The DWmegawad Club plays: Estranged

I don't remember anything in AV I would call slaughterish.

Maps 25 and 26 in AV are the only ones really, which have ~1.4k and ~1k monsters respectively. Most of the other maps with higher than usual monster counts are simply large levels.

rileymartin said:

Maps 25 and 26 in AV are the only ones really, which have ~1.4k and ~1k monsters respectively. Most of the other maps with higher than usual monster counts are simply large levels.

A couple of level in e2 (Overwheming Odds, Lake Poison last area) also and map 32

MAP28 Astral Plane

As usual the MAP28 slot is made for something gargantuan and hard. I wonder if a trend can be broken. Anyways, this one's MIDIfied track sounds a lot better in my ears, and it's still manages to be hellish in a way. Now, this one's got so many snipers in such spaces that you'd be hiding a lot, which eclipses gameplay, as unfortunate as it is.

Those playing on continuous, it might actually be feasible to head into the lava, grab a radsuit (thankfully there's some), and just start roaming around killing a few snipers with rockets, and the "Dead Simple Mainstays" as I might as well call them, end up being more annoying than hitscanners sometimes. Getting rid of said snipers decreases the projectile hell aspect by quite a lot, but eventually I had to take a central teleporter and get back to business.

So, it's sort of an island hopper as well, Of particular note is the southeastern section, easily accessible from lava or otherwise just normally by switch and teleporter, with quite a few enemies surrounding, and then ahead a few more. There's an invulnerability close by which makes it better. There's a few teleport ambushes, like one that triggers after a megaarmor grab which I think is too much. You don't just guard a megaarmor that egregiously. Lol at this levitating corpse though. That same area is actually the center of the map, and the halfway point, clearly due to the cyberdemons making entrances. There's a bumrush of demons at one point in the north, and a dual spiderdemon ambush afterwards, at the place to unlock the exit. Oh right, that's in the northeast section, but it's a stairwell with some lost souls. I usually kill them beforehand, but it was a bit funny how after getting an invisibility they just start flying in random directions. Whatever, I at least tried to find some enjoyment in this sniper-heavy projectile hell map.

rdwpa said:

Boo!

Dunno, they all have their share. What people call "slaughter gameplay" sometimes is really just "using 100+ monsters because the area is ginormous and there's no other way to have a challenge, unless the whole area is like a catwalk over a damaging floor or something, and crowd control really isn't so important because the area is still very spacious in relation to the # of monsters used, even though there are a lot of them and it looks imposing kind of, man this sentence is really long now". :D I can't really say, I haven't played AV (don't stone me, people) or Urania yet. Monster counts in all three get pretty high though, but mostly because of larger maps in THT (and also in the others, from the little I've looked at), with some doses of slaughter gameplay but far from every map.

I see lol. Well, I don't like these ultra-hard levels where you get a BFG and then have like 10 megasphere, 1k+ enemies shooting everywhere and very few space to move. I remember playing scythe 2 and quitting in the 4th or 5th level of the green stuff episode when things started becoming like this =x

I also haven't played any of them, I guess I'll go with the one that wins the poll.

btw, THT has 20 levels.

Capellan said:

I don't remember anything in AV I would call slaughterish.

Not even the infamous Dark Dome?

I'm changing my vote to +++ Alien Vendetta since I've been looking forward to replaying it for a long time, so the tally currently is:

THT: 7
Alien Vendetta: 7

If anyone has any good suggestions for a Doom E1 episode, we could tack that onto the end of September if THT ends up winning.

dobu gabu maru said:

If anyone has any good suggestions for a Doom E1 episode, we could tack that onto the end of September if THT ends up winning.

What about Nihility?

gaspe said:

What about Nihility?

Only issue I have with that is that we generally shouldn't be playing something that might eventually turn into a full-fledged megawad we'll pick again (like Alpha Accident). It's a good choice though.

+++ 'THT' and 'No Sleep For The Dead'

Rayzik said:

+++ 'THT' and 'No Sleep For The Dead'

This is my vote for the Doom mapset! Awesome set.

Suitepee said:

Not even the infamous Dark Dome?

I finished it playing keyboard only on a 2002-era PC. It can't be modern-era slaughtery or that would not be the case :)

Ah, well, I was looking for an excuse to get into Mutiny, what with my unpredictable schedule and all. For an OG Doom episode, I was actually going to suggest Nihility as well, since I think it's really cool, but Dobu's got a good point about it. I haven't played "No Sleep For the Dead", though, so I reckon that's cool too.

