The NuMetalManiak Review Thread: 2019-2021 (most recent review: DOOM: Damnation) (2024)

The question of what has been done before often prevails for mapmakers. We play the IWADs to memorization, we play famous PWADs like DTWID and the Memento Moris to memorize what made them great. Well not all of us did but I certainly did. So when I played DOOM: Perdition, my eyes were set on a lot of things. For one, it was advertised as a "spiritual successor to E4". Which really sort of doesn't mean a lot from the first map, does it not?

It seemed from the get-go that it was heavily inspired by E4. E4M1 is a souped up version of the original Hell Beneath. E4M2 that follows isn't as much of Perfect Hatred as it is something else (namely MM2's MAP12). And then E4M9 has those Tim Willits design charms to it that resembled both the original E4M9 and ATTACK.wad.E4M3 is where it takes off and takes off well. It's a weird map, you'll have a bit of trouble figuring out what does what, but it somehow manages to be a fresh level that works out well. E4M4 is a sandbox/town map, evoking the shades of the maps it was inspired by, E3M6 and MAP15. E4M5 draws a bit of SIGIL inspiration, but does it fantastically, making it the overall best map. E4M6 is based on that castle map from Doom 64, E4M7 draws heavy inspiration from Against the Wickedly and MM's MAP08, then you see shades of DTWID's E3M9 in the final level.

The overall feel of the levels and their gameplay shouldn't really be insane in difficulty, but tough enough for the player to have difficulty conquering. The maps are sized well with quite a few notable homages to look out for. But there's not really anything groundbreaking overall. It's just another decent episode replacement, the kind you're bound to play and be okay with.

What's the standards you go by? Deadly Standards the second comes right after the first Deadly Standards, giving us the same limitations, which basically means make whatever as long as you have the stock textures. For the most part it's good enough, the maps are medium-sized and only get bigger and bigger, with veteran mappers like Confalonieri, SteveD, and Roofi giving it their all. Hate to be blunt though, I hate the direction towards longer and more confusing levels these mappers are making, preferring maps that are generally more action-packed than "action and then you run around trying to figure out what you need to do next"

This is blatant in Roofi's maps and especially the final level. You nail the atmosphere at the sacrifice of gameplay, with the only notable gameplay parts being the cyberdemon fight at the end (very dependable on the skill setting it seems) and the fight around the blue switch. But a lot of the things you gotta do here have progression that makes heads spin. And come on, LET ME GO ON THE TILTED SHIP IT WOULD BE COOL. Other maps, well E2M3 is kinda sloppy but still doable, and E2M7 was made to be as aggravating as possible instead of enjoyable.Rest that aren't mentioned have decent gameplay for their sizes.

3/5

Well the textfile says exactly what it is, a complete episode replacing E1, rough looks, typical of the 1994 era. Yep, that's what you'll get if you play this episode replacement. The monster counts aren't THAT high, but the supply counts definitely are. All those soul spheres in specific rooms. And then you have the other issues: required keys in secrets, no hints to doors, bad usage of lifts, pressing random walls just to get things to work, node issues with crushers and monsters not being active. The names Funduke and Perseus are credited, these are usually associated with uploading the Maximum Doom PWADs and generally bad 1994-quality stuff, Respectively. you can easily pass this E1 replacement up.

1/5

Philnemba's general mapping style is entirely generic, often utilizing techbases with simple design and simple architecture. Not much else to really say is there? Hell on Phil Episode 1: Phantom Phobos is a vanilla episode made entirely like this, although it's not all techbase as E1M6 shows. The episode replacement is just plain and average overall, not too good but not really too bad. E1M4 is actually the same map from Doom 2 Unleashed (MAP38), except now it actually is finishable (originally the level was unbeatable due to a weird design flop). E1M8 is a neat finale map, heavily BFG9000-centric and being a weird slaughtermap with invulnerabilities. Charming indeed, but not extremely exciting overall.

3/5

Here we have a 10-level wad for Doom 2 and specifically for GZDoom with UDMF triggers and CC4-tex included. No real changes to actual gameplay, just 10 nice-looking levels that are medium sized and have reasonable monster counts with generally good flow. The layouts are done quite well, a few homage the maze area from E1M2 and the encounters aren't too tough to deal with. Perhaps it is a bit too easy. I get a bit of Suspended in Dusk feel at times. Atmosphere is done well and there's no sacrifice to the gameplay thankfully. Overall it isn't bad but it's far from memorable, plenty of other wads do this kind of thing better.

