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dobu gabu maru

The DWmegawad Club plays: 50 Shades of Graytall & Erkattäññe

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Eris Falling said:

The cyberdemons on the other hand aren't quite as straightforward. It's all too easy to dodge the rocket from one of them and then run into the rocket of another, which happened to me twice.


"Slow strafing" should handle them fairly easily.

This looks a bit awkward because I forget to herd them at the start, but whatever.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/lv92onbqj4m19oa/50s_test.lmp

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Magnusblitz said:

50 Shades, despite the jokey title, seems to have attracted many more veteran mappers. Part of this is probably due to stricter, more interesting rules ... for example, MMP originally limited it to two flats/two textures but then let people choose textures of their own, including colored lighting).

Yeah, I think having everyone limited to Boom and the same exact textures helped to massage our minds a little more. I feel like MMP is interesting in theory but it's so haphazardly arranged and chaotic from map to map (both in gameplay and visuals) that it never feels quite cohesive like 50 Shades does, and I once again attribute that to Marcaek's guiding hand. The project had no intention to be an MMP knock-off, but its approach to minimalism is so similar that the comparisons were inevitable.

MAP02: So the secret weapon each author is given for 50 Shades of Graytall is the one unique floor. Since the sky is going to be plastered everywhere, choosing a specific floor sets a pungent flavor for the map—in Ezormer's case, it's red. GRAYTALL's obnoxious little red stripe comes in handy here as it compliments the visuals rather than obstructs them, solely thanks to the red tiling. The gameplay is extremely solid too, offering the player a tyson option right at the beginning and making fights interesting despite the general linearity of the map, thanks to the monster composition. It's a brief, bloody foray that doesn't skip a beat, and works well off of Jimmy's quaint introduction map.

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MAP03: The Gray, the Blu, and the Trakly

...And all of a sudden we come to a map that remembers it has teeth. :)

The layout isn't so smooth on this one, with some disconnected backtracking between cavern areas via a cluster of GRAYTALL interior sections; once again, the latter have been broken up into a multitude of short lindefs to allow for more attractive/meaningful positioning of the red stripes next to DOORTRAK trim and avoid some of the uglier parts of the white panel. That's two levels in a row which seem to have worked against GRAYTALL's ugliness as far as possible rather than embracing it, and I do wonder if this is going to be a thing going forward.

Gameplay is built around mostly-mixed ambushes that occur when critical resources are collected, although outside of the red and blue switches, actual progression is achieved mostly using walk-activated linedefs, which is a neat way of getting around the lack of dedicated switches and a different answer to this problem than the one used by MAP02. Several of my deaths here were due to underestimating just what the map was going to throw at me at certain points; it's not shy about dropping big groups on you, or about throwing in pain elementals to make rocket use dicey, arch-viles to send you alternately hustling for cover and scrambling to take them down before they can get a demonic meat wall back up and shambling at you, and other classic plays. Fun and intense.

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MAP03 The Gray, The Blu, and the Trakly

Megalyth always makes good levels. This one tells me to be quite conservative with ammo, as mid-tier enemies really like to show off themselves here. Also a quick run against that archie who likes to resurrect those other guys. the nine revenant reveal is certainly tough, culminating in a double cyb shootout in a rather cramped local with the other top annoyances. Due to his monster placement, I classify this one as hard.

btw line 1785 is supposed to be a teleport line but it doesn't work due to the teleport destination being flagged for multiplayer.

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MAP03 - "The Gray, the Blu, and the Trakly” by Megalyth - UVMax on second try

At least a map without any translucent/skybox ground! I liked how the key switches were designed with small parts of FIREBLU, but I liked less how random the exit area was located, forcing the player to do unnecessary backtracking as there is nothing left to do once the dust settles, not even any secret to hunt.

