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dobu gabu maru

The DWmegawad Club plays: Kama Sutra

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Map08 - “Time Is Tickin' Out” by Adolf Vojta

Great map this, plenty of guns, plenty of ammo and lots of killing to do. It begins with a fight to get out of the starting room, pinned down on all sides and hunting for cover. I found the SSG by acident and I'm glad I did, there is definitely need of it here. The design is complicated and a bit cramped maybe, but its very visually interesting. I was dubious at first when it suddenly went from techbase to green marble, but what the hell. The fights around the keys with the identical pits of revenants were a bit awkward, and doing it twice is maybe a bit of a slog, but the battles after are great fun, especially the final fight with the archviles and their small army (that skull shish-kebob decoration is deviously placed). Some really nice lighting too. Excellent stuff.

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Map 08 - Time Is Tickin' Out - 100% Kills - HMP skill.

Easily the best map in the pack so far, it is quite a challenge, it looks nice, and it plays really well too.

The starting area is a nice challenge all it its own, trying to survive in the area you spawned in. I found myself approaching each new area with caution, especially due to being able to hear distant arch-viles and revenants.

The level looked really nice too, from the level's namesake - the yard with the working clock which got progressively darker, to the opposing key rooms. It looks miles better than the opening map, and is visually by far the best looking in the set.

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MAP08 - UV - scratch start - 4 deaths - 100% of everything -

Heh , using a MAP08:trick or traps" theme

Another tech map , but this time it has some stuff around like the security offices and the marble castles.

And of course : Hiding monsters , some of those monsters are far but they're harmless from far , for example : The arch-vile with the blue card.

The tech lab it self is really easy , all of the monsters are cramped and rockets take them out quickly.
But the sided marble castles are the same cramped challange and the center house is rather dangerous with all those imps sniping from the windows but if you kill them you get to blast another cramped swarm in the blood pool which I find pointless , and those yellow bars lead to the exit.

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MAP07: A flat, uninteresting Dead Simple style map. While it’s slightly fun taking out the titular manc coliseum, the cacos being unable to cross the border makes the fight as boring as those in the last map, and the large space and cell handed to the player lets them dance around all the cybers gleefully.

MAP08: A quaint map. It was pleasing for the most part, having a good enemy composition and nice trickle of munitions. The passing of time in the courtyard was pretty clever and I liked the traps that came along with that, but the symmetrical key containers forcing you to shoot downwards at revs is a major drawback to this otherwise enjoyable experience.

I dunno, so far I’m rather unimpressed with Kama Sutra overall :/ makes me wish I played Hell Revealed instead.

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MAP08: Time Is Tickin' Out
97% kills, 1/1 "secret"

Interesting map, and starting to show some real teeth here. The first part is a difficult courtyard battle, with lots of enemies in annoying/difficult places (revenants at the end of a long thing corridor, hell knight in a window behind cover, chaingunners that teleport in and can snipe you through windows). I loved the design of the courtyard getting darker and the clock marking the passage of time. As we discussed when we did Coffee Break MAP06 though, going through identical rooms with identical enemies is a huge no-no. And there's the typical Kama Sutra misuse of monster block lines (keeping the AVs at the end of the slime corridors, or keeping demons - demons! - stuck near the yellow bars/exit). I also think the column of skulls on the entrance to the courtyard is badly misplaced, as it tends to block a lot of the monsters (the imps after the yellow key pickup could only trickle in one at a time).

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Time is Tickin' Out - K:100% S:100%

This was a hard map for me, but I made a bunch of stupid mistakes too (I got hit by the same Mancubus twice, One of the Revenants managed to get a missile to me in the red key room, The Archie at the Blue Key managed to get me and I don't even know how frankly) Luckily, the map is made quite easy by the tons of health items so I walked out of the level with 200% in both categories. I loved the dichotomy between the tech base turning into a hellish outpost with almost no semblance of transition. The altering lighting levels is cool too.

The hardest parts of this level would be monumentally tougher if not for many pot shot corners and monster blocking lines to make this map a little easier to breathe. Ammo was a bit scarce, however and I left with less than I came in. I found myself making use of everything in the arsenal. Not sure if that is good or bad but I did.

I liked this map, but still falls short of Water Base in my opinion.