4/5

We have Slaughterfest 2011, Slaughterfest 2012, Slaughterfest 2013...ohohohoho NO we have Slaughterfest 3 instead, cause some people took too long. So now we have Slaughterfest 2020...ahahaha actually we have SlaughterMAX. It's so interesting to see how much the slaughterfest community project evolved over the years, the first one separated maps by author, giving us ways to see just how selective mapping styles were done, and it actually did pretty well. 2012 went away with that gimmick but gave us 32 decent slaughtermaps, then 3 came around and whaddya know did the same thing. SlaughterMAX spreads the further joy as the fourth official slaughterfest community project, with UV-MAX demos recorded in order to prove they are complete-able (even though one is literally called Literally Unplayable)

So when I played SlaughterMAX I was disappointed with it. Why? well, I expected...more perhaps? The first level tries to be interesting with pain elemental usage (the map itself resembled one too, I guess that's cool) but it kinda doesn't hit its stride. MAP02 on the other hand, the door didn't work, and the room after it was just a glorified arena. This arena trope is prevalent for the next three maps, and they aren't really designed all that well. It isn't until MAP06 (which was already in Doomworld Mega Project 2016, and was one of the better maps) that I started liking stuff, and only in spades at best. MAP07 wasn't a slaughtermap, the maps after it do better especially MAP10 and MAP11. MAP15 had interesting gimmicks, and I ended up seeing more of these, which is good. some maps resemble hubs, where you go on your merry way. MAP23 was another excellent map.

MAP27 is aptly named Back and Forth and is a strong yet silly level. MAP28 oh man, this was the reason I was disappointed with the wad as a whole. Because I completely expected the wad's quality to be just like this judging from screenshots. And then I couldn't actually play the level in hardware mode, wonderful. However MAP29 was a worthwhile odyssey of a slaughtermap, with an appropriate music change that fit the mood swing, plus it gave off a perfect Sunder vibe, the best level in the whole set. It wasn't the closer, MAP30 was the frantic closer which can be rendered completely unplayable if you're not fast enough (actually I'm not even sure how to beat it in any case).

For the other ones that weren't mentioned, they had their moments, but ultimately felt flat. Given the quality of many maps from the previous slaughterfest community projects, I really did expect things to be amazing, but either the design was bleh or the fights were mostly glorified arenas with waiting being the main protocol. Take note I DON'T hate slaughtermaps, just the arena parts where you're forced to wait often for the next switch to finally be revealed just to move on. I like more adventurous slaughtermaps with more freedom like the ones from Sunder and such. Arenas aren't fun anymore.

Hey look, a classic Doom 1 megawad. what do we got? Well...it's not as good as expected. There are bits that work and lots of bits that don't work. There's quite a lot of classic Doom homages, and a few that seem like they are inspired by DTWID, but there's a number of problems that give this a stanky 90's feel. Big one would have to be the times when you're in the blinking hallways, pitch-black areas that blink every now and then. Other problems include the HOMs, awful backtracking, and yes a few levels may actually be broken. The idea of playing as a female army student seems neat, until you realize she shrieks at just about everythingincluding pressing walls, which gets old quickly. This wad and perhaps several others are made for schools? Seems interesting but I think the quality needs to be better. For some reason E3 is unfinished?

You can pass this one up, as it does things that others do better and with less issues.

As you might obviously expect from this author, you're gonna see the abstract and feel the abstract. It's sort of the same thing if you're already used to monti's style, weirdly-textured locales, completely cryptic secrets, oddball progression, very Mano Laikas-like, which definitely wasn't suitable to many who have played it. But at least here we have a memorable map in MAP06, a well done forest level, and the Mt Erebus-esque MAP07.

It's mostly standard fare for those already used to the style that monti uses, and is worth at least one go for some unique tidbits.

