so i've been poking around the wads on this post. based on its recommendation, i though i'd given alien vendetta a try, as it seemed to be the next logical step after plutonia. and around map 13, i got the feeling that perhaps i'd bitten off more than i could easily chew. but chew and chew i did, and i eventually emerged from the end of the wad bloody, battered ... but victorious. it was a good time!
i also decided, as a way of recording my journey, to take notes on each level. the result is way too many words on doom levels. the first few have somewhat briefer descriptions, but the more you write the easier it gets. it turns out i really enjoy thinking about what makes a good level or not. this post is over 3000 words!
i'm not going to give grades to every level like mtpain27, but i did want to hand out (or inflict...) a few awards. much like a beer or wine festival, there are as many winners as i feel are suitable.
GOLD MEDALS
- MAP08: Beast Island
- MAP14: Overwhelming Odds
- MAP18: Lake Poison
- MAP32: No Guts No Glory
SILVER MEDALS:
- MAP06: Hillside Siege
- MAP13: Suicidal Tendencies
- MAP15: Bulls on Parade
- MAP27: Stench of Evil
BRONZE MEDALS:
- MAP04: Seclusion
- MAP19: Alien Resurrection
- MAP25: Demonic Hordes
THE PLUTONIA AWARD FOR UNUSUAL CRUELTY:
- MAP26: Dark Dome
THE TNT AWARD FOR MOST SUFFERING:
- MAP11: Nemesis
THE LEE JACKSON AWARD FOR BEST NON-DOOM MIDI:
- "Huline Temple", from Lands of Lore 2, as used in MAP08.
and one final note: i started using doom launcher. it's really nifty and way better than writing batch files by hand. it also records totals for the playthrough, which are as follows:
- playtime: 23h54m
- kills 10490/11128
- secrets 69/125
- items 761/877
MAP01 (Sunset): great opener with nice detailing and scenery and some cleverly hidden secrets, but the exit to this level made me sad - you have to press a differently colored torch in a side room and it's really not clear that the torch is even interactable, much less that it opens the way to the exit, and the wall to the exit doesn't really give any hints as to how to open it either.
MAP02 (Rusty Rage): i forgot to take any notes on this level, so i replayed it afterwards. this level is more standard techbase fare than the previous level, although it repeatedly, aggresively corners you in a way that can quickly catch you offguard. in particular, picking up the soul sphere secret causes your path back to be blocked by a dozen chaingunners. and picking up the yellow key causes an archvile to spawn in the central room and immediately start resurrecting everything in there. the only weird bit is that the slime floor doesn't actually damage you; otherwise it's a great map that doesn't overstay its welcome.
MAP03 (Cargo Depot): the room with four revenants on pillars, one per corner, is a nice escalation of threat but also a reminder that autoaiming at revenants on pillars is a real hassle. good environmental touches with a container ship in the background that is actually part of the map and not a background and a rail depot that is used as an exit from the level.
MAP04 (Seclusion): nice thematic transition between levels with a railway connecting the too, i like that. surrounding a player with nine chaingunners at close range, even in a situation that is an obvious trap, is super mean! just when you think they're too dependendent on low-tier monsters, out comes the first archvile in a tough spot. very restrained with the lost souls so far. midi is a total banger.
MAP05 (Crimson Tide): first pain elemental! in a very obvious secret. this map was a bit tamer which is probably for the best. it features a strong interconnected/overlapping design, requiring exploring a large castle in the titular blood sea pretty thoroughly to make progress. the big blood sea is needed for 100% kills, but it only has a couple chaingunners and doesn't really add much.
MAP06 (Hillside Siege): the first map to make a really strong impression. the map gradually spirals outwards and you're under constant fire from the periphery meaning every encounter has to be approached carefully. ammo is tight, probably to encourage infighting. there's also a cyberdemon on top of a big cliff - helps with the infighting but i'm not sure if there's an efficient way to kill it. there's a BFG up there too that i didn't figure out how to get.
MAP07 (Showdown): take of unknown temperature: i don't like dead simple. i don't particularly like this map either. once you've killed the mancubi it's effectively already over.
MAP08 (Beast Island): a really good map with a great midi ("huline temple" from lands of lore 2). the foreshadowing with the cyberdemon stomping around and then teleporting in when reaching the final fortress is a nice touch, and there's a good mix of open and tight areas throughout a level. there was at one awkward part where you have to shoot monster well below you you can't really see, and i found myself chainsawing pinkies again too.
MAP09 (Castle Gardnes): good close-combat encounters with knights and barons requiring managing space and positioning. on the other hand, there are very narrow descending staircases over damaging floor that are annoying to navigate. and theree's a chaingunner trap later in the level where the chaingunners mostly wind up shooting each other.
MAP10 (Toxic Touch): a lengthy war of attrition against a warren of hitscanners with an extra helping of damaging floors and inescapable pits. the sort of map that really tests your fundamentals, sort of like the doom equivalent of eating your vegetables, as inattentive or sloppy play will quickly get you killed.