Edit: Matt534Dog, I'm really starting to enjoy your commentary in your videos!

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dobugabumaru said:

I dunno, so far I’m rather unimpressed with Kama Sutra overall :/ makes me wish I played Hell Revealed instead.

Don't worry, it gets better as you go along.....certainly an example of a WAD that really peaks in its second half. Incidentally, Hell Revealed is itself something of a slow starter, believe it or not.....it starts to really hit its stride around map 11 or so, I'd say (although of course it has some popular maps that come before that).

Map 08 -- Time is Tickin' Out - 110% Kills / 100% Secrets
This map has been covered quite well by other clubbers by this point, so I'll be fairly brief. Suffice to say that while it has many of the same basic traits as most of the other maps in the earlier parts of KS--weird visuals, linear flow, very violent short-range combat, etc.--in many ways it seems quite a lot more polished than any of them (with the possible exception of 'Klondike'), as though it comes from a later era in Gusta's mapping.

It is fairly sharp-looking, an understated base of cement and grey masonry floating in a sea of toxin that polymorphs into some sort of earthen-gothic marble/brick shrine without any warning whatsoever. I agree with pretty much everyone else that the effect of the small gothic hub area growing darker as time advances (complete with simulated clockhand movement!) is quite cool, but I think my favorite aesthetic detail is the way the base-themed section of the map is very cuboid with a lot of sharp angles, while the second earth/shrine section is characterized mostly by smooth, gentle curves--a subtle but effective way to emphasize the theme change that goes beyond a simple change of wallpaper.

Unfortunately, for all of its polish in some respects, it falls flat on its face in the gameplay department at one point, that being the identical key fights in the symmetrical areas in the second half (I guess that's technically two points). It's not a good fight in and of itself--I'm not a safety-first sort of player who would rather 'be smart' than have fun, but I really don't see any reasonable way to tackle this other than to conservatively hug the teleport booth's wall and abuse the weird firing angles the enemies face until they stop teleporting in--and having to do it twice certainly doesn't improve things. And what's with the helpless vile clusters? There are still some good bits--for example, I quite like the vile duo that appears in the hub when full dark is reached--but it's an uneven ride, to say the least.

So, while the craftsmanship here is a step up from most previous maps, questionable gameplay decisions mean that 'Water Base' still holds its position as the best map in the set up to this point.

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Map09 - “The Holocaust” by Adolf Vojta
I like this map, there are some bizarre moments like the huge monster horde just sitting in the street idly before you pick up the megasphere. Then all hell breaks lose. I died a couple of times due to simply managing to jump over the bfg and then got completely mobbed.
One thing to say is the spider mastermind is an absolute bitch and resulted in many deaths directly and indirectly because of its placement and then fact she will fire at will at you. I tried to distract the cyberdemon but this failed many times. I succeeded in the end but still lost 90% health just by trying to open the exit door. I guess thumbs up for good mastermind usage though.
Another good level this one, also very short and brisk.

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MAP09 The Holocaust

This map is quite fun. I remember those still monsters, who immediately teleport all over the place to cause some trouble. Most of the first part of the level is easily handled up to that point, though the hellknights and imps almost cornered me at one point (there are again more monsters than just imps and hellknights on higher difficulties). Nothing too interesting later on, although there was this strange graphical glitch with the 3d bridge I went on.



The cargo area and the truck/forklift/whatever is nicely done, and then I'm back on the road where an archie teleports to greet me (he replaces the cyber on HNTR). I then socked some BFG into the big spider and exited. Final Time 3:12.

No reality run here folks. I don't think it's really possible, what with the spiderdemon taking potshots at me from afar once he sees me, with more accuracy than an ordinary chaingunner, plus the hellknights and imps can be annoying. Sorry bout that.