The Czech community megawad projects always tend to have the weirdest things some times. The first one I'm familiar with isBeyond The Hell, made exclusively by four Czech Doomers in 2005 but it was one of the more dreadful ones. Of course not one of those names I would recognize. The second and more famous one isZones of Fear, a more recent megawad with several of the mappers who participated in this year's Czechbox. The authors in particular were Damned, who made mostly compact levels with great detail and attention to quirky yet wonderful gameplay; Jaeden, who was more or less over the top with any and all outings being marathon levels to some extents; Matthias, aka enkeli33, who also made big maps but were a little less over the top; and Pipicz, known for making the slaughtermap MAP28 as well as being the creative one behind Bloodstain.

Now ZOF definitely had its share of mixed bag and Czechbox isn't as different, but it was a lot nicer to go through than ZOF due to the levels not being huge in any ways. I'm quite surprised at how many maps Damned contributed this time around. jaeden only had a couple or so maps but they weren't big, and Pipicz as usual only contributed one (MAP19) but it was a good one of course. The new mappers, well, Sulphurit's work is amateur, and it seems that they are at the beginning of the mapset just to give the megawad a feeling of "it gets better from here", and indeed it does. Kloki's maps are weird ones, and Matthias, the second biggest contributor, did a number of things that are normal and abnormal. the Kafkaesque world (MAP10) and Orwell's Nightmare (MAP18) are middle episode highlights with cool gameplay, followed by the crate level MAP23 and MAP24 the big arena one. Some of these are certainly speedmaps or rehashes, and are treated as such. be mindful of the platforming especially in Damned maps. Overall though Czechbox is perhaps the most fun of the Czech wads to go through, even if you do it only once or so.

As with Remnant, it was only a matter of time before those lovely OTEX resources were used again, and Death in Excess does that. Imagine Sunder but with those textures and you basically have Death in Excess. These are, of course, slaughtermaps, done with extreme macro-detail and loads of locales all look like they'll wet your pants off, combine that with slaughter gameplay and you're probably just gonna turn on god mode or no monsters just to admire this sh*t. This is eighteen levels (MAP01-16, plus 31 and 32) with progressive difficulty, so naturally the levels go from small to big, hard to harder.

The big issue is when the frames start dropping, causing levels to be nigh-unplayable for me until I switch settings. MAP32 and MAP16 were the big offenders there. they are the big marathon levels that evoke a lot of Sunder vibes, especially MAP16 with its sneaky inescapable pits, platforming segments (please DO NOT attempt to go across them if your framerate won't cooperate, it will not work out for you) and marathon-style gameplay, combined with six keys and all. The rest of the levels have several other vibes going for them, some feel like Rush, others feel like Slaughterfest 20XX levels (kinda bad when you think about my opinion onforced arena fights, I'm not gonna go into detail there but at least here you don't have to wait as long as others). MAP15's idea is splendid for those who had enough, but those who perservere will be rewarded with MAP31. MAP31 is deceptive, having a boss shooter at one midpoint and platforming segments at the other afterwards, with one that will ruin your concentration but only if you want that secret exit.

Needless to say, bigger is not always better when it comes to architecture and the sheer number of things that ruin framerates. Just some food for thought.

Each year Mayhem gets started, worked on, given resources to f*ck with, maps get made, and then the entire set waits until next year to reach idgames. That last part makes no sense but some people are just lazy or something. The last few Mayhems (at least the ones I played) all certainly had quite a few standouts, the first one in 2012 had that last map, 2048 had quite a few memorable levels, as did 1500. While I haven't played 2016's Mayhem I definitely had a hand in Super MAYhem 17 which is still the best one, and 2018 was a double pack which featured...basically the direction this one is headed to resource-wise.

And I am so not a fan of it...

Can we just not with custom monsters and weapons please. I don't want to see another MAYhem with them again. These guys in this wad weren't all that amazing even though they at least don't modify original monster behavior for the most part. But what I see basically are different variants of hitscanner, a skeleton enemy and a golem enemy that function as an imp and a hell knight respectively, a dark bishop-like enemy that functions a bit like a revenant, another that is even more bland in design and gameplay, a few bomb enemies (one is a blue orb that functions like a lost soul, and the other is a pain elemental like thing that shoots mancubus fireballs but still has blast radius), a few boss monsters (well the maulotaur got more use, but it's not a good enemy and STOP WITH THE MANCUBUS FIREBALL MONSTERS USE A DIFFERENT PROJECTILE FOR ONCE), some bats which are fodder, a modified red imp, a cacolantern with different attack, two arachnorb variants that actually have really low health for some reason now. The best enemy are those stationary cube things which function well as plasma turrets. Probably missed a few but screw it. Bottom line is, apart from the cubes and probably the bomb enemies the rest honestly feel very vanilla-like, and that's kind of lame when put up against the creative monsters used in the 2018 packs.