Alien Vendetta has a limited amount of slaughter play in it, most of which shows up in the second half of the game, though it's far from a mainstay for the set. Most of what there is is closer to the old-fashioned Hell Revealed form of the style than any true slaughtermap you'd be likely to see today, perhaps intuitively, though in some ways it's a mapset that can be viewed as the beginning of a move away from that form of high-bodycount/high-density gameplay into something different that would be carried on by others in later years. Above all, I would characterize AV as an adventure-type mapset, not unlike Estranged in a number of ways (and even more like Bloodstain from last month, AV being one of the main inspirations for that WAD), albeit one with lots and lots of killin' along the way.

From the few maps I've played of Urania, I saw nothing I'd describe as slaughter-type, though I reckon that WAD would probably carry a very, very low Club completion rate--big, long, occasionally labyrinthine maps with a very stark, no-nonsense thing placement style which leaves little room for joyriding, sort of an endurance test.

How about Crumpets + Swim with the Whales for the extra 10 levels to finish off the major Ribbiks stuff in case of THT? Those add up to 10 maps since they both have a quick non-combat map 01. That, and the UV-max of Crumpets is shorter than the 3rd Whaling map.

I've played about a third of Urania and can honestly say it has some of the best non-linear, interconnected map layouts I've ever played. And the incidental monster placement is extremely clever, in the brutal sort of way. Some of the puzzles can be a bit obscure and the huge levels really test your navigational skills, along with tight ammo and hardcore combat.

map28

Would have been a strong map, but the combination of irritating floors and snipers you can't see is annoying. It's not so hard to avoid taking serious damage, but getting hit by even one fireball this way is enough to foul my mood. After the beginning the map gets more interesting. The nobles and pinkies can be ignored, and you can use the radsuits to swim around and take out snipers. Still, the revenants aren't so smooth to get rid of this way. The very next teleporter, past all the revenants, leads you directly into two alert shotgunners. O_o I liked the cyber duels and the interior combat and many of the setups where the projectile monsters were placed in the actual fighting area instead of miles away. The concluding battles are somewhat poor, however. A horde of pinkies that can be calmly rocketed without moving at all. Two masterminds that you either tediously kill or soak some damage to hit the switches.

I fired at a group of mancubi in map29 with the rocket launcher and took 50% damage after a baron suddenly warped in front of me, completely unmarked and untelegraphed. I'd immediately DNF here if I hadn't enjoyed the map quite a bit until now. Seems like this mapset is seriously lacking in a good model of "What players realistically might do without the author's level of foreknowledge", which is necessary for minimizing complete nonsense.

Here's a feeble stab at catching up! Twitch VOD for maps 12 to 32:

https://www.twitch.tv/benjogami/v/86270968

Next part sometime soon hopefully :P

Map 28: ASStral Plane

Alright, let's start on a positive note. The map looks pretty cool. It's large, varied and sort of feels like a city submerged in a lake of fire. The midi is great too.

Incoming salt that takes shots at several other wads.

What's not great? Everything else. Extremely obnoxious Resurgence-style sniper crossfire combined with extremely obnoxious in your face pop-ins of Speedo Doom. Yeah, nah bruh. This is Foodles trying to be "hardcore" but instead creating a 40 minute slog of frustration. Dude, I fucking love shit flying at me from everywhere when I'm walking on platforms over damaging floors! And what's with the pointless Demon and Hell Knight hordes? I spent hours yesterday holding down fire on the Rocket Launcher in Sunder's stupid Furnace and I don't need the same shit here.

Rating: Gave me rectal itch/5. [/salt]

I think Alien Vendetta would be a great choice to play, since we've been playing a lot of recent megawads for the path few months. Why not give a classic wad a try for the next month?

+++ Alien Vendetta

Sorry I haven't yet played Estranged. Maybe one day I'll start it.

Fell behind the past few days, what with just plain being busy and, uh, N++ being released on Steam. (Awesome platformer, check it out.) Looks like I'm only getting the one map in tonight, on account of MAP26 looking pretty hefty...

MAP25: The Depths
26:06 | 100% Kills | 97% Items | 50% Secrets

Whoa. Love the atmosphere here. Freaky stuff, dark and strobey. Felt like maybe it got a bit repetitive, with 2 plasma gun ambushes, a number of archie ambushes, and just a lot of redundant meat in places. And then the end was kind of a letdown: 4 cacos! Followed by a solitary baron (granted, he's right in your face) and then a lone vile at the end of a hallway? Huh. I really loved the first half or so, though. Actually reminded me a bit of Unloved, nervously moving down the those gloomy corridors...

