The DWmegawad Club plays: Whitemare 2

Map 25 -- Inside the Pyramid - 102% Kills / No secrets
Epic-esque setting indeed, which from my point of view is usually a plus. The visuals aren't terribly arresting, with some ups and some downs--the main room looks fine to me by virtue of its lighting contrasts, whereas the topside looks a mite cheap and gamey largely by dint of the lack thereof--and the architecture is simplistic and orthogonal, but the scenario created is nevertheless interesting. I believe this utilizes fewer monsters than any of Shadowman's maps thus far, but it's probably the most dangerous (albeit by a small margin) on account of featuring a lot of inconvenient terrain, most notably the various snake-slim catwalks that must be used to navigate around the great pit comprising most of the space in the pyramid's heart.

Again, it's not a difficult map all told; there are a couple of rather cruel moments in the monster-placement department out on the catwalks and one more on the periphery that would've been outright bastardly were it not nerfed by the scads of health pickups littering the room it's in, but for the most part the greatest danger a solid player is likely to face will be his/her own impatience and/or indecisiveness, since it's easy to go plummeting into the depths on account of the former or take a fireball in the face on account of the latter. Even then there's still some room for error, though; you can survive more than one fall into the pit (and may even want to do it intentionally to flank a certain pair of arch-viles at one point), thanks to nearby teleporters and some courtesy medikits down at the bottom. If anything, the map might be a little too restrained and over-reliant on its narrow pathway concept (which persists in some form or another even when you're not dealing with the pit), but since it's not a very long map I don't think it really overstays its welcome. Probably my least preferred of the Shadowman maps thus far, but still entertaining enough.

Map 26 -- Cave Village - 102% Kills / 100% Secrets
Not much of a village, but there are some caves as advertised and more of that Mark Klem BGM I'm always happy to listen to. This is very recognizably a Memfis map; I think that if you told me his previous map (map 14) was by someone else I'd have believed you, but the authorship here is unmistakable--the modest, 'realistic' (relative to the scale of Doom's actors) height variation, the gently terraced sets of planes, the casual/untrapped weapon placement, etc. I suppose the color palette is a bit less varied/cheery than a lot of the author's other recent releases, but this is largely a result of the wintery/rocky theme, I reckon. Even without bright splashes of color everywhere, something about the overall picture still seems lighthearted, somehow, the quaint little cave-cabins feeling quite inviting despite their rather rude inhabitants. Probably just me, but something about the way Memfis builds maps always make them seem, uh....."cute", for lack of a better term.

Fights? Well, I don't remember 90% of the action specifically, as it is quite gentle and casually-paced, like so many of its siblings. The one I do remember works pretty well, though--you drop into a watery cave with a brick-walled structure ahead of you, and then get ambushed by some revenants, knights, and a pesky pain elemental while you're eyeballing that. It occurs to me that ammo balance is again fairly tight, although to nowhere near the level of map 09. I would also agree that the ending's a bit anticlimactic, but the whole thing is so short and light anyway that it's not really much of a letdown.

Map 27 -- Hidden Threat - 95% Kills / 100% Secrets
Ah, a BeeWen map. His are not always the most graceful creations in the world (particularly where navigability is concerned), but they are pretty much always interesting, without fail. Even moreso than in the previous map, the 'winter' theme is back in force here, as is that subtle sense of strangeness that the Russian scene seems to do so well. The setting looks normal enough at a cursory glance--a clearing with some dingy old buildings at either end and what seems to be a large snowdrift clumped around a big rock in its center, all set in some wintry hills--but if you stop to really look at it it's a pretty weird place......there's a strange juxtaposition of nature, gothic, and tech, and the buildings' floorplans are very nonfunctional/abstract even by the standards of DooM (particularly the northern one) despite the 'real-world' flavor of the textures used on them. And what's with the assorted caution-striped cubes? At first I was sure that monsters were eventually going to pop out of them, ala the ice blocks from BeeWen's 'Kleptomania' map from the original Whitemare, but nothing doing....they're apparently just there to make you wonder why the hell they're there (although I suppose the two on top of the central mound are momentarily useful as cover at one point). Oh, and wonderful music as well in this one, it suits the mood and pace of the action brilliantly.

