Agent_Ash (GZ Doom) A weapons mod featuring realistic and current as-of-2011 Russian weaponry. Needless to say, these are a good deal more powerful than the vanilla variants and actually have surprisingly realistic weapon models, if only to a point, but regardless, it's quite clear it would've been a strain to render them in ZDoom, at least with the models and weapons fully intact! It's a pretty satisfying mod, especially when you fire the RPG and dispatch an especially large crowd of enemies, though not at close range unless perhaps you want to risk death 6.5/10 External Statistics Driver (2007) by Simon @fraggle Howard Believe it or not, a program tracking Doom's stats outside the executable never existed before this point! Plenty of programs to aid in editing or various kinds or to organize custom wads but oddly enough, nothing that would track the end-level statistics outside the game. Although perhaps its outmoded when Boom compatible source ports have a feature where you can bring that info at the bottom left corner of the screen. Ironically I never used it but that's partly because I didn't know how to bring it up. But honestly, I think I'm fine not tracking that. Sparta 2 - Project Vesuvius (2016) by Matt @cannonball Powell (GZDoom and FDWL) I avoided the temptation to make a 300 reference because I've spent enough time here and that's old and stupid anyway. This is that one sequel to at least 1 of 2 Doom II wads made by cannonball before 2020. Since it didn't win a Cacoward, I was obligated to check it out; and the first two maps show absolutely nothing different to anyone familiar with Matt Powell's work. Though I liked the trench and the presence of Infinite in Map 01. Anyway, I only got to Map 02 because I was going to play until I die and I wasn't so concerned with playing very much rn since you kind of know what you're getting 7/10, for not thinking to play on HNTR

Map 24: Burnt Guts by Slava Pestov I am loving this midi! Starts out with gloomy strings, punctuated by JRPG-esque woodwind bombasticty, before changing to a heavy funk groove with the addition of an organ melody in spots. It's definitely on the shorter end of midis though, kind of like this map! I dunno how much showcased here is the original design, but nevertheless, the presence of marble stockade, in the middle of a courtyard punctuated by wooden stockades and towers, the latter populated by Barons whose purpose is just keeping the pressure on the player after everything else has been cleared out. There is a fairly easy to find cave behind some wooden overgrowth near the end that allows you to crush them all, with a handy demonstration! There isn't much really worth commenting on fight-wise, as most of them consist of incidental activity that shouldn't be terribly difficult on UV, despite the prevalence of pinkies in lava crevasses there's really no other reason to enter, barring an accident. The collection of enemies around the Supercharge probably asks for a later rocket launcher, although our health was quite low at the time. The real centerpiece is not the diamond-shaped marble yard, which is kind of asleep, but another diamond shaped room with fantastic fireblu walls and some Imp, Sergeant, and Demon chaff in the middle, mancubi in square pillars and an Arachnotron on each far side. We do get a rocket launcher upon entering though, so be aggressive, within reason, although this is still thr hardest section of the map, underscored by two archi -viles that teleport in I think after pressing one of the side switches here and crossing a linedef near the entrance. Let's hope that the Arachnotrons at least are down because things won't be so hard then. After this comes a large brown field and a large teleport ambush near the plasma rifle at the other end but summoning enemies to all sections of said field but we should have enough rockets to keep things from growing tedious. A solid end to a breath of fresh air. I'm not at home so no video today

Kind of....but that normally takes too much time. There's certain maps that are about the exploration but I simply lack the time to bother with attempting 100 percent secrets most of the times.

Intronaut - Valley of Smoke

I'm not sure what you're trying to shake but it doesn't matter.

Nothing like that, I don't really look at things in those terms. Although I will say, certain megawads like Hellbound or Sign or Torment really have to pad things out to reach that magic number of 32 (imo, it's really in the last 5 maps it gets bad in the former, but the signs are evident quite early on)

gorefest.zip(1994) by unknown (Crispy Doom) The amount of '94 maps uploaded these days might as well be nonexistent. This would probably close to one of the last ones, though it seems to have appeared on several shovelware collections. Now unless some other large collections that have been cited by others get posted, that's all that there'll be. Anyways, this map does the typical '94 thing of clashing textures, with the addition of a stringy, disconnected layout, a la Deimos Anomaly. Though what really makes this standout, as Sonic.exe would help show us is GORE. Putting all the edgy connotations of that, this is actually quite nice. For instance, there's at least one inaccessible outdoor area where hanging corpses are arranged quite neatly. And there are plenty of other rooms where corpses and blood can be found virtually everywhere. That said, the extremely narrow corridors with zombiemen are laughable and the one darkened slime pit room is pointless, though it contains some Imps in the middle. I did have to chuckle at the letters "HELP" splayed on the ground in front of the Cyberdemon who's surrounded by torches. He is also, incidentally, among the only Cyberdemon not overly tedious to take out with a rocket launcher since he has little room to move. Side note: this won't play in Chocolate or vanilla Doom past 1.2 because of changes to how scrollomg textures were utilized. I shouldn't be doing this but 4/10

Map 23: Ancalagon by Steve Duff For what seems like a medium-to-large map, this sure took a long time. No matter, the music is excellent and sounds out of some horror segment of a JRPG. I especially like the repeated note toward the end. Unlike some people....the map strangely doesn't feel overlong, but that might be in part because of the music because there's lots of spinning out into essentially isolated side areas and in some ways, it's the best looking map in the wad - yet it also sort of displays why people get tired of hell thematics. I'm not sure how else to explain it beyond the spaces not really making lots of sense at any point, despite the clear visual coherency on display. Honestly, the frequent Arch-vile usage is appreciated, even though I sort of doubt they would appear in the numbers encountered here. I have to agree with cannonball on the blue key encounter though. It seems like a location where the flyers could be blown potentially annoyingly out of bounds and for the love of god, unless there's a purpose, can we please not put monsters in lava, especially when there's no rad suit. Complaining about the rest is a little bit difficult. Although we couldn't get the plasma rifle in said blue key area, possibly because the shootable switch required was too hard to spot, but this map had gone on more than enough at this point at any rate. The part where we have to drop down to progress not so long before was kind of weird. We can otherwise keep going forward but we end up back somewhere else without finding what we need. That is a cool end battle but while there's a certain amount of chance to get through if you don't have the plasma rifle or BFG, it's really not that terribly difficult. It certainly doesn't drag down the pacing of this map any worst though again, the issue of cleanup is always in the background. One more thing: the majority of the secrets really aren't that hard to find, or at least most of the ones that'll help greatly. It just means the final room will have to be played more strategically. Though on another note, the fireblue hallway leading to the computer map was really cool! We may have struggled somewhat against the Revenant here though.

What the hell are you smirking about!

I half-wondered at the lack of response:) post edited with correct video

Looks surprised, i think.

It didn't feel too hard at all on UV at least, despite what my increased bumbling may suggest. This is a wonderfully chaotic arena striking a balance between maneuverability and challenge. Though the mass teleport at the end just felt odd. A single zombieman at the exit probably would make more sense than that.

Yeah, it's probably E1. E2 comes close but....the design does not have the same sort of visual impact or design solidity of E1.