This is starting to get harder but still below the average PL2 or AV map, even if I was surprised to battle two cyberdemons this early, remembering me how bad I am at dealing with them with a BFG. But the map does not leave the player unarmed to deal with the traps. I found the second archvile (in the room before the red key zone) was kinda unexciting as it is easily deal with, but the last one reanimating most of the previous revenants was much more hectic, and could almost ended my second run.

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Getsu Fune said:

btw line 1785 is supposed to be a teleport line but it doesn't work due to the teleport destination being flagged for multiplayer.


I thought that was odd too when I looked at it in DB but upon reflection I think all it's supposed to be is a means for multiple players in co-op to all pile into the arena after the lock-in trap is sprung.

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^^Another (second-time) trick for the cybertwins is to initially skirt around the revenants bunched up at the canyon entrance (the room with blue armor is plenty long/wide enough to allow this) en route to the BFG, which will often allow you to cheapshot one or both cybs when they inevitably turn to scuffle with the skellies.

Map 03 -- The Gray, the Blu, and the Trakly - 109% Kills / No secrets
I might characterize Megalyth as something of a 'Newschool oldschool' sort of mapper, whose stock in trade is roaming, rambling abstract layouts couched in clean, practical architecture. This type of mapping draws a lot of its visual mood and flavor not from rich vistas or ornate sector detailing, but rather from lighting choices and particularly texture selection, and so I might've expected his characteristic visual style to struggle somewhat with such a threadbare toolkit to work with. To some extent this turned out to be true; to say that the heavily orthogonal cement blockhouse that figures front and center in the level progression is "visually spartan" would be more than a bit of an understatement, and I didn't care for the stab at texture-detailing where the red stripes of GRAYTALL were cut/merged with strips of doortrack at regular intervals, gave the aesthetic a weird 'tileset' look, like Minecraft or something like that. Lighting is very simplistic here for the most part, though fortunately it tends more towards neutral-dim (which plays well with the engine's simulated contrast and with these particular textures, conveniently enough) than a bleached neutral-bright look. The author seems to have agreed that the overall presentation needed a little something-something, however, and so made the decision to double down on the FIREBLU, which here has been carved by astral winds into a couple of lurid, sparkling canyons that frame the gray base setting. It has been quite a long time since I've seen this texture used in this way--perhaps ironic considering the way I've painted Megalyth's style--but I reckon it's the right call. The level aesthetic needed some color and energy, and these canyons certainly supply that. FIREBLU arguably even tiles better over large areas than many other textures, and so the overall presentation is surprisingly clean-looking, provided you can get past the fundamental absurdity of the tableau. Quite surprising that the level uses the stock map 03 music track, but again, this sort of fits in with what I know of the author's style.

The action is a bit more brisk here than in the previous two maps. Visual style aside, here Megalyth offers some decidedly modern, calesthenically-inclined combat, where most major encounters are triggered via usually obvious walkover snares (oh I'm sure a plasma rifle sitting unguarded in a big empty room is TOTALLY SAFE); while most of the traps are not at all difficult to see coming, they are generally effective at keeping the pace up by virtue of simultaneously attacking the player from several angles (often from directly in front and directly behind) with strong monsters, meaning that just lazily tanking hits won't net you much success. Ammo is plentiful (oddly, it's shells of all things that seem to be rarest), and so the focus is definitely on fast twitch action rather than on complex positional play or resource management, which suits the level's short runtime just fine. The action climax is the aforementioned cybertwin duel in the second/larger canyon, which can become more complicated if a player tries to get cute and snatch the red keycard without properly making the twins' acquaintance, but is otherwise a fairly straightforward encounter that nevertheless clearly states that 50 Shades isn't going to be shy about playing rough over its 18 map span (and of course, one man's "painful" is another man's "kinky", let us not forget!).

I'll agree that the handling of the actual level exit seems a mite arbitrary. Not so much a function of its actual location, mind--it's a smallish map, and so it's not like it takes long to jog back to it from the second canyon--but the eventless backtrack is a strange contrast with the player's second trip through the base after getting the blue keycard earlier on, where some extra monster presence is introduced to keep the ball rolling en route to the next area. It really seemed to me like the little alcove with the candle in it that opens up near the mouth of the base during the proceedings in the second canyon was supposed to contain a teleporter back to the exit or something, but alas, no dice.

