The DWmegawad Club plays: Doom 2 Reloaded

MAP04: Alpha Base

I got stuck in the beginning because I couldn't tell the striped panel was a door to the air duct. Not sure what the switch next to it is supposed to be doing.

There were some attempts at realism in this map, but while I liked the laptop (such a simple idea to make use of default textures, and I'm surprised I haven't seen anybody do that yet), the laser experiment chamber felt bad; it wasn't attractive visually and didn't have good combat. Overall this level was quite disappointing; it was very linear, as in, it was a series of rooms with one entrance and one exit, especially after the blue key door.

vdgg said:

About glass windows I wrote in 2009 in dd322354.txt "The cacodemon battle is boring, as I said. Moreover, how can rockets pass through glass? Hello!? Look at WOS by Paul Corfiatis and Kristian Aro. THERE we have correct glass behaviour." I prefer them solid, no bullets/projectiles can pass.

Back when my dad played Doom (some PWAD or other with glass windows) he was impressed by how realistic it was you could shoot through the windows, his reasoning being that bullets go through glass, don't they?

MAP04
Feels like something from the doom alpha with all these sprawling corridors, there's a room where you go along a laser beam(I suppose) What's the deal with it? A simple nukage floor would work.
This map is harder to play because it has awkward encounters towards the end. But to tell the truth, I enjoyed the first half.

MAP04: Alpha Base

I feel like this level isn't entirely sure what it wants to be, and while many of its individual elements or components are pretty cool, the result doesn't hang together especially well to my eyes. The aesthetic, for the most part, is 'clean technbase,' lots of white walls, gleaming green metalwork, pale green TEK textures. Where the map claims your health, it's mostly through attrition rather than ambushes. The laser conduit is an interesting idea that feels a bit out-of-place just stuck on one side of this level as an area you simply have to traverse; it almost feels like it could have done with having more attention drawn to it, having been made more remarkable and memorable. Later on, places like the mancubus/revenant room and the cacodemon/crates/pits room, feel... odd, I guess? Like they were built without much consideration of the "what's on the other side of the wall?" factor, or as though they're smaller and less memorable than the previously-explored "backstage" areas of the map. I'm probably not articulating that well.

The linearity doesn't do this map any favours when the layout seems like it could be easily modified to open up backtracking-friendly passages as one progresses... though speaking of backtracking, the provision of additional radsuits to allow a single return trip back through the laser conduit is a nice touch.

Solid windows have a negative side too: the monsters can't see you through them, which is also stupid, e.g. http://i.imgur.com/4vmEzZi.png I don't know which solution is better.

But if you make them alert, they'll follow you.

True, but stupid Doom monsters will group together and become a too easy target, especially for RL\BFG. I think that's why I made them deaf in that level.

Simply don't make them look out of the window, then.

thoughts on level 2: love that fight with the Arachnotron
a write-up, a video and a new tune

map05
This is the first level where after exiting my thought was “That wasn’t bad”. Probably that stemmed mainly from my enjoying the secrets near the exit. They were parkour-esque, but relied more on working out the correct path than on expert coordination.
Many of the flaws of the set so far - clumsy progression and way too many corridors - continue, but since there are signs of improvement, I shall persevere at least a while longer.

05 - this map felt totally empty to me, nothing interesting happened apart from the weird green sphere part and even that I didn't like. I mean, I appreciate that Andy actually placed this powerup, which you don't see that often in modern maps, but it is used in the most banal way possible: you just take it to kill a horde in a safe "mindless fun" fight. Why not make me think how better to use this gift, why not give me some choices? Oh, I forgot, there are no choices in the land of linearity...

MAP05 Lockdown

wow, what a way to start the level with a lift in front of my face. also, the corridor behind me is lasered.

things start to get a bit tougher in generic techbase land. now I pretty much want to get those secrets in order to really take down the big monsters that are starting to show through. not only that, but I didn't get a chaingun until about halfway through. I managed to find an invulnerability sitting behind a column that made the baron of hell and revenant in the next area a whole lot easier. I don't remember if it was on a harder difficulty (I'm gonna go with no on that one). other stuff, well the eastern room has a rather nasty teleport ambush all over the place, and if you play your secret cards right, you'll wind up getting the BFG early. again, just another level to plow through.

on another note, why is that MIDI (from the old D2RMUS) so darn long?

Map 05 -- Lockdown - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Fifth verse, same as the.....second?