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Map09 - “The Holocaust” by Adolf Vojta

This is a very memorable map for the simple weirdness of having a small army of monsters standing there on display behind an invisible wall. I guess this does a good job of filling the player with dread for the moment when the wall drops - the window overlooking the scene from the starting room is a nice touch, added to which is the sound of arachnotrons waiting for you to step outside which gives the feeling of stepping into a war-zone.

however...

after a couple of deaths trying to figure out the best way to deal with the slaughter in the streets I discovered you can simply walk around the edge of the invisible wall and grab the blue key without releasing the monsters. You are then free to continue the rest of the map (which is pretty pedestrian by comparison). Apart from a room with 2 archviles and a swarm of revs, which can be easily dealt with by going back out the room, there is not much else to hinder your progress. A cyber appears in the streets at some point so for fun i went back and released the monsters so he could kill them all while I nuked the mastermind with bfg.

I'm pretty sure thats not the intended way to play it, but I'm curious if the author realised you could do this and just decided not to fix it for the hell of it.

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Map 09 - "The Holocaust" - 99% Kills, 100% Secrets - HMP skill.

A nice city themed level with a bigger sense of realism than previous levels. From the starting room, you'd figure that you're in for a challenging level with the crowd of revenants and hell knights visible down in the street, and with a number of thresholds separating you from the street area itself.

However, as long as you skip the megasphere in the street area, none of those monsters wake up, and those that could teleport in, won't appear. If someone wasn't in need of an extra health boost, then that's a whole bunch of kills that will never register. Plus, the rest of the level is mostly simple combat. Even the cyber/spidermastermind battle at the end can be skipped for the exit.

Ammo is very abundant, which was a good thing as I had next to none left after the last level. Also, the overall progression of the level is really nice too, although I wish that the door just before the cyberdemon didn't permanently lock as it leaves you with no way to go back unless you noclip. With some of these discrepancies fixed, this could've been a classic level. Otherwise, it's still fun to play through.

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MAP09 - UV - 97 % K 33% S - scratch start - savestate use

I actually start to use savestates in this megawad.
Small-long map with lots of enemies to snipe , the map starts from a wooden condo , I really like the flesh sofa , looks tasty.
After that the whole map is basically the courtyard with lots of stuff to do first of all the cacos on the pit and then to the black building behind that 'expensive' trap that has a heavy ambush and a heavy weapon at the same time.
and after those buildings you have to get through a cyber and a SM which infight , lal.

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MAP09: The Holocaust
59% kills, 3/3 secrets

Yup, only 59% kills. I didn't grab the megasphere and found that avoiding it meant no triggering of the giant invisible block of monsters. Oh well. I also let the Cyber and Spider duke it out without killing either one. Fight smarter not harder.

The rest of the level isn't much to write home about. There's a few attempts at verisimilitude that aren't too corny. On the other hand, there's also some really ugly floor texture rule violations. I didn't get any visual bugs on the bridge but there is a rather bad one if you look outside the window and you haven't sprung the megasphere trap. I am glad ammo was abundant since like others I was running low on shells and rockets after the last map.

Pizzabob: After the cyberdemon spawns, you can go back to the rest of the level by going across the slime pit (that the cacos hide in). The slime doesn't hurt and there's a path cut into the rock edge.

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The Holocaust - K:56% S:100%

Well, what can I say. I grabbed the megasphere and as expected the invisible walls came down unleashing all those damn monsters. What I did not expect was for them to teleport behind me, causing me my second death.

Loading up my saved game I decided that discretion would be the better part of valor and as noted on here, you can bypass that whole fight. I get why there are Megasphere traps but this one is just not worth it. The rest of the level was tough but manageable, not as hard as Colosseum or Time is Tickin' Out. As with the massive battle at the beginning, I skipped both the Cyberdemon and the Spider Mastermind. Maybe I'm a coward, but I survived the rest of it with only a few cuts and bruises.

Ammo was abundant which is a plus as I needed a restocking after the previous level. The bridge saved my ass a couple times.

In terms of texture choice this level is your standard earth base affair, nothing too exotic or out of the ordinary.My only real complaint is the Mastermind should be used to lead the mob of monsters astray and the Cyberdemon fight should have been elsewhere. It's a giant waste of monsters, unless you're doing UV-max runs.

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Map 09 -- The Holocaust - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
This is where the claws start to come out, although the marquee fight can be abstained from if the player so desires (given the general tone of the WAD, I suspect this is a piece of silliness that Gusta knows about but left in, assuming he didn't consciously design it this way to begin with). The setting is, once again, a strange blend of the representational and the abstract--the action very identifiably takes place in and around a caved-in city sidestreet near a warehouse of some sort, but there are some kooky details like the brainsnake sofa in the opening apartment or the bizarre plush/velour 'forklift' on the back terrace behind the warehouse.