Very minor issue, though, hardly enough to spoil the solid serving of action the rest of the level presents.

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Map04: "The Alfonzone"

"The Alfonzone" has a fast-paced start pitting us against crossfire from baby spiders, cacos, and hitscanners. Resources, including ample healing supplies, are laying around nearby, but it takes some measure of concentration to not intercept a plasma volley or walk directly into a cacodemon's heated grill. With the exception of some light scuffles with revenant clusters, the action slows down afterwards -- the main culprit being the blue key room, guarded by a pair of turret arachnotrons. Safer first-playthrough strategies will see the player sniping away at them, slowly, with some combination of the shotgun and chaingun, saving the rockets for more threatening opposition surely to come. But this area plays better with preknowledge -- nothing inside is too dangerous, so charging in aggressively is the way to go. The last battle is a clever object lesson in area denial -- the player is pinned in a small room, spiders spraying plasma onto one half, archviles gazing wickedly upon the other. Taking out the spiders quickly is quite easy, after which the fight is all cleanup, but it's a nice concept anyway.

As is typical of the little of Alfonzo's work I've seen so far, "The Alfonzone" has a well-designed layout employing "classic" geometry: oblique shapes that harken back to a pre-Scythian time before 90° and 45° angles became all the rage. Loops are used well, and leaving the RK room calls for a cute little strafe jump over the eternal sky. The only weakness of the layout is that making multiple passes through the blue key area is not fun, because of the unnecessarily slow vanilla lift. But anyway, this is my favorite map in 50 Shades yet, and the start fight is my favorite battle yet.

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Oh come the hell on. I’ve successfully beaten MAP03 already, but somehow something has to always go wrong when I try making the demo for it. I’m going to edit the demo in later, for now let’s just try and keep up with the thread. UPDATE: There we go! It's a crappy run, but at least I'm done with this map.

MAP03: The Grey, the Blu and the Trakly by Megalyth

UV Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlGTUvyQe64&feature=youtu.be

Welcome to sudden Plutonia! No, seriously, after two mostly benign levels, we get thrown in this totally unforgiving combat puzzle affair. As far as the first attempt in which I made real progress is concerned, I was doing pretty well until I actually grabbed the red key. Forget the two Cyberdemons guarding it; it’s afterwards that all hell really breaks loose. Well, I guess I can’t complain as the map is fair and absolutely entertaining. It’s also easily the best looking one yet. Or maybe it's not that bad, , I guess you just have to be ready for that one Archvile before it robs you of any chance of victory. The best map yet by a long shot, I guess the wad is starting to shape up. The funny thing is that the Plasma Rifle room might be my favorite part, although it’s more scary than really hard in any way. I was also surprised to see that the first Archvile can actually snipe you through the ventilation, that’s quite a devious trick on Megalyth’s end.

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MAP04: The Alfonzone - Alfonzo
Deaths: 2 | Time: 03:40

A very open layout this time, with this map really only consisting of two major areas. Once again, mid-tier monsters are all the rage, though with quite a lot of space to move around in, they are quite easily dealt with for the most part. The exception to this comes in the form of the arch-viles at the very end of the map, which are responsible for both of my deaths, the first of which was when I couldn't even tell where it was.

That said, it may well be the only part of the gameplay that really stands out for me. For the rest of the map, you just go along ploughing through monsters, and while this isn't at all boring or tedious, there's little that really sticks out as being particularly memorable. Instead, when I thought of MAP04 before playing it, it was the big open areas that I remembered, and their visual qualities.
This is actually a pretty good looking map, moreso than the maps that came before it, making nice use of lighting contrasts, and presumably that GRAYTALL alignment trick with all the vertices, though I wasn't paying too much attention to that.