Again, very similar to map 02, and again a bit better than that map, although this probably is one of the least memorable maps in the set, I think. Apart from the V-sphere in plain sight that Memfis mentioned (I also don't really like that encounter, incidentally, it feels like the sphere was placed mainly because eschdoom realized after the fact that fighting the stuff in the piston chamber would just be dull and grindy otherwise on account of having to ride narrow slow-lifts in order to meet them face to face), the other most notable thing about the map is probably its fairly harsh pistol-start, where it's likely most players will soak a significant amount of damage (which can be difficult to recover from until you reach the berserk pack) precisely because the pistol and shotgun can't usually deal damage fast enough to prevent at least some of the zombies from getting off a few shots. I also recall that the monster placement in the claw-lift room seemed well thought-out to me, at least on a theoretic level, e.g. if you retreat from the cacos and revs the cacos can actually fly over the wall on one side of the room and eventually circle around to flank you while you camp the door and try to chip the elevated Baron to death, etc. I do say 'theoretic', though, because depending on the vagaries of monster-pathing and RNG and such, sometimes all you'll tend to see here is camping. Interesting when the scenario pans out, though.

Secrets remain interesting and varied in their placement and modes of concealment, although their material rewards continue to have what could be argued as a decidedly overstated effect on the gameplay, both in a current-map sense (e.g. the early hidden SSG + backpack here) and in a continuous/intermap progression sense (e.g. the early BFG here which Getsu Fune mentioned, although granted it is rather well-hidden). Whether or not one considers it proper for secrets to so persistently have the potential to skew the gameplay so much, though, again I'll say that they are definitely worth making a point of looking for in this WAD even if you are a player who doesn't usually pay much mind to secrets; the author's flair for implementing them in interesting ways is generally strong enough that the joy of the hunt itself is usually a suitable reward, and his methods are varied and 'rational' enough that the WAD makes very good practice for detecting/reaching secrets in general--you almost never need ESP, blind wall-humping, or 'meta' tactics (e.g. look for blank areas on the map in the middle of the level, and hump around to see if you can fill them in) to uncover his secrets, they can all be puzzled out if you sharpen your eye for details and try to approach the game world in an inquisitive way (e.g. if you see a stack of crates, wonder if you might be able to get on top of them somehow, even if there's no immediately pressing reason to do so).

Aesthetics? Again very dull. Competent, certainly, generally clean and polished...but dull all the same. Lighting is perhaps a bit blander in this case than in other recent maps, but I reckon the dull impression really elides from there being so little vibrancy in the color palette--it's 'realistically' understated to the point where nothing much jumps out, but it's also 'realistically' far from being monochromatic in a principled way, such that the limited color palette is a point of artistic/presentational focus. There will probably be more to say about this general topic later...the somewhat representalionist slant is one of the defining traits of the WAD, and it can be something of a double-edged sword (which actually speaks well for eschdoom's style, I personally think--for most folks representationalism in Doom is just a single-edged sword, and sadly it's usually not the right edge :D).

Map04 - “Alpha Base”

Nice fast paced map. Essentially a lot of corridors to run down, but there are some cool visual touches to distract you from that. I particularly liked the laser tunnel. Nothing too difficult, just lots of simple blasting. I did well with the secrets. In the bullets passing through glass windows debate I will have to say yes it is a bit weird. Sure doom had solid looking walls you could walk through, but in a map which is striving for a level of realism it feels a bit strange. Ah well, seen it in plenty of other wads I'm sure.

MAP05: Lockdown
98% kills, 2/5 secrets

Much of the same approach - largely linear approach, though this one has some more large rooms as opposed to just corridors, and enough little nice things that it works. I think the lasers damaging the player for standing too close are a nice touch, for example. I actually liked the V-sphere battle, most WAD authors are pretty reticent to use them since they're so powerful, usually saving them for lower difficulties or placing them in secrets for large scale battles, but here it's just presented for the player to easily rip through the meat in the next room, which is nice. The battle in the far northeastern room with the first AV is the real difficult part, since I was out of rockets and had to play hide-and-seek with the normal shotgun with the Vile. I do appreciate how the author will happily drop a huge ambush on the player in a non-obvious space.

MAP05: Lockdown

I'm enjoying some of the atmospheric decor -- the column surrounded by a laser beam ring, or a computer mainframe behind a fence. The secret teleporter to Hell was sure a nasty surprise.