MAP11 (Nemesis): this map is absolutely no fun at all. brown stairs against brown walls, way too narrow passages everywhere, steep ascents and descents that make it impossible to see what's happening. locked doors without any indicator what key you need for it, and a giant damaging floor that you'll likely have to cross multiple times. i'm not even sure how the exit gets opened up, but i was just glad to get out of there.
MAP12 (Entropy): very solid techbase type of map, major breath of fresh air after slogging through map 11. a lot of it feels pretty standard but there's one spicy encounter where you're dropped into a room with a bunch of monsters that teleport in and need to pick off the chaingunners before they inevitably whittle away all your health while also avoiding projectile fire and trying to provoke infighting.
MAP13 (Suicidal Tendencies): really good map but i can't shake the feeling it could have gotten the point across in about half the number of monsters. regardless it does take careful resource management and planning to successfully carve your way through ~600 monsters in this map - ammo is scarce enough that you'll need to use all your weapons appropriately to keep making progress. one minor criticism is that the staircase near the cyberdemon can't be climbed by said cyberdemon, or the horde of pinkies there, making it easy to finish off at range with the plasma rifle.
MAP14 (Overwhelming Odds): similar in size to the previous map, but much meaner. overall considerably higher tiers of enemy and not a whole lot of health to go around. there are two revenant traps in particular that are rough to deal with. the second group spawns in a tiny room that has four difficult-to-hit archviles in pits plus a cyberdemon when you start. the meanest trap is probably when they place a partial invisibility powerup under an archvile you have to rush to kill - but if you actually pick it up, the crowd of imps, hell knights, and mancubi behind you will start firing semi-randomly making the encounter much harder to survive. on your way out, if you haven't had enough it spawn two more cyberdemons and a dozen barons, but they are easy to go around and i was absolutely done with the map at that point.
MAP15 (Bulls on Parade): massive breath of fresh air. still challenging but not nearly as long or relentless. especially memorable is the final arena which floods the area with enemies but there's a little bit of extra space in a number of sections behind false walls that might have some much needed resources... or maybe a couple enemies. there's also a nice spotlight shone on gaming's greatest glutes. there are a couple of weird moments (non-damaging lava that you have to stand in, a revenant that materializes out of thin air) but overall a very good map.
MAP16 (Mutual Desctruction): this map is... okay. mostly very straightforward, other than some weird mapping choices like a grate that you can walk through and a couple of computer terminals that can be interacted with, but don't have any indication that you've done so successfully. then you walk into a room a bit later and get hit with a big crowd of revenants at close range, have to race to take out six cyberdemons while invincible, and deal with revenants and mancubi in a room filled with pillars and lava i'm convinced i was missing something on. a map i was glad to get out of.
MAP17 (Nukefall): a very fast-paced scramble of a map that leans perhaps a little too heavily on making the right split second decisions. still a good time, and needing to run past enemies to deal with them later is a somewhat uncommon element in doom maps. i couldn't deal with that cyberdemon in the middle room though and eventually just let him be. something to work on for the future. (i feel somewhat better after seeing mtpain27 take 17 attempts to kill it.)
MAP18 (Lake Poison): another massive slugfest of a map. there's green slime floors everywhere (although only some of them damage you). in the first part, as soon as you shoot something a massive number of imps (150?) teleport in all over this sewer area, and clearing them out becomes a priority before the rest of the rooms can be dealt with. you also have to keep a close eye on resources. the second half is a massive fight in a large chamber that at the start is suicide to stay in for very long. you need to rapidly push into the side chambers, make space there, and gradually work on the remaining enemies. overall a lot of fun, although it did feature a return of enemies silently appearing directly in your face in a few parts.
MAP19 (Alien Resurrection): a lot of good, tricky close quarters action in this one but also a certain amount of running around and hitting switches and hoping they did something to help you advance in the level. there's a nifty trap where you try to open a door and the entire wall behind you lowers instead. the way the final area unfolds is generally a lot of fun as walls keep lowering to expand the space and reveal more monsters in unexpected ways.
MAP20 (Misri Halek): a technically impressive map with a very strong thematic design but one of the most extraordinarily painful maps i've ever played. lots of endless twisty narrow sand colored corridors, switches whose purpose you need to run around the map to find, and it all just goes on for way, way too long. the middle part where you ascend a volcano is better, but it's still too narrow for much interesting encounter design. and there's a lot more to the map after you do that.
MAP21 (One Flew Over the Caco's Nest): an incredibly basic followup to the previous map. nice to have something that can be ran through more quickly, but it's almost entirely linear with no encounters more dangerous than a single archvile. you're probably going to have to punch some pinkies, though.
MAP22 (Rubicon): a much better but still lighter-weight map. kind of a weird layout, though, and includes maybe the most insultingly obvious secret i've ever seen in a doom map, hiding one (1) medkit. the end of the map has a library-like room that sets up multiple tight ambushes in an inventive way and the final room is also surprisingly challenging for something that contains maybe a dozen enemies.