A decent outing, though I would say it's definitely geared towards making the best possible use out of these textures than providing a memorable gameplay experience (and memorable isn't always a good thing, so I'm not sure it's even a major fault).

8/10, 7 if I were having a bad day :P

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MAP04 The Alfonzone

He makes some pretty good encounters in this otherwise short level. the standout here is the red key switch, where you have to backtrack to get those endgame archies, as usual. kind of like Megalyth, I enjoy this map. (was gonna say something else here, but I forgot what it was)

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MAP01 - "Entrygray” by Jimmy

Well-balanced opening map, fun to play too, but the fact that it's so closely imitating Entryway's layout is not sympathetic to me at all. Some of the design choices come off as nonsensical for any purpose other than making the player notice a similarity to Entryway. That's the bad kind of homage, as I see it.

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The usual: Zdoom, UV, and the occasional quicksave. I will also be pistol starting all the maps too.

MAP01: Entrygray
I love the sky texture used throughout these maps, and we're going to be seeing a lot of it given the limitations. This one starts out nasty with lots of gunners, but the shotgun is available early on. The rest of the map remains challenging by throwing in some revenants and chaingunners, and there are a bunch of optional areas too with more powerful weaponry. The HOM switches are well done too.

MAP02: Tall, Gray, and Handsome
The author of this map utilizes the red stripe in the GRAYTALL texture and combines it with a red flat to create a unique combination of gray and red. Lots of odd shapes help to give the map a surreal feeling. Doors and switches are handled well given the limitations. I had fun throughout, the difficulty was consistent and each encounter with the demons was unique.

MAP03: The Gray, the Blu and the Trakly
One of the first things I noticed here were the really nice (and appropriately colored given the required key) switches. This map challenges the player mainly through teleporting monsters, then later it throws two cyberdemons at the player in a reasonably sized arena. This is only MAP03, but the difficulty level has already exceeded that of last month's WAD. Much like the previous map in this set, the red stripes and DOORTRAK are used creatively as detail. It's chaotic at times, but it's definitely a good map.

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One thing I forgot to mention when speaking about MAP01: I really don't like the sky-transferred switches (and everything that is sky-transferred and isn't an actual sky or a solid color, for that matter). It strikes me as wrong, and magnitudes more ugly and weird than general texturing in this wad. Unfortunately, IIRC there will be other instances in next maps.


MAP02 - “Tall, Gray, and Handsome” by Ezormer

I liked this, pure focus on gameplay, a mix of relaxing and challenging at the same time, simply abstract but inspiring shapes and layout, all good. I see the map as generic, but less so than MAP01 was.

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MAP04: The Alfonzone

Two things jump out at me about this level: the open-area focus of the layout, and the brilliant use of high-contrast lighting to provide visual variety when playing with such a limited texture set. The actual layout itself, with medium-sized, open, multi-level areas, a sense of path or flow that loops fluidly back into itself, and plenty of cover, reminds me a lot of a somewhat compact deathmatch map, but your opposition here consists mostly of staggered releases of mixed monster packs as you progress through the level. I wasn't entirely clear on what the intended exit strategy from the blue door/red key room was, since I found the secret-flagged way out more apparent than the strafe jump from the upper balcony back to the entrance hall.

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MAP03: The Gray, the Blu, and the Trakly
100% kills, no map secrets

This map uses a lot of the same design as MAP02, with a heavily broken-and-aligned use of GRAYTALL in order to use the red stripe and gray wall but eliminate the sludge mark. Doors are actually less interesting (they're just a block of FIREBLU, don't even have the DOORTRAK marks that MAP02 used) and there's a lot of full FIREBLU caverns as well. Most interesting is the key switches, which are created by using GRAYTALL squares and small FIREBLU buttons to make a sector representation of the normal one-red-button Doom switch.