And the final game of cat-and-mouse against the arch-vile, with the mouse (me) sneaking from crate-top to crate-top in a slow, careful descend to the floor, and with the cat (arch-vile) roving the floor so that you never knew exactly where he was, was an intense, interesting one. However, I'm not sure if it would be very fun without the plasma weapons from the secret areas. Though reading through other's posts I now realize I could have probably just dropped down to the floor and rocket the arch-vile to death. Oh well.

Difficulty seems to be on the rise, I died a few times. Good thing the maps are short enough that it's not much of a chore to replay them.

MAP05: Lockdown

Another clean techbase level; honestly, the decision on where to end the previous level and where to begin this ones feels more than a little arbitrary, since thematically there's not a lot to differentiate or separate them, one area of the base flowing smoothly into the next. I feel that the gimmick of a base that's under a security lockdown is underutilised here; the only section of the map where it's particularly apparent is in the proximity of the entrance and exit, separated by a security barrier which then compels the exploration of the sprawling eastern sector of the map (and thus most of the map's gameplay).

I compared the first level of this WAD to Dark Forces in its aesthetics; in this level and the previous one, meanwhile, the overall layout puts me more in mind of Quake 2, with a hostile techbase full of "backstage" areas that the level's security compels you to parkour your way through (texturing is obviously not at all Q2-like).

I liked the secret jaunt into hell "ahead of schedule," and I agree with Demon of the Well's observation that this is a WAD where secrets are really worth hunting for. I appreciate the presence of computer maps as late-in-the-level secret rewards. Mostly, though, I'm looking forward to less linear and more exploration-based levels, which hopefully the WAD won't spend too much longer building up to.

Map05 - “Lockdown”

Interesting start to a map, giving you a facefull of pixels and then when you back away from them you stumble into some damaging lasers. Anyway, I liked this map, kind of similar to the previous although with some more interesting rooms to fight in. Some of the spaces felt a little close for the action maybe. Oh man, I died from an unfortunate barrel explosion, but what the hell is that replacement death sound meant to be? Also, I got the super secret BFG, nice. I am liking the secrets in this map, although some of the parkour ones drive me a little crazy.

So I fell behind and never caught up with Draft Excluder and then went on hiatus due to having to attend a friend's wedding. Here are my impressions of the first three maps. As with previous occasions, I play continuous on UV with quicksaves.

Map01 - “Infestation”
This is a poor opening map. There's nothing wrong with the use of cement textures in my book, the issue is that when half the map is monotextured in them it's dull. It's not well-interconnected, as the three areas are entirely divorced from one another and simply linked by long boring corridors and the gameplay is generally dull too. Excepting the start area which forced some wall-hugging to avoid hitscanners, the gameplay is boring too. I particularly disliked the repeated lifts and waterfalls section. The one good thing I can think of about the level is the soulsphere/chaingun secret which was satisfying to work out and find. Otherwise this is a poor and creatively bankrupt first level.

Map02 - “Return to UAC”
This is perhaps a bit better than the above, but it really seems to epitomise the term 'corridor-crawler'. Areas are separate and divorced from one another; a significant amount of the play takes place in corridors, be they the tech corridors of the upper level or the slimefall edged corridor at the bottom. At least the open area near the blue key pickup offers the possibility of some crossfire. The revenants there are enough of a distraction to prevent killing the hitscanners from getting too casual. I quite liked that the first secret offered a safer vantage point onto the first area for thinning the monsters - the central door exposes you to more fire but the side grilles obscure the monsters positions. I got all but one of the secrets, as I couldn't see how to get into the partially opening door room. Releasing an arch-vile into the end room was a decent idea. It was pretty simple to kill given that there's a door/corridor to corner snipe from, but given that it's only level 2 I think that's reasonable.

Overall I think this level, with it's corridor based gameplay, has the sensibilities of a '97 level but with neater and new texturing. At least it has area-reuse, which helps tie the level together.
EDIT: apparently there was a one-time secret, so I assume the door I couldn't fully open was it. I held back in that room to take care of the revenant - how annoying.

Map03 - “Phobos Overdrive”
This one continues to be a bit too corridor-based, but less of the gameplay takes place in them. The open areas contain more of the monsters and are more significant for gameplay, with the corridors just being there to join them rather than seeming like an end in their own right as with Map02. These open areas are a bit symmetrical and (like Map01) repetitious. Similarly to Map02, the area you return to is the area you exit from and an arch-vile (this time with a bunch of monsters in support) teleports in. There was plenty of cover from the archie and the area was too large for the teleporting monsters to do anything more than incur attrition.