This is another slow-paced map on the action front, but I enjoyed it. The level's nomenclature presumably refers to the way the map seems very quiet and desolate at first, with enemies tending to sneakily emerge at strategic firing positions with a good angle on you while your back is likely to be turned. Most of this is very nonthreatening; good angle or not, most of the popup monsters are revealed quite a ways away from you, providing ample time to dodge or seek cover. As things progress the groups of monsters revealed tend to get larger and more powerful, culminating in a heterogeneous attack on the central space by revenants, cacos, knights, a couple of viles and a cyberdemon at the end, but even these encounters are almost wholly stress-free given the space and ammo available. Not unusual for BeeWen's maps, a couple of ideas seem oddly out of step with most of the map--most notably the little bit where you kill a whopping 4 cacos while waiting for some bars around a teleport to disappear, and the whole deal with the Entry/Exit generator on the central mound--but I suppose that's part of the charm of his style.

Above all, between the atmosphere, the light platforming, and the low-key combat, I would describe this as a 'leisurely' experience; sometimes there's a fine line indeed between what feels boring or patronizing and what simply feels relaxing and soothing, and 'Hidden Threat' is very much in the latter camp. Probably my favorite from E3 so far, actually.

Edit: Oh yes, there is a problem, though--one of the monster teleporter setups seems to be broken, as one sizable group of foes never showed up. Oh yeah, and the header text on the entry/tally screens (giving the map's name, author's name, etc.) is indeed screwed up, at least in Eternity.

MAP31: Pillars of Creation
Big and atmospheric. Or, rather, the map itself is pretty small, but the atmosphere is huge. The graveyard portion really felt like a Hexen level (reminded me a lot of Desolate Garden, actually); it might have been because this level had Hexen music (one of them did, anyway.)

MAP32: Green Madness
I had ALL THE DEATHS here. Srsly. Besides the major BS that was the pillared portion of the map, I actually had a lot of fun, more or less. The single-color theme (green!) and the slaughter set-pieces reminded me a lot of a Ribbiks map, if not quite as polished.

MAP16: Mystery Island
I liked this one a lot, except for one little thing: I really hate when a map is empty, and you start walking and enemies suddenly magically pop up in front of you. It's obnoxious, and what's the point? (To "surprise" you, I guess? Anyway, obnoxious.) A lot of fun, otherwise. Rather reminded me of something from Epic 2.

MAP17: Abyss of Death
Another fun map, though that last stretch of cliff was brutal, with the cacos from above and the spiders across the chasm.

Map26 - “Cave Village" by Memfis

Interesting theme and layout, exploring subterranean monster houses (and an underground tree for some reason). Also interesting to get such an early plasma rifle when the fighting isn't all that heavy, allowing for more creative weapon juggling. It felt a bit less linear than it actually was thanks to various side areas. A pleasant little map, could have gone on for longer.

Map27 - “Hidden Threat" by BeeWen

Mysterious wide open and empty map, strewn with enormous unopened christmas presents. Impressive scenery, though it never really gets utilised for the fighting - this is more about the exploration I feel. It was a bit like waiting for a fight that never happened, even with the surprise monsters at the end, they were spread so thin in that landscape you hardly noticed them (and thanks to the steep angle the cyberdemon could be shot from the ground without his missiles reaching you). But this is one of those maps that is more about the journey than the conflict i guess. And its a nice enough journey.

Map28 - “March of the Viles" by Shadowman

A fun slice of slaughter in a massive urban wilderness. I get the vibe from the goofy music that this isn't meant to be taken all that seriously, and when the fighting starts in earnest it is a total shitstorm of enemies that can for the most part be effortlessly avoided, so there is some fun missile dodging and infighting to be had here. The landscape is perhaps bigger than it really needs to be even with this many occupants, it takes both player and monsters so long to get anywhere that often you have to go find the battle rather than the battle coming to you. And that music will start getting on your nerves somewhere along the way. Enjoyably silly.

MAP28: March of the Viles
80% kills, 1/1 secret

Despite my usual dislike of slaughtermaps, this is actually pretty good. The first part of the map is a fairly decent cityscape, and I played it normally up until the part with the three AVs near the blue door. After that, unleash the shitstorm, and run like hell. Only complaint would be that the progression is a little unclear in parts (white teleport pads blend in with the level, switches lowering platforms to open up areas subtly, etc).

MAP28's music is unbelievably catchy.

Looks like I didn't make it again, even playing on ITYTD, but I have played several of the other levels.