MAP29 Sheol

Huh, I thought there'd be a MIDIfied version of this song too, but like MAP32 it was just removed for some Doom track that I don't feel like hearing.

Anyways our penultimate map is a sort of opposite to the previous one, in that it's very close-quartered. In fact, so much that it's easy to avoid damage if you know exactly where to dodge, and that was actually how I first played this. Of course it's nonlinear, and is generally enjoyable as you scrummage for keys here in whatever order suits fit. Not a whole lot to say on each place except they are connected rather well. The finale could be a bit tougher but I've seen worse.

map29

This map is brilliant. I've forgiven the baron warp-in (still silly), because it's plausibly an oversight due to how non-linear this map is. There are three keys and three primary paths you can take at the start, but the paths are connected and many of the individual areas can be accessed via multiple paths once you're in a region, which can color the encounters in many different ways.

(Don't read any spoilers in this post if you haven't played the map yet -- it's basically cheating, since they will heavily nerf the two most potentially lethal scenarios. ;))

The action is somewhat leisurely (with slight bursts of intensity) for 95% of the running but still enjoyable, with a surprising absence of annoyingly placed monsters, with the possible exception of that spider mastermind who becomes a chore to kill after its initially effective deployment, assuming you want to kill it. The last fight is probably the most dangerous encounter in Estranged so far, however, with the viles that warp in.


Fun stuff all around. Lots of replayability value.

Haven't been around for one of these in ages, and I'd certainly give it another go as an excuse to try AV. Throw in the recent Black Label release for extra fun, too.

+++ Alien Vendetta

This is a tough one to vote on, but I'll vote for Alien Vendetta. Would be cool seeing everybody's thoughts on the individual levels of this one, and I could use an excuse to play through it (I played and like the first few levels though). I'll play THT soon for sure though.

+++ Alien Vendetta

Benjogami said:

Here's a feeble stab at catching up! Twitch VOD for maps 12 to 32:

https://www.twitch.tv/benjogami/v/86270968

Next part sometime soon hopefully :P

heh, you're not alone. another map dump like this and i'm done with estranged ;)

real life has graphics, but no gameplay.



MAP16 - "Battle Room”

large, squarish map reminding me of some map in HR, visually but also concerning gameplay, based on plenty of revenants with some archvile as team medic. in the beginning it's easy and advisable to get everyone into infighting by running circles and shaking the fists at them. i insisted on fisting the revs as long as i could and went on ssg-ing them artistically around corners, not noticing the rocket launcher right in a hallway. the final battle room is a setup with a spiderboss and revs and pinkies to chase the player around and block him.



MAP17 - "Twisted Realms”

small shores of hell themed map, easy on continuous and hard on pistol start because of several barons who block the way and there's no ammo for them. foodles seems to go for a horror / survival theme here. you get on the rocket launcher and there's barely room and health to use it. i sniffed out the bfg secret quickly, but getting into it was a pain in the ass, i guess i became too slow. its only charge is very helpful against the vile+barons team.



MAP18 - "Crater”

a hectic start into another group of bunkers watching a rocky area. the second bunker is the place of an attack by several revs and one vile - let them come through a choke point and fire rockets at them. plus there's a switch puzzle someone said it leads to just an armor iirc, so i didn't care about it. pretty cool descent into hell.



MAP19 - "Haunted Mines”

oh, the map with the mandatory RL secret. no wonder i failed on my first try, for not finding it. it went well on the second, although i still had to be careful with my ammo. dark, atmospheric map that can kill one pretty quickly.



MAP20 - "The Rift”

hellish map where running circles around dumb monsters again saves the day. this is limited however by lava pools in the big cave section. the finale is a free for all with circle strafing everyone into oblivion. well it would be easier if there weren't said lava pools, but the cyb is your shield against those annoying homing revenant missiles, and there's the exit already. which kills you.



MAP21 - "Hell Hole”

a kind of speedrunning hell map concept. run through, dodge a bit, grab a bfg, blast spiderdemon out of the way, and hop into the exit. that'S all.



