03/06/2012 @15:33:16 ^16:27:10

DOOM ][ "A$$KICKING"

A single map firmly in the hodge-podge of styles of the mid nineties. Great if you like that sort of thing, which I usually do provided the gameplay isn't too annoying. Unforunately, in this case it can be so.

• some excessive darkness (the first room in particular, whose main purpose is to show DOOM 2 on the floor. Cute but pointless.)
• thin ledges (around the edge of the second room, and a third to the south-east)
• some monsters stuck together
• top heavy monster placement. This map gets much easier the longer it goes on.
• abundance of necessary secret passages

The latter point appears to be the point of the wad, as the text file says it was created as a challenge for the author's friend to get 3x100%. But it doesn't do itself any favours by hiding everything, and throwing monsters at you faster than you find ammo to deal with them, and slime, and so on. I think it has its heart in the right place but it's all just a bit too annoying. Oh, and shell characters in the filename!!

feudal.wad

Replaces E1M1. Map starts in some green stone passages with some fancy pictures on the walls. You follow your nose mostly until you get out the back (after a lift that takes way too long to lower) where there is a castle, nicely made but quite symmetrical. You have to basically fetch a red key out of here and go back and open the door you started in front of.

The castle and its exterior are crawling with monsters but none are particularly dangerous, you just have to watch your health. The one secret is fairly obvious. The hardest part is on the way back in when you find one of the largely empty corridors now has a cyberdemon in it. I think you're meant to run past it; if you want to kill it, conserve a little ammunition. Punch stuff. There is a berserk box out there.

I have nostalgia for this wad, it was one of my earliest PWADs. Not super early but definitely in the first fifty or so. I was reminded of it recently in a Freedoom forum thread, and decided to play it again 12 years later. I remember making quite a number of failed attempts to 100% the thing but being killed by that damn cyberdemon. This time though I managed to do the thing on the second try, so, so much for that. I guess it helps that I now know the BFG dance that hits it for 75% of its health in one go. (The klonger you fight in that cramped space the more chance you have of an accident.)

One other point of interest, in the place where you get the yellow key there is a small cupboard with a switch in it next to the yellow key, which raises a floor to allow you to get the latter. If you go in this cupboard and turn around, there is a secret exit line on the back side of the door. Perhaps this map was going to be part of an episode.