19 was broken, and I had to noclip to beat it.
I continue to play 20 on UV with respawning items as an endurance test (kind of ruined it once I figured out how to stop the imps).
I actually beat 32 and 24, even though I was on ITYTD.
Both 20 and 15 would've been DNF's from me, the latter due to constantly dropping down to about 10 FPS.

Really cool WAD.

MAP29: Trip One Way
93% kills, 1/1 secret

A nice little breather map between the slaughtermaps. I like the overall aesthetic, since it's got that winning combination of white snow, deep blue water, and brown rock that I like - nice vivid and complimentary colors. There's a few spots that go a bit overboard with the textures (such as the lava platform holding the blue key, or the door with the three hell knights in it that at first glance looks like it should require a red key) but those are minor complaints. Gameplay is pretty easy but has a couple of ambushes to keep the player awake. There's an odd sky effect before the Pain Elemental ambush that makes me not quite sure if it was intentional or a bug. The music has a nice start, but too short to make an impact (the audio quality also isn't that good).

Map 28 -- March of the Viles - 104% Kills / 100% Secrets
Gremlins, eh? Yet another piece of music I thought I'd never hear anywhere near a DooM map, courtesy of Shadowman. Kind of fits, though...despite the 666 monsters, this one's pretty easygoing. The setting is a little walled village-center near a river in some snowy hills (map 27 actually begins a thematic minisode that continues to the end of the game, it turns out); the contrast with Memfis' very understated sense of scale is clear here, as the buildings are tall, the river is wide, the hills are expansive, etc. Initially it has that sort of city-sandbox look and feel to it, and the layout opens up in a big way as progress is made, but the sandboxiness is purely illusory....the route to finish is very specific and linear; most of the space exists simply so you and the monsters can move freely.

Yeah, there are tons of monsters. They mostly appear in large homogenous groups, but are deployed in such a way that the groups inevitably intermingle and start a demon-on-demon riot. There's a horde of revenants, a few broods of arachnatrons, a large cacofleet, even a herd of pinkies, the whole schebang, although arch-viles don't make nearly as much of a showing as the map's title might suggest. After some somewhat lengthy switch-hittery preamble, the main idea of the map becomes apparent not long after breaching the second wall; basically, most of the large ice-walls and other structures that define the bounds of the initial play area end up melting away in larger and larger chunks, releasing larger and larger groups of monsters to hound you. I think that the way the action is paced in this map is very well done; the preamble I mentioned seems reasonable enough and feels like it's going to define the map because it dominates inside the village itself, such that when the hordes start appearing it's a surprising development that catches one's interest and gets the blood pumping....and then the hordes just keep getting bigger, finally climaxing around the point where the cyberdemons and the cacoswarm hit the scene. Though all of this may sound imposing, it's really not--the play space is vast, there's far more hi-test ammo lying around outside the village than you could ever need, and there are plenty of ____spheres in the some of the monster nooks to see you through. It's a pleasing pitch; there's enough going on that the battle feels busy and climactic, but the tactical realities of the situation mean that it's really nearly as relaxing a play as map 27 was, at least assuming you aren't the sort of player made fundamentally uncomfortable by there being a lot of monsters moving about.

It's simplistic, but fun stuff, feels like a companion piece to Shadowman's 'Operation: Blizzard' earlier in the set. I really like how drastically the scenery shifts with the first truly big monster reveal, as well--one seldom sees lowering sectors on that scale. However, as has been the case with a number of other maps in the set, this one has at least one game-ending oversight: on the western side of the village, there's a little yard with some rocket boxes and mancubi that is supposed to be revealed after the player rides a certain teleporter, but it is very easy to make a basic/legitimate jump into the area from the first imp-rooftop; there is no way out if the player does this (and it looks like a perfectly reasonable thing to try to do), resulting in a dead game (or IDCLIP time).

Map29 - “Trip One Way" by BigMemka

A compact map compared to the previous two, almost to the point of feeling claustrophobic in places. Pistol start is interesting, and encourages running blindly into no-mans-land to find a decent weapon, unless you want to shoot a bunch of pinkies with a pea-shooter. The map then twists around on itself like intestines as you work your way to the exit, nice use of archviles along the way. There is a consistent theme throughout this wad of imps used as volatile scenery, which this map continues. It does keep you on your toes, but clearing them out can be a bit of a chore. But anyway, a nice map, nothing really bad to report here. The music is well chosen but horribly compressed.