I was a bit disappointed to see that the corridor elements (straight and corner pieces) are identikit prefabs that have been copy+pasted from Map02. And the bunks were a fairly cheesy piece of doom furniture - something which I am not keen on. I got 4/5 secrets. Interestingly the rocket launcher secret provides a safer firing point over the open-area and is 'hidden' fairly obviously using a different texture, just like in Map02. I guess this is going to be one of the author's repeated tropes. I did find the megasphere secret satisfying to track down though, given how well it was advertised. Oh yeah and I didn't understand what was with that second switch behind the rad suit? Presumably it would have opened a door down in the other slime trench and was therefore there just for show?

I will get on with the next two maps shortly - at least it's easier to catch up at the start of a megawad.

map06
The blue key trap is much easier to run from than the author seems to think. I merrily bolted away and ended up going through the blue door corridor ‘backwards’.- as evidenced by the fact that most monsters were facing away from me when I met them.

Other than that, this is another so-so techbase where a good chunk of the difficulty comes from not being able to see/target enemies due to the excessive height variation.

MAP06 Comms Station

crate maze at the start proves to be one heck of a claustrophic nightmare. I know that from playing in higher difficulties. not to mention I go back there for more secrets. I almost ALWAYS miss a kill in this map, because one of the non-secrets triggers a revenant into the crate maze. as for the rest of the level, it's more techbase, but the spiral staircase is a wonderful thing to climb up. just be ready for the blue key ambush plus the archie at the top of the spiral. the nastiest part of the map for sure. pretty decent, with a funky MIDI to go along with it.

Map03 - “Phobos Overdrive”

As I see it, this map was half of a success, half of a failure. I still liked the artistic visual aspect of the locations, although several visual glitches spoiled the impression. Structurally, the areas tried to be interesting. IMO, none of the long hallways / nukage corridors / plain rectangular rooms achieved it, but other areas did: Start room with terraces around it, outdoor courtyard with metal supports and simple-yet-fitting scenery, and even the blue key room with pillars and a nukage pool. Speaking about gameplay, it was a disappointment. The most fun moment was shooting a switch through bars, I liked it. The way how monsters raised from invisible floors on the terraces around start room before the player reentered the area, that wasn't bad either. But otherwise, just shooting gallery, hitscanner peekaboo, annoying nukage runs and skippable arena battles. Anyway, the level provided enough incentives to keep me busy and entertained on my way up to the end.

Y'know, I'm enjoying this level set a lot more than many of the posters here. Corridors don't intrinsically offend me, especially in a pseudo-realistic level set where they link such good landmarks, and the secrets so far are obvious to the point where it becomes silly to complain that resources are at all hidden from you. Let's not forget that the bulk of the Doom experience comes from shooting enemies which are in front of you!

scifista42 said:

Map03 - “Phobos Overdrive”
[...] although several visual glitches spoiled the impression.

Visual glitches in a D2R map? Examples, please.

yakfak said:

Y'know, I'm enjoying this level set a lot more than many of the posters here.

Obviously you are not as cool as those posters. Try approaching each level expecting it to be nothing less than the best DOOM map ever -- and then meticulously list every aspect where it falls short. That way everyone will see how knowledgeable and world-weary you are and what fine taste and uncompromising standards you have.
That's a really nice new track to go with that map. The video is odd: it looks like all palette changes (on pain, on pickups) are turned off. Makes it look like TAS.

yakfak said:

Y'know, I'm enjoying this level set a lot more than many of the posters here.

Never_Again said:

Visual glitches in a D2R map? Examples, please.

The only outright error I recall seeing in the earlier part of the WAD is that the lip of the blue platform inside the stack with the nonfunctioning switch seems to be untextured on the side that abuts with the metal shield that lets the Baron out/the player in, and so shows a small HOM (its twin stack uses the common stepface texture on the analogous surface). IIRC there are also very minor texture misalignments in some inconspicuous places, ala inside the small blue-locked guard towers in that same area, though it's unlikely anyone would notice them during casual play, and so I don't know what else he may be referring to.

Note that the version of the WAD I have is from back when D2Reload first hit the Archive (perhaps also true of Scifista, as he speaks of the WAD nostalgically), so if there were ever any hotfix versions or the like in the intervening years perhaps the errors might've been fixed.