Amazingly enough I'm not as much of a hater of the custom monsters as I am the levels though. The first few maps up to MAP08 are entirely unmemorable, nothing sticks out, it's DMPhobos's map that is the first actually good one. MAP09 tried something cool, but like Impie's other map didn't deliver in combat. MAP10 and MAP11 annoyed me due to spending minutes trying to find the next required switch, Please princess please give some hints as to where to go god damn I hate spending so long in maps that have low monster counts. Also MAP11 has two secrets that I so far have not been able to find solutions for. MAP14's beginning section needs to f*cking go away, the rest of the slaughtermap was okay. And MAP16? when will dobu make a completionist-friendly map? Or actually one that is fun AND interesting instead of fun OR interesting? This is one of his worst and I can't stomach it. So either most of the maps are nauseating or they are boring, really.

The good maps besides MAP08 though are MAP12 (a nice pacing map), MAP32 (yes that's right, a f*cking joe-ilya map manages to be one of the better ones), MAP15, and MAP17 (both better done for slaughtermaps than MAP14). However, MAYhem as a wad series needs to stop with the dehacked stuff now and just make something with a texture pack and a limitation for next time, plus BETTER LEVELS PLZ. 1/5

Hey! be nice to short people please! With the joke aside, smfsp2 is apparently a presequel of the first smfsp, which was done by@datacore. This one was actually mostly authored byRoofi, but also includes three datacore maps and one from Vergogneful.

Now these are speedmaps and have to be treated as such, most were done in 30 minutes with the exception of two Roofi maps and all Datacore maps. As such, the quality is largely varied and there's bound to be some f*cked up stuff throughout. To really craft something amazing in 30 minutes, this does not do that, but it tries at least. And by try I mean try to come up with something that seems crafty in many cases. The wacky texture usage is an obvious echo to the TimeOfDeath mantra, although there's not a lot of slaughter in the maps that have this texture usage. Then you have the abstract MAP26 which as small as it is is certainly one of the better 30-minute maps. Plus MAP03 and its 6000+ monster count. There's a lot of dissonance here as you play maps both short and not-as-short, moments where the crampedness combined with the monsters present could spell an early grave, a la Swift Death at times. The three Datacore maps are not speedmaps, but they obviously look the best and surprisingly don't take as long as you might think. The custom skies are neat fits.

But at the end of the day this is predominantly speedmaps and fit the nice little coffee break for the day, if you can get past a few hurdles that is.

A2Rob isn't a household name in the Doom community...yet. This is a mapper who so far contributes only to community projects, speedmapping projects, and wad contests. And by playing those past maps, I got the impressions of a modern mapper who understood the complexities of making gameplay central to each layout while keeping things designed decently.

Running Late 2 might just be the big breakthrough A2Rob is looking for, featuring 14 maps (plus two bonus maps) all within the modern style of things. There's a few new things, like weird textures and such, and also incorporating plasma marines and punchy skeletons replacing the SS and Commander Keen respectively. These custom enemies are properly used, even though in general they aren't too impressive. A2Rob's level layouts work for what they got, there's bound to be several linear moments, but the enemies will keep players busy. a number of arena areas exist, secrets are actually easy to find, and the levels were slightly designed for co-op play, so you'll probably gloat as you face hordes of monsters pouring from several areas. Some of the levels have what I like to call "Joshyisms", as there were moments where I got slightly lost and thought to myself, how am I gonna get this key and all of a sudden I find a weirdly innovative and somewhat counter-intuitive way to pick up this one key. Hell, I actually managed to get a Resurgence vibe out of many of these maps, which further strengthens the use of this term.

