13/04/2009 @14:12:31 ^16:31:21

Newstuff 74

Not to be confused with this newstuff 74, which according to its introduction is actually newstuff 71. Someone screwed up here, evidently. Anyway, I stumbled on the thread a few days ago, recognised both wad names but haven't played them since they came out.

THE OTHER SIDE OF PHOBOS

This is an E1-style techbase running on E1M1. You'll probably need to play it a couple of times. The start hurts, due to lack of weapon and being surrounded by zombies. There's not much health, and a lot of slime, barrels and monsters around. Getting the blue key requires an unprotected run through slime and on my first attempt I didn't have enough health to do it, which meant I was basically stuck. I've also never much been a fan of the E1M2-style computer core maze and there's one here. However, I liked the way the yellow door gets progressively more locks on it as you pick up the keys.

It also gets a bit cheesy with its obsession with the numbers 666 and 1337. The latter is written on the automap in large letters. One of the secrets has a candle on the windowsill that I spent some time trying to activate - I thought it was a secret area opening trigger. It certainly looks like one. But it is in fact only there to mark linedef 666. This was pretty annoying (in fact the only part of the map I actually remembered from seven years ago was this wretched candle on the windowsill) The secrets in this map are in general irritating and you will probably need an editor to get them.

Summary: it's decent and worth playing, but this author has done better.

x8a7

Four maps running on E1M1-E1M3 and E1M9. Apparently took seven years to make; couldn't have been working on it that entire time. It definitely looks like it's from the mid-nineties.

E1M1: the distinctive messily textured simplistic style of the early era of Doom mapping; it wouldn't look out of place in one of the wadpaks, for example.

E1M2: a bit better but quite cramped and extremely disjoint. Three sections can be accessed in any order to get keys (but it's a lot easier if you go east, north, west - the west red key section is quite nasty if you're not prepared for it, and is pretty much impossible if you go in there first) Some good battles here and it's not terrible. At least it uses a few windows and glimpses and stuff. It does manage to have one of those secret areas that's too thin to register, I don't know how people manage to make these, don't you test your levels?

E1M3: you start outside a fortress with three doorways in (this was the only scene I remembered from before, but then it's still a fairly standard opening and I might be remembering a different map... still, who cares) Pick the right-hand door and go up the stairs if you want a shotgun. It turns into a bit of a puzzle map and I needed a map editor to avoid frustration. Even having cheated I still needed to backtrack a lot, and there are certain actions like clambering around structures to press buttons to re-open doors that must be done repeatedly. It gets quite tedious and irritating.

E1M9: your prize for finding the secret exit is a four-mile-long and three-feet-wide corridor. You start at one end by a chaingun, invulnerability, and cyberdemon. The exit is naturally at the other end. The corridor is full of soulspheres, blue armour and more bullets. You can just run to the end before the invulnerability runs out or you can kill the monster by holding down the trigger button and trying to avoid its rockets and healing yourself as necessary. It is one of the most pointless maps I have ever seen (although its "pure gameplay" nature has some appeal to speedrunners...)

Newstuff 340

Demonic Libido

A rather silly name for a rather generic but solid Doom2 base/hell map. Perhaps the author doesn't actually know what "libido" means, I don't know.

Anyway it's your classic Doom2 sprawling relatively themeless map. 300+ monsters of all sizes, various themes used, some interconnection and future glimpses, but not a great deal.

I say relatively themeless; large Doom2 maps tend to stray from a single theme because the stock IWAD textures are all fairly generic and so you end up with base maps with stone and brick and stuff in them. It's quite distinctive but abstract - you can't really say just what this map is meant to be. Some people think this abstractness is a good thing. I don't really care as long as it plays well.

Difficulty varies, it's mostly manageable except occasionally you might find yourself trapped in some hell cave full of lava with 10% health and surrounded by imps and a pain elemental just teleported in and...oh. I'm dead.

Journey To Hell Demo

Six maps of an upcoming megawad. The maps are essentially remixes of various maps from Hell Revealed, Hell Revealed 2, Alien Vendetta etc. This in itself is not a bad thing, but they're fairly mediocre and it's not worth it.

The author is obviously a fan of speedrunner's slaughter maps but doesn't understand stuff like you need your monster teleporters to go off in a timely fashion to avoid frustration, etc. Also you probably need to put enough ammunition on your levels that they can be done from pistol starts. Map03 I am sure does not have enough ammunition on it. Map04 on the other hand has more ammo than you'll ever need, and once past the first room is trivially bypassable (don't fire your weapon - he should have surrounded the switch with enough barrels so you can't reach it rather than one single lost soul that can be dodged until the exit has lowered) There's a lot more silly bugs (TEXTURE1 referring to unknown patches, missing texture HOM, etc.)

Incidentally I only downloaded this to find out why it demanded ZDoom, Legacy or Eternity. I found out why; rboom could play it right up until map05 where you need mouselook to shoot a button on a wall. Pretty dumb.