Map05 - “Lockdown”
Too little heavy ammo meant for some very tedious combat scenarios, the baron placement again was poor here. Having some very useful secrets right at the end of the map felt like a bit of a joke too. The concept of the map isn't too bad though.

MAP06 - Comms Station
Andy really does place monsters to be at their maximum annoyance doesn't he, again I couldn't really enjoy this as I proceeded at a slog pace, being frequent screwed over by revenant rockets and RNG resulting in stupid situations of hitting a revenant 3 times at close range with no death, followed by a 80 health hit from him killing me instantly.
Visuals are very much similar to the rest of the episode.

^^No, I downloaded the wad from /idgames 4 days ago. I can see a HOM / missing lower texture inside the left Baron closet, and I can see MIDSPACE bars sunken into nukage floor down in the nukage channels in the outdoor area (right next to the berserk + on the opposite side). I've tried to explain in my first post in this thread that I'm not really nostalgical about this wad, I haven't even played it all, and 99% of what I've played of it was less than half a year ago.

MAP06: Comms Station

And here we have, uh, yet another techbase map. The name isn't very exciting, and so is the level. The rooms are big, gray... visually dull. There's at least one memorable location (the room with the tall spiral staircase), and the imp suddenly popping up on the screen near the end startled me, but otherwise this level feels very "genderless", devoid of any identity or special concept of its own. So much that it's tough to even say anything in particular about this map. The secret areas continue to be extremely generous, which, combined with most of them being fairly easy to find, makes the gameplay of this map way too easy.

MAP06: Comms Station

This level opens with the conclusion of the warhouse/cargo-moving facility that dominated the previous episode, providing a deliciously claustrophobic sneak-fight, then it's on to the main body of the facility, which consists of a series of corridors and chambers wrapped around a central room housing a big transceiver. Even without consulting the text file there's a clear sense of achieving mission objectives here - early in the level you raise the antenna, and towards the end you make your way to some kind of control room to get a message out (or, perhaps, to receive a message and further instructions - though if that's the case, it doesn't seem things quite go according to plan). I'm a big fan of the idea that levels should communicate what's going on and "make sense" purely based on the information the player encounters and receives during gameplay, and this particular map does a beautiful job of that, depicting the fulfilment of an objective that's more elaborate than is typical for a Doom level.

One thing I totally failed to spot when I was playing through this level was the 'front' side of the blue door in the room that flips open ambush-style right after you collect the blue key, so I ended up backtracking to the lower blue door, climbing up that side of the map and collecting the yellow key before finding myself in an area I'd already explored and kind of going "huh?" But that corridor can actually be run in either direction, I think, and that's kind of cool.

The gameplay is a big of a mixed bag, with a few too many revenants dropped in places where they provide delays but not really that much of a challenge. Individual rooms are generally good about setting up ambushes and crossfires in between long stretches of meat-filled hallways to grind through, though I think the mancubus/sludge chamber to the southwest of the the transceiver is a bit of a missed opportunity; the demons below the entry openings feel like they're there to discourage the player from stepping forward and doing anything but hanging back in the cover of the hallway and neutralising the room from absolute safety. I really liked the way that one of the level's secrets is an opening into the upper level of the initial crate maze for some parkour action, though I missed the second secret within that.

Never_Again said:

Obviously you are not as cool as those posters. Try approaching each level expecting it to be nothing less than the best DOOM map ever -- and then meticulously list every aspect where it falls short. That way everyone will see how knowledgeable and world-weary you are and what fine taste and uncompromising standards you have.

Well, that sort of "overly critical" view is what often happens when you try to analyze megawads in detail, especially map-by-map. I could simply play, let's say, 15 maps of d2reload and write something like "man, this was cool, nice unique realistic design, a bit too much linearity in some levels for my taste but overall I had good fun exploring and fighting". Or I could try inspecting each map in detail, pinpointing every little problem and kind of evaluating it on its own instead of as a part of the overall experience, then maybe feel a bit bad about it. Perhaps you've never tried participating in the club actively and that's why you're not familiar with these feelings, expressed well in this post by Demonologist for example:

I'm kind of starting to feel bad about all this... I actually like this wad in general, but during map-by-map analysis I seem to bash much more than to praise, gameplay in particular; strange incompatible feelings, this irrational subjective garbage