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I played this using Doom Retro and decided to go whole hog on the "retro" thing -- fairly low res, no vertical mouselook, no crosshair, no widescreen. Rough intro if you do a pistol start, but a fun time after that. A good-looking map with some truly classic combat and map-uncovering. Some classic bullshit unfairness too but it's all good. :-)
For some reason it makes me quite happy that Romero still has good Doom maps in him. (I kind of wish I had played this without knowing the author; I wonder how much of the "authentic Doom-ness" that I was smelling was from a placebo effect.) I haven't actually played this yet so I don't know if you're right. I just wanted to put that out there. Your cramped and fiddly ass.
There are definitely cramped places. There's also some big open areas that are a bit under-used. It's been 20 years since he made and released a map so I think what he created is still quite the achievement. His second map should be brilliant if this is the warm-up.
For me the 2 biggest problems with the map is that the opening moments are extremely difficult, you really have to work hard to get a decent 'foothold'. And the very last room with bruiser brothers is a bit claustrophobic and under-populated.
A little tough at the beginning then quickly becomes a little too easy. Other than that I think it's pretty sweet.
Would be hilarious if it turns out this is part of an arrangement with Bethesda to do some viral marketing for the new Doom.
Timings a little off though. I've only played it a bit with doom2.wad and Brutal Doom v20b. The beginning is a bit of a fight and ammo seemed thin, but other than that lots of fun. Like the big open spaces, but do wish he used that space a bit better.
Some highlights:
The huge open slime area seems to be the classic Doom's concept of a sea. The wall around it serves just to hide the fact that the Doom engine can't render sea horizons in harmony with the "skybox". And rather than invisible walls, what prevents the player from going too far away is the slime damage. The beginning is brutal if starting with just the pistol, but this is a good way of shaking off the rust from our Doom gameplay skills before playing the rest of the map. There are multiple routes, which in Doom is a given, but the funny thing is that some of those are definitely deadly and should be avoided, because they lead to areas with no way back if the player hasn't reached those areas through more proper routes. So, the player has a lot of freedom, but must use that freedom with some responsibility. It's been years since I've played classic Doom, but as far as I can tell the level of detail is definitely higher than in the original maps. Doom's gameplay feels a lot more different from Quake than I remembered. Although I could still remember the gameplay strategies, the feeling of the game in action is quite magical. Something about the unrealistic yet smooth flow of everything makes it very appealing. My comment about the "open sea" was to explain that it makes sense for some areas to be seemingly underused; the action isn't supposed to fill them completely.
Also, "underusing" a big area helps to make it feel bigger. The variety of area sizes gives a nice contrasting feeling, as if each area had a different personality. I had a lot of thoughts on this, you can read them here: http://scar3crow.com/2016/01/romeros-take-on-doom-e1m8/ and see a video of my playthrough.
Played it after all this hype. I once again noticed how much i prefer quake to doom.
The map felt cramped, those floor cracks where notso, navigation was oldschool as in "wtf where do i go now" Technically not outstanding, the textures looked random and not really good in places. But hey, lets all jump on his penis, right? Still it is awesome to have JR returning to his roots, mind you. He could do better though, lets wait for the 2nd map.
Seeing those 2Q shirts on all the Doom4 developers in the recent gameinformer coverage lets me hope they have something hidden as a surprise for us... that if I had a 20 year break from mapping that I'd be a little bit rusty.
I suspect his 2nd or 3rd map will be better. Good & well-informed article, as usual.
You play well, but enabling vertical look in Doom is a sin. Also, you missed a secret because of the non-vanilla automap you're using. In Doom, if a wall's line has a different color from the other identical walls in the automap, it's most likely a secret. Doom's automap is not just for helping to memorize the level better, it actually complements the gameplay. |
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