MAP22 - "The Bloodworks”

a wood & stone castle in a sea of (luckily non-damaging) sea of blood, very much running around to get hell's finest bash each other's heads in. there are a few encounters where archviles come to the rescue, but there's rockets by the boxes available. one revived the hitscanner guard on one of the castle walls so i was greeted with a hail of bullets. the siege cow was problematic up there right in front of the elevator, but i could lure it down into the marble room with the "fireplace" where i had killed the revs before, and ssg it from the entrance - rather boring, but i didn't find anything better.

seems that AV is leading atm... well i don't want to ruin anyone's fun since my contributions during the next 2 months might look similar, so i'm fine with anything you like to play.

MAP30 Chimes at Midnight

Well what do you know, the last level has the sniper-heavy setting once again. I honestly don't recommend anyone to pistol start this, as it combines gauntlet run with loads of snipers and that's not the gameplay style that anyone should be comfortable with. It really gets hairy at the cyberdemon, or when you are waiting for this lift to the north which leads up to a bunch of hell knights (I remember revenants at the top, you decide which is actually worse). The problem is they are already around you without any avenue of escape most of the time and then there's more projectiles coming from behind, GAH! Oh and crusher-combined platfomer sniper section, fucking come on. Did I mention an arch-vile was supposed to teleport there as you approach and yet doesn't actually wake up once?

Well, the boss is a pretty standard one, with a sort of Plutonia-feel with all the high-tiers. That always works against the grain but what I think sucks is that the switch to hit the boss brain with is down near the Icon itself. Staying on the platform and aiming straight ahead works to kill it and end the wad. Honestly, lose the gauntlet run, especially the lift part, and this would have been an okay closer at the most.

MAP26: Valley of Defilement
18% kills, 0/5 secrets

After reading about what the map was like, I decided to take the pacifist route and see if I could make it through. I did need to stop and shoot some enemies in the midway point (mainly mancs which blocked thin pathways with their fat asses) but it's mostly do-able, especially with some foreknowledge. I did take a second whirl through the BFG path as well, it was cool how the two paths intersect with each other on the map itself. Just don't have it in me to really sit and fight through everything though.

MAP27: Flame Peak
69% kills, 0/1 secret

I really like the cacos at the start that act as a flank to push you out of the starting point. I do not like the cacos and pain elementals and lost souls that continue to rain down from crevices high up that you can't even see and harass you throughout the map, appearing at the completely random-ass worst moments. I'm not playing with infinite tallness, I can only imagine how dreadful it is with that setting on. Heck I was wishing at points I was playing GZDoom just so I could aim all the way up. It's a shame because the map I think would actually be pretty fun - it's a big linear assault but a fun one, certainly with some more interesting monster setups than previous maps. But I only made it halfway before getting frustrated with the fliers and deciding to run through the map. Managed to finish with 1% health, amazingly.

Map 29: Sheol

This is a rather large penultimate map that took me about an hour to fully explore and find everything. Oh, and I played it pistol start, for whatever reason. There is a great deal of non-linear exploration and inter-connectivity, not unlike the recent Urania, with the ability to approach encounters from a variety of different paths. Quite a few optional areas too that contain plenty of ammo and other goodies. Rockets and Cells are plentiful which makes the combat fun and avoids the boring grind present in some other maps.

The gameplay itself is generally Fun and Balanced© aside from the iffy Vile use in the final encounter. This is not a problem on continuous but Foodles doesn't provide a BFG for whatever reason so a bit of RNG is involved. I came into that fight with 100HP and green armour, which also doesn't feel good in that kind of scenario. Adding a megasphere there would also be a good move as that kind of encounter just doesn't play well with entry level defenses. There's also jack shit worth of health, in the form of a few stimpacks, so that doesn't help matters either. Assuming the Viles don't target you right away, they're easily caught up in infighting and can be safely blown up by your or Cyber rockets as you circlestrafe the arena in the direction of your choosing.

I also died to a bug where if you jump down onto the platform below from where you face the Cyberdemon, the insta-pop Cacos don't trigger and I fell through the floor into one of dem pits. The way to lower the blue key is also a bit stupid as I cleared the map without stepping on that elevator and had to check GZDB to see how the hell you pull that sucker down from there. Also annoying that you can't activate it from the bottom to reach the starting area and have to backtrack quite a bit.

Other than that, this is one of the best maps in the set, although I wouldn't go as far as calling it brilliant. It does almost make up for some of the less than stellar maps prior. Onward to the finale, and if it's an IoS I will shoot the damn thing with free-aim.