The levels all vary in size and memorability but for the most part there's enjoyment in each one. The longer ones MAP05, MAP10 and MAP12 will definitely be busters, and they sort of ruin the whole purpose of "running late" given just how late I end up getting to the exit, hah. Looks like that boss won't be happy no matter how fast I make it to the exit. All things considered, there's all the time in the world to play this mini-megawad. So don't be late.

2 hours for a speedmapping window, 24 hour period. 26 maps were made, all by different authors. Speedmapping certainly has become so popular it's hard to keep track of all the different session names. For this speedmapping session, the theme is "hell base", which I guess depends in a number of ways, some do it better than others naturally, others neglect the base part I seem to notice. The other theme is "one weapon" and this wad is for GZDoom so it uses the "resetinventory" and "resethealth" properties to, well, reset upon completing a map. Makes sense, since the authors expect players to beat this using only one weapon only.

The good news is that there's quite a lot of variance to go by with these, the smaller maps naturally use the smaller weapons for instance. The bad news is that the chainsaw and fist were not used in any way (apart from a few berserk packs, but these don't really do much). And the ugly news is that some of the maps broke the convention of one weapon, specifically the ones where I get both shotgun and chaingun. Some of the map names will clue you in to what you might expect, others won't. Interesting ones just so happen to be the BFG slaughter ones, specifically My Pheasant Likes Blue Balls (MAP12), an invulnerability-fueled blue sh*tshow as well as Circle Strafe (MAP23). So much in terms of random quality but there's concepts to be had here and there.

It seems like this was a long time coming, given how the one and only time I played Demon Eclipse had me left hanging for quite a bit. Regardless, Hell-Forged is a beast of its own right despite being pegged as a remake of the second episode of Demon Eclipse, featuring several new things that definitely qualify this as a robust TC.

There's a few new enemies, some of which actually function like reskins (Draugr to revenant, Corpulent to mancubus, Arachknight to, well, arachnotron, even some of the boss monsters like Helldukes which are essentially cyberdemons). These new enemies are mixed well with regular beastiary, although you'll notice a complete lack of hitscanners at all times here. Other new monsters are somewhat interesting, the devil is just an enhanced imp, while the new demon and spectre variants do use projectiles. Infernals and sentinels were also quite impressive.

For weapons, we start out with the melee Templar sword, but you'll notice that each slot up to 5 has two weapons, the Vorpal blade being exceptionally amazing when fully charged and using alt-fire, capable of slicing down even barons with ease. For slot 2 the fire weapons, starting with the immolator which shoots fire jets that continuously harm, or fires the ground up. The other slot 2 weapon the basilisk has a crappy alt fire with a dual flamethrower, but its regular fire is a nice Duke3D-like devastator weapon. Slot 3 gives us the Wheel of Pain, a very unique weapon that functions like a shotgun but gives a healing projectile to the player upon a successful hit, and the alt-fire is a chainsaw variant that apparently gives the weapon more ammo. The other weapon the Hellbolt functions like a rocket launcher and a bouncy grenade launcher. Slot 4 has weapons that echo the nailgun and super nailgun from Quake, with the alt-fires of both being rather strong, the mauler in particular is essentially an SSG in alt-fire mode. Finally the soul weapons in slot 5, the Soultaker functions like Quake's Thunderbolt weapon but is powered up, then the alt-fire releases a deadly blast consuming that energy, while the Reaper is essentially a nasty BFG-type weapon spawning ghasts that continue the attack.

And then you got the power up spheres that compliment the journey accordingly. The Doom sphere essentially is a Tome of Power, while other spheres do things like give infinite ammo, completely replenish ammo, or speed up the player, and well there's more.

There's so much to take in, but the levels are gonna be the big thing here. This is an episode of 9 levels, each level being quite big in size and getting bigger as you progress, making this a worthwhile adventure. Level layouts can have you taking multiple paths, but there's usually a hub you start out in and then you branch off to find the keys or whatever. Lots of secrets, unfortunately even I cannot find them all, like in H1M4 the Factory-like area with the Dead Simple arena, there's one secret I never could find. Notably there's all these mushroom dolls which I think are in every map and are secrets in their own right, I think I got all but one of them. Then the green key is usually a secret key in each map, and finding several switches behind green doors tends to allow you to access the better weapons sooner. However, many of the maps are huge, but not too difficult to actually navigate. H1M8 is a hub with five spokes to go to, but apparently you only need to reach three different areas, which is slightly convenient.