MAP18: City on the Edge
Looking back, I quite enjoyed this one. In particular, the way the path looped back and forth across the landscape. Certainly it could have been better marked, but it wasn't too bad. The obnoxious part was all the snipers that could tag you from the next postal code over. I did manage to kill everything (thank goodness for continuous play) until the very end, when I ignored all the baddies on the graveyard cliffs and just booked it for the exit.

MAP19: April
I really liked this one to start. I thought the architecture looked cute and it felt like a bit of a breather map after last. Oops. Hooray, archies and revvies everywhere. I too got the bug where the power plant never opened, which soured me on the map even more.

MAP20: Gloominarch's Realm
Ha ha, no.

FDAs maps 24-27

Map24: Castle Brutanasia by Arsenikum

Good lord. Not a fan of this at all, the constant hail of Rev rockets got very annoying VERY quickly. Just no. I did record a FDA but it's a short failure with 200 something kills, didn't get very far.

Map25: Inside The Pyramid by Shadowman

I should hate this by default because platforming, but it was actually pretty alright I guess. It has a bit of a puzzle map feel to it although it's not very puzzle-y after all, just pressing switches to raise walkways basically. Monster placement plays a big part in such an open map like this and I think the author did quite well in that department. The sniper enemies are thankfully mostly Imps or HKs so they can be dispatched pretty easily. Cacos make a few appearances like they should and the Archies are used in tricky ways mostly. The demo is an another terrible effort by me, I manage to die very stupidly in the big AV/Rev ambush and didn't even start over. Neat concept map anyway.

Map26: Cave Village by Memfis

Another standard Memfis map. This is perhaps the weakest of the three since it's the easiest of the lot. Aesthetics are as high quality as in the other two and the setting is pretty interesting in it's strangeness. Cave village indeed. The underground tree was quite amusing too... Combat is pretty non-threatening throughout, even the Archies because you could hear them before they showed up and so I was ready when they finally did. The PG given right at the start helps a lot too of course, if you use the ammo wisely. I've played enough Memfis' maps to know to save cells for the token Archies heh. Pretty good map still, even though it could have had a little more bite to it.

Map27: Hidden Threat by BeeWen

Another decent enough map. A relatively large one at that but mostly to the account of the big central area. Most of the time you're actually circling around it in small tunnels and such and only the finale really activates the central area too. This map was also relatively easy overall despite the decent amount of meat you'll have to go through. I wonder what the missing horde of baddies were though, it was a pretty sizable bunch after all. The map isn't super detailed but it looks pretty realistic and good nonetheless. Enjoyable stuff.

Map 29 -- Trip One Way - 104% Kills / 100% Secrets
A final offering from BigMemka, smaller than any of his others, but still fitting the same mold--a narrow, linear pathway fraught with moderate peril. The scale of the terrain and architecture is noticeably smaller here than in any of his previous maps, which I feel hurts the presentation a bit, although the color/texture spam is more tasteful than in his other maps by a fair margin, only really looking garish in the ice/lava/marble room that Magnusblitz mentioned, although in fairness I think that the bright red/white marble recolor would probably be ugly in 99% of all contexts. I also noticed the red sky bleed effect near the end of the map; I assumed it was a bug, myself, since there's no real thematic/gameplay shift to accompany the change (and the current version of White2.wad has been fairly buggy in general).

I don't remember a whole lot about the gameplay at this point, which probably doesn't speak in the map's favor overall, but I do distinctly recall that the opening moments are the best part--shooting the oblivious zombiemen loitering around the mouth of the little cave where you start prompts some pinkies to charge you, and taking them on with a pistol, fists, and ~50 bullets doesn't seem particularly practical (or entertaining), so you're compelled to rush out of the cave before they crowd you in so you can get something better, which is fairly risky given that there are enemies that can inflict damage from some angle pretty much no matter which way you turn in this first little area. The tight quarters continue for the rest of the map as well, but little else stands out. Truth be told, when you get down to the nuts and bolts this really doesn't play much differently from BigMemka's other maps in the set, but where those maps offered play spaces that made their tight quarters seem natural/incidental (ala the snowy country road in his first map, or the cliffside paths in map 17), this one doesn't really dress the proceedings up in any particular way, making it seem less interesting/engaging overall.

