06/11/2007 @07:44:23 ^11:51:44

ONE-LINERS

I've missed a lot of wads this year and have been going through the 2007 uploads. Here are some of them. Hopefully I can get through this lot without being too verbose. Famous last words...

Ode of Resurrection Single map for Doom 2 in the style of the Master levels. Quite complex and nonlinear, lots of initial choice about where to go; that makes it quite top-heavy, so just use savegames the first time you play. It is excellent and fun, and worth playing more than once.

The Abandoned Base 2 Bejiitas_Wrath makes a welcome return to mapping, producing a wad for TNT:Evilution. I really like his instantly recognisable style; huge, rather spartan architecture, high ceilings, and great amounts of interconnection. However like most of his maps there is an obvious lack of polish and testing, and a number of elements that don't fit at all. It's like he starts off making a map and then has all these ideas and just puts them in without thinking about it. Here we huge areas of water you can get stuck in and need to jump out of, and what I believe are stealth monsters. Thus like Hellpak it kind of needs ZDoom, but I could run it anyway.

The Outer Darkness E4 map, mostly wood, marble and lava. Excellently themed. On the difficult side but not impossible. Somewhat top-heavy. Contains the interesting possibility of missing out the middle half of the map due to an apparently deliberate speedrunning trick. Recommended.

The Hazard Variation Another E4 map. It's almost as if one Abrahim says, "I'm making an E4 map" and the other says, "OK, so will I!" This one is a lot smaller and easier, with less than 50 monsters. Lots of detail, and the theme is best described as "noisy". That is, it mixes up many different types of Doom texture. So, old-school, but not ugly. Also recommended.

Fort Knocks This is from 1994 but apparently new to the archive. However I know I've played it before, as I recognised it instantly. It's definitely one of the better 1994 wads, it has actual architecture and plays well, even if the theme varies wildly between hell, castle and tech. Worth a play.

Toxic Cove A map based on Alien Vendetta map10, it was originally a speedmap, but then was tarted up a little. Has typically modern levels of detail, happily lacking too many obvious Doombuilderisms. UV is balanced for extremely good players so I recommend turning the skill level down, but nonetheless very much worth playing.

Scanning Electron Microscope Tiny base in a cave by the sea. Good scenery, good detail and lighting. The base is so tiny it only contains two rooms, one of which has the titular complicated machine in it. Odd monster placement - what's with the entrance corridor filled with sergeants? Then the map is over before you know it. Nice, but rather pointless.

Hell Keep Remake Yet another one. The fifth this year, I believe. Very nicely detailed but hardly changes the gameplay at all.

Happy Hour Fun Time Gameplay Four maps which look nice and are quite hard. The worst thing about them is that the author doesn't give you any of the larger weapons. As it is, he has the right idea but it's just frustrating.

Little Tiny Level A small cave, quite well made, lots of effort obviously made on making the interior "natural", sadly one sector has SKY4 on the ceiling instead of F_SKY1 which means you have to hack it to get it to load in PrBoom, otherwise not bad.

Entry A remake of the first level of Doom 2. Everything is about twice the size, which I liked. However, the monster count isn't increased so it feels rather empty. The secrets aren't very good. Probably not worth the bother unless you like remakes.

CYBERFIGHT 10 maps. The first 8 give you a BFG and 200 cells and ask you to kill a single cyberdemon in a smallish arena. The ninth has a couple more. The tenth is just a single tiny room that appears unfinished. The maps aren't ugly and the first eight are quite fun if you have the trick of killing cyberdemons quickly.

Mattbratt's level pack A 32-map megawad made by one of Doomworld's most infamous idiots. I'm only mentioning it because some of the maps have been lifted from other wads and I wondered about their original sources.