06/04/2005 @11:52:34 ^16:12:58

you can't pronounce masochist without "kiss"

no it's very sensual and tingly and oh god~~~

Right let's try not to let this get too long

Here's a bunch of maps I've done over the past few weeks or months or something

10 Years of Doom released at the end of 2003 was one of several tribute maps made at the time. It replaces E3M4. In spite of being map writing it's actually pretty good. It looks attractive and thematically consistent, and has the distinctive "stark contrast" lighting style of Vilecore (by the same author, partial review here). It's quite easy, although very very linear (and, as you follow it, appears to spell out "10 YEARS OF OMDO") It took me quite a while to realise one of the secret areas was supposed to be a cake... There's an 11 Years of Doom as well but I haven't played that yet.

(Map writing is where you make your map deliberately to look like something on the map; it usually makes the gameplay rubbish)

Return to Phobos Yet Another Map called Return To Phobos. Well, who cares, they're usually pretty good, right? This one certainly looks good, plenty of detail, etc. On a larger scale, though, it's just rooms and halls with quite a lot of backtracking. I think it's a map that's a lot better with hindsight. For example, the second time you play it, you don't spend most of it horribly low on health and ammunition. There are lots of secrets but they're hard to find, and frustratingly so because you can see them there but can spend ages searching for the trigger, which might not be anywhere near the actual secret. I don't know maybe I'm just sour I missed them and had to use an editor to find them. I do know one of them is impossible to get, though, it's one of those "sector is too thin to walk into" problems like the hidden teleporter on MAP15. Oh yeah and don't go into the exit room unless you're sure you've done everything else because you can't get back out. But apart from all that it's pretty good.

The Spire Okay this is probably the largest map I've finished. It definitely is in terms of monster count, at the end I had nearly 2300 deaths. In fact I think this is a so-called monster level (see Doom Underground's review of Industrial) The author has, I believe, discovered a new editor, and found it very easy to create decent maps with ease, and got totally carried away... It's extremely hard, although I thought it became noticably easier after I got the red key and dealt with the enormous trap that went off subsequently. But that's probably less than halfway through the level. The theme is extremely varied; it starts off with bricks and grass, there's E1 style bases, huge marble halls, industrial plants, dark underground rivers, this huge wide open area full of cacodemons, you name it. It took nearly two hours of game time to finish on UV, and I'm flad I did it.

Courtyard Escape DOWNLOAD THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW IT'S INCREDIBLE YOU WILL NEED THE GOTHIC TEXTURES WAD I SWEAR IT IS IN BLASTEM2'S LEAGUE OF INFINITELY REPEATABLE FUN GAMEPLAY or would be if it wasn't so fucking hard FULL REVIEW TO FOLLOW