It is again highly linear, and again lack of free space is an important tactical factor, although this time it's not so much because everything is cramped as because important areas are so jam-packed with devilflesh that it feels like there's no way to go. It is also quite short, essentially only a 2.5-fight map with some light/unimportant interstitial stuff between the main events.

The highlight is naturally the megasphere assault down on the street. The dirty trick Gusta pulls here is that some of the demonic phalanx is able to phase over by the blocked off tunnel as soon as they awaken, cutting off retreat--there are a couple of places where it's tempting to hole up and lay down suppressing rocket fire, but there are so damned many monsters it's hard to get around them all to reach the tunnel mouth, and Gusta has hidden some cacos down in the crevasse in the street to stymy attempts to hide down there (although they can be awoken and easily goaded into floating off to fight with the distant mastermind before starting the main battle). I also like the ring-around-the-rosey fight with the viles/revs/crates in the warehouse, although this too can be skipped/ignored with foreknowledge. The surprise cyberdemon, by contrast, is no big deal--it's very easy to get him to switch focus to the mastermind and BFG him in the back.

Yes, clubbers, from here on out, KS is going to start trying harder to spill your blood, so get ready to buckle down.

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Map09: The Holocaust

A quick romp and a fairly enjoyable one. This time we are journeying through a small corner of some city that is obviously overrun by hellish invaders. Things look pretty realistic most of the time but then we have a few token oddities like the brain-sofa near the start. The forklift was is a nice touch too, I must admit haha.

Combat is pretty standard apart from the mini-slaughter in the streets which is easily the standout in this map. I died once before coming up with a working strategy but even then the megasphere didn't help much. Still, there's no way I'd skip that fight. I thought the blue room with crates and Archies/Revs was pretty clever too. My second and last death came there, I tried to take out both Archies with a single BFG shot which didn't exactly work out like intended. Spiderqueen and Cyber make for an adorable couple but they didn't seem to want to start a fight at all. So after a while I said fuck it bfg'd them myself because I didn't want to die again.

Map10: To Be Or Not To Be...

And now for something completely different... A long ass map with less set-piece battles but more constant streams of deadly opposition. This is a fairly good map, really good visually and the combat isn't too bad either. Visuals may give some Plutonia-vibes if you look closely enough and it's kind of serious looking compared to other KS maps. I think the problem with the combat here is that it's very doorway-shooting -oriented which becomes a bit dull in long maps like this. But there were good parts as well, of course. The massive amounts of backtracking was pretty ridiculous too, though.

I don't know if I can really call this map tough or not because other than the awkward Cyber fights, I had no real problems with the anything. But man did I ever have problems with the Cybers. I have to point out that I had no previous memories of this map so the Cyber encounters were slightly surprising (especially the third). First death: shot in the back by the first Cyber. Second death: third Cyber appears and I go into panic mode -> shot in the back and then in the face. Goodnight map10 at that point. Trying again this morning and the second Cyber almost ko's me. And when I say almost, I mean 1% health and no healthpacks in sight. Still I managed to finish off the fucker and clear the dinner table room without taking a hit so I survived the scare. I missed all the secrets so I had to take down all the Cybers with the ssg which isn't really optimal. The third Cyber especially became a bit tedious without better weaponry.

I liked the frantic starting room battle even if it wasn't very hard. But I'm sure there will be enough brutal starts to satisfy my appetite for dying in the very near future. The party at the bottom of the lift was a good one too. I liked to just wake up everything, teleport out, take the lift back down and enjoy the show. The crate-maze pier was another memorable one, it's pretty crowded at first and could be deadly if you corner yourself or wander to the Archies line of sight.

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hmm map10, I might be some time, after being instantly killed by a cyber after grabbing the red key, I'm not exactly impressed.