This map is definitely a step up in the gameplay department, with some nice ambushes and more difficult fights (such as the two-Cyber tango for the red key). I'm not a big fan of the first ambush though, as I felt it wasn't "set up" enough - I like it when the triggering pickup (usually a key, but can also be a weapon, here it's the plasma gun) just screams "UNLEASHES HUGE TRAP" to create some tension, but here it's just a plasma gun sitting in a fairly innocuous room. This may just be me though, as DotW quite pointedly realized it was in fact a trap. And the actual fight is pretty well done with a nice pincer trap and then some enemies strung out behind to make things more difficult to retreat from.

On the other hand, design-wise, this is probably the weakest and least memorable map thus far, as it shares a lot of the same design traits as last map (big monolothic corridors) but without the striking red stripe and red floor design, and with a more demure dark blue carpet. The all-FIREBLU caverns are just ugly, no saving those. While the combat is a nice needed shot in the arm, in terms of design/layout/textures etc it feels a bit generic and nothing special.

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Map 04 -- The Alfonzone - 113% Kills / 100% Secrets
Alfonzo is one of the aforementioned WADsters where one gets the sense (justifiably or not) that there is some vast repository of his work that presently is and probably shall indefinitely remain unseen by the teeming throngs of The Public, but from what little material I've played by him two things that always jump out at me as core competencies on his part are texture use and lighting decisions, not only in relatively recent speedmaps but also in his oldest DTWiD/D2TWiD stuff (which I hear he now despises, incidentally) where he was actively emulating someone else's mapping style, and even in maps patently not supposed to be taken seriously, as in his sarcastic contribution to the second (I think?) DW Megaproject compilation from a while back, which I remember for its strangely fascinating boiler-pipe columns. That being the case, I would expect him to cope fairly well with the 50 Shades asset restriction....and he does not disappoint!

Whereas previous maps all had areas that looked conspicuously unadorned lurking around between their obvious "screenshot points", the visual presentation here is a lot more consistently engaging throughout, drawing on irregular shapes, spatial contrast, and directional lighting effects (including a sector-shadow or two) to wring the most mileage possible out of the limited toolkit, as seen right off the bat in what is a particularly cool opening shot. Also assisting in this more 'together' aesthetic is that the few textures available seem to have been assigned purely abstract structural roles--e.g. GRAYTALL is the base material, doortrack is for supports and braces, FIREBLU is for doors as well as friezes and other decorative surfaces, etc.--rather than trying to treat each as some loose substitute for part of a more realistic texture scheme (although FIREBLU does also sort of find itself in its default role of 'natural/outdoor' texture here again, I guess), meaning that you get a pretty consistent blend of all materials in every conceivable screenshot around the joint. Lighting and airy feel to the playspaces aside, I reckon a lot of the reason this looks as good to me as it does is that it eschews previous maps' heroic yet ill-fated attempts at trying to make fine art out of doortrack, which is the only texture in the set I'd consider fundamentally ugly, nice to see it not cluttering up every surface. The clever use of GRAYTALL's stripes to form chunky red-velvet bars on windows here and there is a nice touch as well, adding a hint of the ornate to what is for the most part a very pragmatic presentation.