MAP23 (Blood Sacrifice): this map, to me, symbolizes the occasional folly of trying to do blind pistol starts. lots of cells everywhere, but the plasma rifle and bfg are in obscure secrets. other than that, the map is a bit of a mess to navigate. a lot of hitting switches and backtracking, along with door-looking textures that aren't doors. almost the entirety of the challenge in the map is limited to the three cyberdemons it contains as well.
MAP24 (Clandestine Complex): a kind of aggressively bad level that is more concerned with being clever than challenging or fun. awkward platforming and jumps, weird ascents and descents, and of course, basically the entire map is covered in damaging floor requiring rad suit management to make it to the end. and there's a switch in one of the rooms... that turns off the lights in the room, making the boxes that need to get climbed on much harder to see. at least it's not super long.
MAP25 (Demonic Hordes): oh wow. 1357 enemies. i don't know that i was fully ready to play a map like this, but i'm not sure anything really prepares you for this. but this map runs you from slugfest to slugfest and a lot of the encounters are really well put together. the map is visually stunning too pulling a lot of textures from heretic and designing areas that are plausibly real locations, to a much greater extend than doom wads typically do. there were a few locations where infighting was more necessary that i'd like, and i might have picked a midi other than "you suck" for a map this long. but overall i don't know that i could have picked a better map for my 1000+ enemy initiation.
MAP26 (Dark Dome): map 25's smaller, meaner brother; a onion made out of osmium. the map starts with you in line of sight of a couple of cyberdemons, half a dozen archviles, and maybe a hundred revenants, and you have to bail off the platform you're on and desperately run for safety - and the only safe areas, really, are the ones you'll carve out with your own hands. there are teleporters that take you up to where you started, although if you pick the one that leads to the chamber full of revenants without killing them, you're as good as dead, and there's no way to know that in advance. although there are plenty of resources, every room and corridor is stuffed with monsters of all types. there's also a lot more poking around for switches and keys than you'd expect for a map of this type, and the final insult to injury is once you get the red key the entire center area repopulates and you need to start running again to avoid getting immediately killed by a cyberdemon. brutal.
MAP27 (Stench of Evil): this map can be summed up by a situation i ran into at the end of it where i had 3 rockets and 23 cells to kill an archvile (and no other ammo). less overwhelming in terms of enemy count than the past two maps, but basically every room required careful ammo management. there's also a number of secrets that "reward" you only with more monsters to kill. visually very nice, and the layout is intricate without being overwhelming. there's a few bits, such as an entire set of bleachers full of chaingunners, where the monsters will do a very good job of killing themselves as well, which is generally required to exploit to make it through the level. this is reasonably straightforward and not too heavy an element however.
MAP28 (Whispering Shadows): many fewer enemies here but this map feels like it stays way past its welcome. part of that is because you are more or less forced to take out a cyberdemon with a super shotgun. there's also a huge amount of backtracking required just to get through the level. at least two secrets require awkward strafe running, and a key section of a map is hidden behind a series of blood falls that it's not clear you can pass through. there's one nice fight against a bunch of cacodemons, but that's about it.
MAP29 (Fire Walk With Me): this is another relatively shorter map, and the one major thing that sticks out is the huge wall of revenants encountered shortly into the map. there's something like 100 revenants in the room and not very much room to maneuver, with certain areas triggering the entrance of archviles and mancubi. the rest of the map is considerably more chill focusing more on exploration, although there are a couple groups of chaingunners that can cause problems.
MAP30 (Point Dreadful): oh boy, it's an icon of sin fight. they did a nice job of sprucing it up visually but there's only so much that can be done. you also better know how to strafe run or otherwise you won't be able to make it from the first elevator switch to the elevator it lowers in time.
guess who forgot to do the secret levels? it's me. anyway i warped to map 31 and carried on.
MAP31 (Killer Colours): secret levels, traditionally come in two types: wacky gimmicks and extremely difficult. this is unquestionably the former, as it's split into three areas - blue, green, and red - and everything, from the enemies to the pickups to the weapons, is themed appropriately. there's some fun combat but a lot of the level is figuring out what green section of green wall to press to let you proceed. the final fight in particular requires using invincibility to take out all of the archviles in the fight and as many cyberdemons as you can, otherwise you'll wind up getting roasted.
MAP32 (No Guts No Glory): remember one map ago when i said secret levels come in two varieties? this is unquestionably the second. step out of the starting room and you'll be in the line of sight of four archviles, five cyberdemons, two spider masterminds, and a ton of other monsters stuffed into every nook and cranny. you can back up and pick off the archviles before you start (and you will want to do that) but eventually you'll just have to wade in with the BFG, and there's just barely enough cover to make that happen. there's also teleporters for each cyberdemon if you're feeling bold and want to try telefragging them, although you may wind up eating a rocket if you do. initially i made it out of the level with under half the kills... but there's no guts or glory in that. so i went back and dealt with the second room properly, which mostly involves grabbing the blue key and holding on for dear life as archviles, revenants and pain elementals pour into to an already pretty crowded room.