Map 30 -- Operation 'Antimaydan' - 106% Kills / 100% Secrets
Essentially the sequel to 'March of the Viles' from earlier; using the theme from Gremlins 2 was a nice touch. The setting here is an urban medley of rooftops and alleyways with a few building interiors; as a result the shapes are more uniformly orthogonal and regular, and there's not nearly as much interconnectivity at play. While not offensive to the eye, the visuals are also rather bland, being comprised chiefly of big monotextured blocks of brown and grey (especially grey), one of the textbook pitfalls of a representational style without enough attention to mood and detail. The only real splash of the color comes at the end, in the form of a gigantic yule-tree that is apparently being shat out by a UFO (????), somewhat reminiscent of the tree scene from the original Whitemare's 'Hopeless Joy' map.

It is probably more challenging than its predecessor on account of its heavy use of instapopping ranks of monsters and some functionally cover-free battle spaces on the rooftops, but unfortunately it's also not nearly as fun, its more controlled linear connections and flat boxy spaces less conducive to freeform violence. Things do liven up a bit around the yule tree, which turns into a giant infighting clusterfuck (complete with V-sphere under the tree), but since the actual play space is still very flat and static the somewhat extended series of switch-hits/monster reveals can't fully sustain interest for as long as the segment lasts. There's also a basic IoS setup at the end, but the area is so large that the fairly subdued spawn rate means that it takes a long time for any real pressure to mount, and so it's mostly the same old song and dance about just making sure your rockets fly true instead of autotargeting pesky lost souls or the like.

******

Overall, Whitemare 2 is enjoyable enough, but if I'm honest I don't think it's quite as consistently interesting as the original. Another club member said of Epic 2 last month that the WAD seemed like it should've been 10-15 maps long instead of 32; to some extent I think that's the case here. Maps that were really grating were few and far between, but a lot of the more modest, straightforward speedmaps are almost totally overshadowed by the WAD's handful of obvious showpiece levels, such that it's already difficult for me to recall some of them....I suspect that the only reason I can specifically recall as many as I can is largely a matter of the WAD's thematic changes from episode to episode, although even this starts feeling pretty patchy/half-baked in a lot of the second half of the game. The WAD's also still got a lot of moderate-to-serious bugs in it, which makes it feel less polished overall, but that is ultimately a minor concern.

All the above being said, in this case it is very easy for me to pick my favorites from the set, as they tower above most of their brethren. In no particular order:

1. Map 15 -- Floating World
2. Map 32 -- Green Madness
3. Map 28 -- March of the Viles
4. Map 13 -- Inside Your Mind
5. Map 20 -- Gloominarch's Realm

Honorable mentions to 'Trynton' and 'Hidden Threat' as well, both have some real quirky charm to them. I suspect that maps 20 and 13 are probably somewhat oddball selections, but I'd be surprised if the other three don't all end up being oft-picked as standouts by other players, sort of underscoring what I mean when I say that some of the maps here really dwarf most of the others, in more ways than one.

MAP30: Operation 'Antimaydan'
88% kills, 0/1 secret

What the heck is an anti-maydan? The closest I can figure is that it's a different spelling of maidan (as in Euromaidan, as in the protests in Ukraine that deposed the government) but that just means "square" so... I dunno.

As Demon says, this is basically the sequel to 'March of the Viles', as it features a slow buildup across a cityscape before culminating in a giant slaughtery fight. I actually found the cityscape to be quite realistic, though it is hurt by the limited textures and dull color selection (brown and grey). It does make the giant tree at the end stand out though, as well as the UFO (setting up Whitemare 3, eh?) I played normally until the tree segment, then just began to run around like crazy... there were already so many monsters that the Icon's extra ones didn't really add much.

Overall thoughts

Not sure quite what it is, but I felt a bit disappointed by this WAD overall. Maybe it's burnout from having the last few months be Whitemare 1 (similar in nature), Scythe (fun at first but the last few maps are doozies), Epic 2 (also lots of slogfests). Or maybe it's just because there's nothing really that tickled me that much about any of these maps. For some of them, the speedmap origin was quite apparent. For others, there was clearly a good or at least interesting idea, but the execution was lacking. The most complete ones just tend to be slaughtermaps, which really aren't up my alley (witness the two maps I didn't finish).