The 'Zone is another short level with a fairly small monstercount, but again skews markedly towards the Doom II bestiary with a side of hitscannery for zest, making for a modest yet filling portion of bloodlettery. The layout's emphasis on tiers of play as well as largely empty central spaces makes for a dynamic where the aggressive player will often find himself being fired upon from all sides while yet enjoying relative freedom of motion, whereas the more conservatively-minded marine will be able to limit enemy fields of fire by staying put, at the cost of having to make much tighter dodges and to make due with less juicy firing angles for his own salvos. The relatively open plan means it's also inviting to switch between these approaches on the fly, and indeed, this seems to be how the first fight was planned out, i.e. to eventually compel the player to jump down from the starting ledge into a lower area by dint of sheer enemy pressure, which buys a little more time to avoid being swarmed by flying tomatoes but also introduces its own complications, particularly if your landing spot was the cement pit in the center with only one way out. The RK area continues this dynamic by providing cover from perched artillery which is technically adequate but also somewhat inconvenient to use, again encouraging aggressive play while not actively precluding a more deliberate approach, quite classy. I didn't think that the final attack involving the arch-viles on a higher ledge worked out quite as well--it's clear that this encounter is designed to vex players too hesitant to charge out and fight the last brood of arachnatrons in the open by making their initially safe cubbyhole a rather inconvenient place to work from--but no matter how you play the main battle, actually getting rid of the viles (and the crowd of shitheads they likely resurrect) can only sensibly be handled via some curt janitorial sniping from the ground below, a somewhat anticlimactic way to close out the map. I also felt like the barrel chain on the stairs in the room beyond the blue door needed to be longer/larger to make it more reliable for comically dispatching the commandos at the top, but that's a very minor quibble.

All told, I pretty much agree with rdwpa's assessment, both that this is the most enjoyable level in the mapset to this point, and that the first fight is the WAD's most fun fight to this point.

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MAP04 - “The Alfonzone” by Alfonzo - Died with 4 monsters left on UV on 10th try or something

Now this is what I call a hard map: Plutonia-style hectic start with its host of hitscanners and an arachnotron ready to stab you if you don't move immediately, and the notable absence of the SSG which slows down progression quite a bit - or am I dumb enough to miss it everytime? I suppose fighting packs of revenants chaingunning them one by one and moving carefully so the front one serves as meat shield for the other's shots is the intended way, for example. I gave up after the redkey room switch when I was moving away from arachnotrons only to be grilled by a couple archies without cover available, having seen most of the map at that point. I am surprised how fellow clubbers talked about previous map's difficulty and not this one, which is to me well above The Gray, the Blu, and the Trakly.

Anyway, I liked the red stripe columns here and there and how the mapper played with lighting effects as already mentionned. Most doors and lifts in most maps until here are using FIREBLU, with their own take of making switches, I think this level's switch could've been made smaller to make it more obvious. The teleporter inside the secret zone was pretty much useless, too.

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MAP04: The Alfonzone
90% kills, 1/1 secret

Unlike the last two maps, this one doesn't care about hiding the sludge trails on GRAYTALL at all, or about their poor tiling. :) Doors are a simple FIREBLU block with torches to indicate key color, and the lone switch is made with a red stripe/FIREBLU rectangle to just look... well, like a "push me" device. This is a largely outdoor, open-ish layout that reminds me of some of the moon levels in Valiant. Especially the lighting, which goes for the striking "sun creates heavy contrast light/shadow zones" look, though it doesn't always make sense.

Surprisingly difficult start, as well, with plenty of arachnatrons, cacos and chaingunners to harass you across the wide-open spaces. Unfortunately, I found this map to take a quick nosedive in fun after the blue door, as being forced to deal with large groups of revenants and arch-viles with just a single shotgun is entirely un-fun. There's a few rockets, but not nearly enough, I ended up needing to run from the AVs at the end (and the revenants they resurrected) because I had no ammo left... this map definitely needed about 20 more rockets.

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MAP03: A fun experience. This one feels a bit more like what would happen if you pasted the 50 Shades textures over a standard map, using GRAYTALL for indoors and FIREBLU for outdoors. It has a nice combat but the presence of chaingunners and Pain Elementals really punishes freeform movement, and the warp-ins can occur at inopportune times... perhaps I got a taste of my own medicine on this map! Mostly entertaining stuff besides that. I really enjoyed the cyberdemon finale—great work fitting two instead of one into that room.

MAP04:Alfonzo is one on a long list of mappers (essel, Xaser, Jimmy, etc) that I'm absolutely enamored with their naturalistic level design. My mind works compartmentalized, room-by-room, so playing a map that naturally blends from one area to the next is an absolute joy (perhaps if I wasn't so obsessed over micro-detail I could hone this skill more :P) Anyway, good lighting and verticality here—I'm not really a fan of how tight the ammo is on this map, seeing as there's a lot of revs in it and fighting them with anything other than the RL is a chore to do, but as I mentioned before I love the flow here and how beautifully the level melds together.

