13/11/2014 @20:24:22 ^07:47:51

The Tiger Den

That distinct style of nineties Doom 2 mapping: a sequence of rooms and areas, each in a different theme, chosen apparently at random. For example beyond the red door you have green bricks and blood then computer tech and superheated water. I did like the open courtyard with the overlooking windows and towers.

Plus, it just gives you plenty of ammunition and health, and then throws monsters at you, so it was a lot of fun. There were very few annoying slow or cramped parts. As for bugs: there were one or two monsters stuck in walls, an inaccessible secret (thin sector before step up), and it's possible (but unlikely) to get yourself locked in the red key room.

1fifwar

Three maps: E1M1 is a circular arena with a dozen or two monsters, including all the Doom bosses. E1M8 is Doom's E1M8 modified in the same way that Doom's E3M1 became Doom's E3M9.

The highlight (as it were) is E1M2, which is in two parts, a grey base-style area and a large outdoor arena. The whole thing is stuffed with densely-packed monsters and ridiculous amounts of ammunition, but health can be hard to find. There is also a pillar-hopping and ledge-walking sequence, so it's just like a modern slaughter map!

Only joking. I did rather enjoy E1M2 and played it several times, although it can be tedious having to watch your health, and also because the blue key monster teleporter is badly designed and takes forever to deploy fully.

Shalom, welcome or farewell?

Six simple maps that comprise a mini-episode. For some reason they're distributed as six separate uploads. You can load them all at once if you renumber shalom02 from MAP01 to MAP02, the rest are numbered correctly.

• shalom01 - Just some simple rooms with monsters in them, and a couple of secret areas.
• shalom02 - A ring of sewage surrounds a large central chamber, which contains the key for the exit and a good fight when you pick it up.
• shalom03 - Some backtracking and finding mildly hidden secrets is required to get the blue key to exit this long thin map. There is a staircase builder that can be triggered several times, try to avoid it.
• shalom04 - Three concentric rings of walls and windows, and some hidden doors and tripwires.
• shalom05 - A simple cross shape of blood and metal, very top-heavy from a pistol start, probably should have ammo carried onto it.
• shalom06 - Boss level, mostly consists of a rectangle bisected by a large crushing ceiling. Not difficult to make everything kill each other or be crushed. Trick start and exit.

Blood of the Damned

A very old Doom 1 episode essentially composed of thin mazes. Not very inspiring. Some look "okay-ish" (ignoring the tedium of maze traversal) but others are noticably plain even by the rest of the wad's own standard (e.g. M4).

Secret level is a copy of original Doom's E1M1 and the exit to it is on M7. Best ignored I think, you don't want to have to play M4-M7 again. M8 is probably meant to have ammunition carried onto it, otherwise the spiderdemon is a difficult proposition to deal with (and the route to the secret exit on M7 gives you a large cache of rockets).

Megadoom.wad (for Doom 2)

A single map intended for deathmatch, but has monsters for solo. I don't think it would work very well for deathmatch, it's too large and also has an automapless 64-wide maze in it. The other two main areas weren't bad though. The large open plain with the slime river looked good. But what was he thinking with the mile-long twisty corridor of WolfSSes?

The Infected Tower lvl.1

A trek through grey fog. Well, ASHWALL2 is some kind of rock, but all the walls are invisible on the automap. This is not because they've been marked as such, but because they're two-sided. Every sector is unclosed. The most remarkable thing about this one is its relative lack of gameplay bugs given such a basic misunderstanding of map-making...