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Map10 - “To Be or Not To Be...” by Jakub Razak

This was an enjoyable map for the most part, it has some meaty encounters and nasty traps and an interesting layout (with the usual monster blocking in weird places). I have one issue with it and that is the cyberdemons. During the map i might get close to death and things might get tense until i find a medkit, but when you come across a cyberdemon in a small area with only SSG to slowly whittle it down then you just hit save and the danger drains away as you play the rocket lottery. One mistake and one rocket in the face is certain death. Gameplay seems almost to stop in these moments as you dance around pillars leaching their health away, and when the third one appears it becomes a bit of a chore. There is also the issue of having one instantly popping up in your face and another that almost certainly destroys you when you teleport back to the start room, but i could forgive those if i just had the rocket ammo or plasma gun to deal with them more quickly. I checked in doom builder and it seems there is a plasma rifle hidden behind a secret wall which I would never have found anyway, but if you are making a map with this many cybers and loading it with cell ammo then just give a plasma gun out in the open why not. By the end of it I was struggling for ammo, and yet I had 600 useless cells.

Oh and that music is bloody annoying

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MAP10 To Be or Not To Be

*Regular Run*

Can't really tell if the MIDI of "Smooth Criminal" is really the MJ song or the Alien Ant Farm cover. And it doesn't loop right. Oh well.

Never did like this level to be honest. The archviles here are pretty much harmless, and I'm not a big fan of the revenant placement. The northern part of the level is drab mostly, there's not much to go about there although the bridges were nice. Southern and eastern parts with the big rocky thing, the dinner table, and then the cargo area, these places were more interesting, but nothing too fancy. One secret with a blur artifact took me awhile to reach. I fought a baron on HNTR where the one of the cyber used to be as well (there's only one on HNTR). Oh and in the cargo area, you're supposed to lower the crate where the archvile was standing to get to a switch to exit, but it can only be activated on one side. And then there's a cyberdemon I fight at the end with some close quarters, a plasma gun, and a SSG before exiting. Final Time 6:21.

*Reality Run*

Fuck me sideways this was difficult. The initial enemy reveal can be problematic as they converge fast. The long elevators in the west leading to switches opening up areas reveals me to shotgun guys, who are total wildcards (and this one baron after the first switch also annoyed me). I had to get lucky and a bit cunning to avoid a hit from them twice. Northern part wasn't too bad in trying to figure out where shotgun guys and zombiemen were. Southern part was a bit problematic, I tried to chaingun snipe a few enemies in the cargo area so they'd not catch me, cuz I'd be teleporting their way soon. Behind the yellow key door, the two sargeants at the north end of the table. And then the cargo area, good thing I cleared out some enemies (or they cleared themselves out, to be precise, the hellknight near the teleporter infights with his revenant buddies and gets hagged on). Mostly a cleanup job while playing careful. The last cyber, I handled him just like my regular run, but much more carefully. Or, actually what mouldy does, shoot SSG and hide. Final Time 8:37.

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Map10 - “To Be or Not To Be...” by Jakub Razak
Rather strange and awkward map with music which will drive you nuts.
4 cyberdemons, all taken down with ssg. Feel exhausted. The use of blocking lines makes the fighting awkward at times and feel rather strange. 2 cybers are pretty much similar in an area which to be honest compliments the cyber being there. The next one is beside the hill like thing with the yellow key. You can trap him near the radsuit and just peek-a-boo shoot him to death. The third cyber was rather amusing. I just stood on the dinner table and blew him away without taking a hit.
The dockyard area was ok as I cleared most of the troublesome monsters before heading down there, left with the baron and arch vile which were easy enough.
Wish I had found the plasma rifle secret though. I think the invisibility secret is an arch jump style secret, but I managed to get it another way.

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Map 10 - To Be Or Not To Be - 100% Kills, 1/3 Secrets - HMP Skill.

Ok, now I can see why this wad is so famous/infamous. The difficulty has been ramped up quite a bit, and many of the fights in the level are direct confrontations with revenants and arch-viles. The two separate cyberdemon fights were pretty challenging as well.

Most of the secrets alluded me, and perhaps it was the music, which got rather annoying as time went on, but I felt myself wanting to get the level over with. Despite these feelings, I like the whole isolated fortress feel that the level has, and despite my frustrations, it was a good challenge.