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MAP05: Concrete Flagellation

After two levels that are bold in emphasising their heavy hitters, this one changes up the pace with its dependence mostly on hitscanners and imps, though demons are in evidence and there are a handful of higher-tier creatures scattered around - a revenant, a mancubus, a modest cacoswarm. Overall the level has old-school sensibilities, a complex of walkways and bunkers wrapped around a central courtyard and tower that says 'techbase' to me though it could just as easily have been a castle - maybe it's the GRAYTALL crates scattered around the place that push me to the interpretation of it as a more modern environment? High-contrast lighting is present again to help add visual variety that the textures cheekily refuse to provide. So far there's been a tendency towards maps of relatively modest scale and I'm wondering if that's simply because it's early days within the WAD yet, or if one of the obstacles posed by the limited texture set is difficulty in creating the sort of landmarks that are necessary in the navigation of larger maps. It'll be interesting to see what subsequent offerings hold.

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MAP03 - "The Gray, the Blu, and the Trakly” by Megalyth

Except for the start (bland bright-lit DOORTRAK pit), I liked the whole map a lot. Relatively simple but fun fights against challenging enemy types in reasonable numbers with appropriate weaponry available, and similarly simple but still appealing architecture. Merely backtracking back and forth isn't really nonlinearity in my view, but at least it was more interesting than full linearity. Good map.

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Map05: "Concrete Flagellation"

This map is somewhat obnoxious. First off, the somewhat pointless first half: non-threatening imps and hitscanners. The barrels, which are one of the tools a mapper has to make combat with ultra-low-tier fodder fun, are almost wholly irrelevant for gameplay purposes; they are all clustered against walls and you have to go out of your way to get monsters within detonation range. The only halfway entertaining moment is the two revs (on UV) dropping down if you get too close to snipe at then. Thank goodness for that. The second half is basically ruined by the nonsensical placement of the shellbox right in front of the SSG, so that if you enter with 40+ shells, as I did the first time, you have to carefully shimmy around it -- TWICE! -- in order to save it for later, and apparently you DO need to save it for later, because there's an archy rezzing shit while you deal with the gasbags and pinkies and simply not a whole lot of ammo afterwards. Bleh.

The design is not too bad, however. It's a classic storagebase that doubles down on the high-contrast shadow technique and pulls it off well. GRAYTALL boxes serve as crate facsimiles, and to drive the setting home, we have the aforementioned barrels. Bases like these can easily come off as anonymous as far as topography is concerned, but the observation tower in the center gives the level a much-needed landmark. Aesthetically speaking, levels made with GRAYTALL and DOORTRAK and FIREBLU live or die on their layouts. Anyway, I can't imagine replaying this map.

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MAP04: The Alfonzone by Alfonzo

Once again, I’ll edit the demo in later as I am not on schedule. The one for MAP03 is up for those who would like to check it out. EDIT: Done!

UV Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAN3yQkEzS8&feature=youtu.be

I only know Alfonzo through his interventions on Doom Radio and his Twitch streams, from which I got the impression that he has a very thorough understanding of what makes Doom such a special game to play. It seems I was correct in that impression, and thus we leave the world of strict Plutonia-style setpieces for the carefully orchestrated chaos of Resurgence. Such a shift will incite no complaints from me. Also, for better or worse, ammo distribution here is very tight and will not forgive sloppy playing. Not only does this one play well, it has downright beautiful architecture. Turns out Alfonzo can not only play skillfully and analyze skillfully, but unlike yours truly, he can also craft skillfully. I’m a big fan of this one, I have to say.