Overall, my favorites: MAP07 "Ice and Fire", MAP08 "Frozen Acid", MAP09 "UAC Outpost", MAP10 "Operation Blizzard"

Interestingly, these maps all come right after one another. Maybe I am just moody when reviewing maps? Heh. On the other hand, there are some definite groupings when it comes to the maps - the real shorties are early on, then we get to the maps that are finally long enough to have some fun. In the middle was a detour away from the snow theme, which I felt crippled the WAD a bit, as the levels seemed somewhat random and unrelated. Near the end, we swing back into the snow areas, but it's mostly huge slaughtermaps with the odd breather map thrown in. MAP28 would probably be the honorable mention, and others like MAP20 I can appreciate from a design point of view, but not necessarily say I enjoyed playing.

okay I didn't finish but I honestly think that the first Whitemare was better than this. I didn't find much of the mapset memorable or fun to play which is why I stopped midway through. Some maps had terrible monster placement though. Many of those sacrificed gameplay for visuals which really isn't a good thing. MAP18 can go fuck itself for that matter. I guess it was more diverse in its authors, but I'm not entirely sure diversity shined here.

My favorite maps would have to be MAP05, MAP10, MAP14, MAP19, and MAP32.

Map30 - “Operation 'Antimaydan'" by Shadowman

More gremlins, and a suitably ridiculous final battle around an enormous christmas tree. This was great fun, lots of space and lots of chaos. The city scenery is quite epic in scale (though fairly simple in detail) and the pace is fast as the lack of cover makes running your main tactic for avoiding enemy fire. The grand finale was one of the highlights of the whole wad for me, though its not specifically challenging beyond dodging a million enemy bullets and taking out rogue archviles, but I love that kind of mess. Took me a few moments to figure out the lift to the top of the tree, but I'm glad it was a nice and simple one-shot deal with no awkward aiming or back-and-forth. The perfect note to finish on.

So there we go, I got through the whole wad. Its a real mish mash of stuff, some good some bad, some epic some modest, some ugly and some beautiful. I'm not sure if the good maps would be enough to draw me back to it, but I had fun while it lasted. My pick of best maps would be 10, 15, 17, 30 and 32. I think map 20 could have been in that list if it wasn't for some fatal flaws, though its certainly one I won't forget in a hurry.

Glad to see everyone finishing up, but we still don't have a series of maps to put beside Sunder. We need something in the range of 12-16 maps that might complement it well (as in, not in the same style), and I'm open to suggestions like I said. We could go with one of Psyren's sets as per Plums's suggestion (though I know not which since I'm not used to his/her work)

dobu gabu maru said:

Glad to see everyone finishing up, but we still don't have a series of maps to put beside Sunder. We need something in the range of 12-16 maps that might complement it well (as in, not in the same style), and I'm open to suggestions like I said. We could go with one of Psyren's sets as per Plums's suggestion (though I know not which since I'm not used to his/her work)

I saw Flashback to Hell mentioned in the cacowards thread, which is 15 maps. Don't know anything about it beyond that.
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?file=levels/doom2/Ports/d-f/fth666.zip

There's always this if you guys don't mind doing speedmaps: you could do it alongside Flashback to Hell or something.

dobu gabu maru said:

We could go with one of Psyren's sets as per Plums's suggestion (though I know not which since I'm not used to his/her work)

Rylayeh is definitely the best of his three mapsets. It would be nice to also give Crimson Canyon some attention too though, since despite winning a Cacoward it's rarely talked about these days. But up to you. I didn't even get to unzipping Whitemare 2 this month, which I'm quite disappointed/ashamed about, but I still plan on playing it sometime.

Flashback to Hell is maybe a good one too.

Obsidian's new mapset is very good, and also very short - I think some people talked about going through the whole wad in under 2 hours. I think it might suffer some of the same problems as Scythe did for a DWMC in that it works best playing several maps in a row. But it would be nice to give it some attention, and from what I know about Sunder it would be very different indeed.

Yeah, I was thinking Obsidian's 1-hour mapset could be a good one, since they're so short.

Obsidian said:

There's always this if you guys don't mind doing speedmaps: you could do it alongside Flashback to Hell or something.

I played the first 3 maps of this the other day, and thought they kept getting better. Map03 was really quite cool.