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MAP09: While MAP05 had a megasphere that made the map too easy, this map has a megasphere that springs an unbelievably difficult battle, especially if you miss the RL like me. I wound up tiptoeing around it and finishing off the rest of the level without too much of a problem—I liked the AVs in the central room but my health and armor were too low to deal with the revs so I had to back out and wait for them in the nearby corridor. Okay level.

MAP10: I think this map perfectly encapsulates how I feel on Kama Sutra overall. There’s some really keen architecture here and a good theme throughout, but most of the fights come off as clumsy and boring thanks to an overabundance of high HP enemies and questionable block monster lines. I spent a lot of battles beside a doorway just shooting out since the SSG had the most ammo and it just grated on me fight after fight. There were some good encounters, like the first cyber and most of the first courtyard fight, but for every good encounter there was a cyber you had to camp (the third) and a terrible “downstairs” fight for the red key against a bunch of revenants. I may just be in a foul mood this week but I’m questioning whether or not I should continue.

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To Be or Not To Be - K:100% S:66%

Ugh. This map took me forever to complete because of the Cyberdemons as well as the copious amounts of sniping. Also I died three times. The courtyard after the elevators, I accidentally awoke both sides. The Cyberdemon that teleports to the area with the plateau got me from behind after I got the Megasphere and was busy trying to snipe the Revenants form a far, and lastly the immediate Cyberdemon that pops up in the yellow door room.

I did enjoy the elevation differences and the texture choice was very reminiscent of Plutonia (not to mention the abundance of Revenants and Chaingunners). However as has become a common occurrence in the megawad, monster blocking lines made this level easier than it could have been. The Cyberdemon fights got a bit redundant considering this level practically forces you to use the shotguns. An over the top amount of boxes of shells with little else in terms of ammo, weakened this level quite a bit in my eyes. And Super Shotgunning Cyberdemons only captivates the attention span for so long.

Long story short, the level was fun to trod through, I enjoyed the level architecture itself, monster variation was decent, minus the Cyberdemons and very little ammo outside of shells kind of drags this level through the mud.

Also, surprisingly, I did not get nearly annoyed by having Smooth Criminal play constantly, but maybe I'm a glutton for punishment.

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MAP10: To Be Or Not To Be
99% kills (left the last Cyber alone), 0/3 secrets

Some good fights (the opening fight, and the one in the boxes) but the rest is just more corridor shooting with some Cyberdemons thrown in, albeit with better window dressing than some of the last corridorific maps. Like a lot of other levels so far, monster block lines really ruin a lot of this map. The insta-lift monsters aren't my cup of tea either (the Cyberdemon after the yellow door is especially bullshitty) and there's at least one egregious bug in that the Pain Elemental on the megasphere is hemmed in by the insta-lift (I assume) and can't spawn any Lost Souls. Ah, and poor music choice again. I like Smooth Criminal. I do not like a Smooth Criminal MIDI repeated over and over and over again.

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Map 10 -- To Be or Not to Be... - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
What was the question?

Oh, 'is this a Method map?' Yes, most definitely. Many of the facets of his style remain--orthogonality, big meaty HP clusters, a hub-spoke design--but this is in many ways a more ambitious attempt, featuring a much more pronounced aspect of height variation, more 3D bridge trickery, a generally more elongated progression (too elongated for the liking of some, clearly), and of course, even more violence than before.

Despite the map's ambition and its several virtues, it is quite flawed, the main factor in this being poor/questionable usage of monster-blocking lines, as various others have said. I have played Kama Sutra before, years ago, and the persistence with which this mapping contrivance has been showing up so far within it is greater than I remembered. There is a fair amount of engine trickery going on in various places in KS (e.g. the 3D bridge effects in the southern area here), which often betokens some logistical inconveniences like this, but blocking lines are showing up in far more places than these effects are--indeed, they are the single most notable factor about a lot of the early fights in this map. I can only assume these were used as some sort of measure to preserve some kind of target difficulty curve in the first half of the WAD (since the deployment of these lines coupled with the linear nature of many of the maps generally tends to trivialize battles), but whatever the goal was, this was almost certainly not the way to go about it. Monster-blocking lines of course exist for a good reason, but when set down in and around main progression points/battles are in the majority of cases harmful to both core gameplay and immersion, as we've seen here and in some of the other KS maps.