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MAP05: Concrete Flagellation - Quakis
Deaths: 1 | Time: 02:36

A shorter offering, the setting for Concrete Flagellation seems to be some sort of supply depot, where everything, even the containers, are made out of GRAYTALL. Combat is fast-paced and continuous throughout the map, there's rarely a quiet moment, but said gameplay is also pretty easy. The majority of the opposition is made out of lower-tier monsters, and the only major threat here is falling foul of some chaingunners, which is what happened to me. I'm certain that the SSG must be one of the worst weapons you can use in situations with more than one chaingunner.
So while this a much easier map than MAP03 and MAP04, it's still every bit as enjoyable as prior maps, largely down to that fast and consistent pacing of combat.

Visually, it falls a bit flat, comparatively speaking. Sure, there's not much room for manoeuvre with the limitations, but this struck me as being too grey, with not enough to break it up. I never thought I'd complain about a lack of FIREBLU, but I do so for this map. I wonder if maybe picking a grey floor texture was also not the best choice.
Oh well. Despite weaker visuals than previous maps, this is one of the best so far, even if there isn't really much that's particularly memorable about it.

8/10

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MAP05 Concrete Flagellation

Looks like 50 Shades of Graytall ain't gonna go crateless, looks like Quakis provides the right amount! another rather ordinary level though in the graytall theme, which of course just plays alright. interesting moments are few, but I like ordinary levels. and that exit switch was designed quite well.

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MAP05: Concrete flagellation by Quakis

UV Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IozgGnLmS2o&feature=youtu.be

After two rather frantic maps, we are offered a much more conventional and old-school level courtesy of Quakis. The start is very slow, full of traps and in a lot of ways reminiscent of IWAD gameplay. Things stir up when picking up the Super Shotgun, with what I will grant is one of the most devious uses of Pain Elementals I’ve seen outside of slaughtermaps. It seems to help if you treat the whole thing as a race against time instead of waiting for the more dangerous enemies to show up. The solution of keeping the barrels at the start in order to get rid of the Archvile is pretty clever, but in hindsight kind of obvious. …Or not, I guess he doesn’t quite hang out in the right spot to make that convenient. Oh well, there should be more than enough ammo anyway. It was an okay map, nothing too memorable. I suppose it does look surprisingly good considering the textures, and the lighting is impressive and also very reminiscent of IWAD design.

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MAP04: The Alfonzone
Oh would you look at that, it's already bloody difficult! This map's difficulty comes from the lack of weapons and ammunition, especially near the beginning where the player is immediately under fire. As usual, there are lots of pretty curvy walls and that awesome sky texture. There are some very nasty moments when the arch-viles show up, but other than that, I don't have much else to say.

MAP05: Concrete Flagellation
Much like the previous map, this one is also pretty damn difficult in places - I got trapped with a bunch of nasty monsters on more than one occasion, and even found a way to die after I had killed the monsters on one of those occasions (derp derp). This map also earns Surreily's Most Creative Switch Award 2015 - congratulations! Things get more interesting once the arch-vile makes an appearance, but the player is well equipped by this point and is able to take him out (there's also a big pile of barrels to help with this). Good map!

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MAP05: Gorgeous lighting on this map—I think the shadows make the map pop more than the DOORTRAK trimming. The major problem I had here was the lack of health—almost everything killed me in 1-2 hits for the blue key ambush, but other than that it was a lot of fun. Short, sweet, and best of all—mean (I'm always a big fan of interesting archvile fights). I also thought the psuedo-switch was cute.

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MAP04 - “The Alfonzone” by Alfonzo

Again, gameplay and architectural goodness wins over the restricted texturing. Fun map, using monsters efficiently (Cacodemons flooding start area = yes!), well balanced and good looking too! When I entered the red key area, I had little health and rushed forward in panic, and I jumped down the ledge without taking the rocket launcher (playing from pistol start!). When I realized it, I thought I'll surely die soon, but I was eventually able to outrun the few monsters there and jump back (I really liked this jump from an angled ledge by a wall side, by the way), and eventually didn't die at all.

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