SteveD said:

I played the first 3 maps of this the other day, and thought they kept getting better. Map03 was really quite cool.

Yeah, I was quite proud of that one. MAP26 and MAP31 are good ones too, although MAP31 is kinda hectic.

Waxing on Whitemare 2

Map 20: After trying the first room dozens of times and dying without making much progress, resorted to god mode. Still curious so dicked around with god mode on. I have the lost soul limit on so it was a little less crazy in the central arena. That one cyber concealed behind a gate texture is not really an issue; there is a safespot to abuse to attack from and it is unable to reach the player with its attacks. The maze area is where I would surely die trying it honestly if I could even make it that far. Overwhelming. I'll give this map credit for ambition but it's not fun to play.

Map 22: Ended up liking this. Probably where the sum of the parts is greater than each one individually. Progression is simple yet works well with making one's way through the valleys before climbing up to the high ledges of the ruins. Didn't bother me climbing up each time I dropped down from the upper ledges to reach goodies. Some navigation aids would make for a stronger map.

Some low ammo at the start which I solve with infighting. The map plays fair with monster placement; any deaths were a result of carelessness on my end, the first time I reached the cyber and being completely blindsided being a memorable one. Took a few attempts before I exited successfully on HMP without any cheats or saves and had fun.

Map 24: Ugh, no. Whereas maps 18 and 20 had interesting concepts that ended up not fun to play but have potential for something better to come along, 24's gimmick is not fun period. I have a two word phrase for those elevated revenants that starts with F and ends with F.

Map 27:: Winter. Not to easy but not too hard either. Somehow ended up as a favorite. The way the central area populates with more monsters as the player progresses is one of the primary features. Right after obtaining the rocket launcher, there is a prime chance to dish out splash damage from above. Fun. There is a navigational hangup (it's really impractical to take out the first archvile without dropping to ground level, thus calling for another climb up the center snowbank) though it doesn't drag down the overall quality too much for me.

Time to finish this. Demos for maps 28 and 30.

Map28: March of The Viles by Shadowman

I really enjoyed this, probably my favorite map in the whole mapset. It is indeed quite easy due to the heaps of ammo and health provided but 666 pieces of meat to go through is a pretty substantial amount and in here it's a case of the more the merrier. The opposition usually appeared in several homogeneous groups of different types of hellspawn so getting them to infight was a piece of cake. That's what I do most of the time in the FDA too heh. A relaxing and enjoyable massacre overall.

Map29: Trip One Way by BigMemka

This one was pretty good as well. Small, short and not that hard but it's well crafted and the gameplay is fairly interesting despite the relative easyness. I remember giving this a few spins back when the wad was released and both times went to the BK fight with SG only so up until today I thought this map was actually much harder than it is. Felt pretty stupid when I found out that both weapons are freely available at the start and I managed to finish the map on my first attempt today. Even with the SSG the BK area is probably the hardest of the map and the highlight as well. Looks very nice too, there's a good amount of detail and just the compact nature of the map and the use of height differences was quite appealing. Nice little map, no demo though because of the aforementioned stupidity.

Map30: Operation 'Antimaydan' by Shadowman

March of the Viles, part 2. Now with 100% more christmas trees! Neat finale to end the mapset, I'm definitely glad it's not just the usual dull 2 minute IoS battle. Same theme as in map28 and combat was also kind of similar, although the revealed groups were much more heterogeneous in this one. It's a little more difficult as well, mostly due to Arch-Viles being placed a little more threateningly. The final battle is pretty fun and easily turns into a chaotic mess, which is not a bad thing at all. There's a free Invuln sphere at the bottom of the tree but you don't really even need it imo, kind of like the Invuln in map28 being equally unnecessary. BFG-spam is more than enough to do the trick against the hordes. The actual Romerohead-killing is the standard lift&rockets thing. But yeah, nice finish to the wad by Shadowman. He did well with these two maps in the final three. The demo is a half-FDA of a sorts, I played some of it before recording but and remembered a few parts. The christmas tree I had not seen beforehand though.

Overall Whitemare 2 was definitely a mixed bag. Mostly enjoyable stuff with a few highs and a few lows so worth playing for sure. Highlights were maps 15, 28, 30 and 32. Honorable mentions to 8, 9 and 20, which wasn't perhaps the most enjoyable map but a very impressive and unforgettable one nonetheless.