The harm done to immersion (and gameplay) is a particular shame in this case, as this map actually has quite a coherent sense of place, in spite of the characteristic KS thematic whimsy--the combination of various types of Plutonic stone and masonry with more conventional tech/storage annexes and some natural/outdoor materials and a lot of sea views call to mind some very old island fortification (including a keep in the north carved directly out of rock) that has been repurposed/updated into some kind of depot. In many of the areas there's a lot more open space than Method has given us in the past, and this coupled with a usually-visible sky gives a pleasant 'fresh air' feeling.

After the initial skirmish at the top of the tower, fights tend to become mostly room-clearing affairs, dragged down in some places by the aforementioned use of blocking lines. The obvious climaxes are the cyberdemon fights of course....the first one must essentially be SSG'd (it's not advisable to leave him for later) in the starting tower, which is not something I personally mind. The later cybs can be efficiently liquified by the plasma rifle (especially the third--trigger his popup, go back out to the southern rock formation, and fire away with impunity).....if you can find it. I'll go out on a limb and say that I don't actually mind this weapon's placement, given that there are enough shells to kill the cybers (albeit slowly) without it. It's good, I think, to have a secret that, while not essential, is genuinely valuable from time to time. It makes a good incentive for keeping an eye out for them in the future, and is a nice counterpoint to secrets like the tricky-to-access blur sphere, which is really not very useful at any point in the map.

I don't know anything about 'Smooth Criminals' or 'Alien Ant Farms', but I didn't find the BGM terribly grating. Forgettable, ignorable, but not distracting. This suggests that it's probably the lyrics/vocalizations that make the actual song obnoxious....

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MAP11 Execution

With a start on an electric chair to boot, much like Duke's Death Row level.

The beginning is the reason I can't do a reality run here, and it can go fuck off for that matter. I can't escape the zombies and at the same time go to another part of the level because another group of monsters greets me. The rest, can easily be handled with just the SSG alone. Design-wise, I'm loving the skull and the bridge leading to it, although the imps on the bridge were rendered harmless. The caverns were cool too. An interesting exit scheme (with lotsa useless megaspheres at the beginning!), where I teleport on top of barrels and physics smacks me hard as I am blown to the exit teleporter. But there's a type 11 floor down below as well in case someone is playing with IDDQD :). I like the former better. Final Time 4:15.

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Map11: Execution

I really liked this. Gameplay is great, it's visually consistent and has a few of those lovable KS oddities to give it some personality. The visual theme this time is hellish rocky terrain with a few man-made structures here and there. I'd like to think that the player has been executed in an electric chair, which is neatly done by the way, and now wakes up in the execution chamber's hellish counterpart. Loving the little details in this map, like that Archie's little chamber where he's guarding the red key, the numerous gallows dotting the landscape or the couple of nice looking hanging bridges we have here. The ending is also pretty awesome and unique I must say.

Like I mentioned, the combat is very enjoyable as well. The start is pretty damn crazy and even with foreknowledge it's hard to survive the initial hail of bullets. I doubt there's a bulletproof strategy to that but I found that rushing to the alcove with a soulsphere/blursphere seems to work somewhat well. After the welcoming committee, the map eases up a bit but the pace is considerably faster than in the previous map. Grabbing the BFG (or something along that way) unleashes an another horde of enemies near the electric chair but it's less tricky than the first since well, you just got the BFG. Rest of the level is relatively quick work with SSG and RL getting the most stage time. I too was amused by the immobile imps in the skull bridge that alfonzo & co. pointed out in their vid. Cannon fodder much?

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Map11 - “Execution” by Adolf Vojta
I really like this map, there were a few oddities though
- Red key door does not require the red key, you can simply enter it from the start so half the map is optional, but you get the bfg along the way.
- The progression after the blue door is a little iffy, i.e the lowering redrock texture.
Apart from that, it's a great map which looks very tame texture wise, well thought out and executed. The start is insane though, the rest of the map is a walk in the park due to plentiful rocket ammo and the bfg of course. There were plenty of good fights including the BFG fight, the final room with the revenants and the tucked away turret arch vile. The vanilla rope bridge looks pretty darn good if I say so myself.
Cool map and a sign of more great maps to come.
Oh yeah the exit is definitely something special.

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