Prepare for an episode that's guaranteed to have you in for a long hall with this thing. It's a long ride for a TC.

Amongst the many projects stuck in Doomworld development hell and often showing up on the first page of WADs and Mods with updates (or just people bumping threads and sh*t) we have Texture Extravaganza. To the uninitiated, one probably thinks it's just a resource wad, made with the efforts of creating new textures, but in reality it's a 27-level megawad, with 26 regular levels and one secret level, with the main gimmick being to use only a select set of textures for each map. It's a community project, started by bzzrak, continued by NaZa, and only now in 2020 was it compiled for idgames release.

The overall gist is this, each starting room is a black room where you see all the textures and flats used to create each map, and with that in mind the teleporter will take you to the map itself. The overall progression of the levels go from generally easy ones with limited resources, to more modern stuff, to the slaughter stuff at the end, which is quite typical of modern megawads. There were mappers I was glad to see, and mappers that I honestly didn't want to see, making maps for this thing. walter conflagration made some interesting maps, some more annoying than they ought to be, and riderr3 made three maps, surprisingly only MAP15 made me feel groggy. The sh*tty progression in it is bad, but it's actually way worse in Stormcatcher's MAP24, which honestly ought to have been a standalone (when are we gonna get a compiled Cursed Realms). I was okay with pretty much everything else, dobu's map was actually good, even if it's one of the easiest levels, and Azurish's level is good too. Most maps tend to go for the gimmicks, which are love or hate, but I'm glad this got a release.

"A classic-style Doom II megawad with 32 levels. Version 3 music fix released."

Well isn't that right. The gameplay of Deep into the Massacre definitely holds the classic style for the most part, although there's some discrepancies to be had. There aren't any music tracks in this wad, but the wad's music is shuffled more or less. Not that I care about that though. The wad was tested with GZDoom, and I played on that too. It says it won't run with Vanilla Doom, but I think it can run at least on a limit-removing port, if not, Boom-compatible, as there's nothing that really screams ZDoom use anywhere here.

Anyways, design-wise, this is nothing special at all. Gameplay is all over the place depending on the map. Some maps play pretty fine, others try for some gimmicks but come up short. A number of them are a bit boring due to bad baron of hell placement. Secrets make things way too easy. Some areas are symmetrical and often employ the revenant or chaingunner trap. And then there's MAP26 which unfortunately must be broken because it looks like there's no sector tagged for some of the teleporters required to go through.

When it's there though, the combat is alright at the best and mediocre at the absolute worst. It's not that bad but it definitely has room for improvement.

So yet another megawad, yet another community project, and I must be getting old, because I recognize less and less names in the community nowadays who participate in these projects. The overall gist is that this is a project which is in Doom 2 format, where each mapper who participates must use a maximum of 40 sectors. So it's like 10 sectors except times four. Then, you are limited to only using four monster types, which is four times 1 Monster. I guess Four Is Death. but the last limitation will likely raise some eyebrows, as it basically says that there is no SSG allowed. A weapon that can balance itself well against Doom II's bestiary, and it is cancelled completely for this project.

Nevertheless, modesty is the name of the game, and that's what these map layouts offer...modesty. Don't expect supremely fancy Ribbiks architecture, expect more modest, 90s-style layouts that really do remind you of 10 Sectors the megawad. Most maps are short, but several outliers exist, like Blue_Juice's two maps, which I actually don't like. This is an episode-driven megawad, with not only death exits but also episode selection from the main menu. There's going to be slaughtermaps, special mention goes to both secret maps which are stupid and silly levels where shotgun guy hordes basically kill themselves trying to kill you. I can surmise it's likely that players will miss that SSG for the entire megawad.

A combination of rules set out to make a megawad that multiples and combines aspects of classic limitation megawads, and the result turned out exactly as its namesake, modest. Some maps will be weak, there's no getting around that. At the most this set as a whole is just modest.

OOPS: All TechBase, yet another community project that uses techbases, except with the hay fever of dropping bananas on people's heads in the middle of a rainstorm while snakes on an island wear suits and ties. Wait no that's not what it's about. It's a community project with the theme of techbase. Kinda inevitable when you think about it. I was annoyed at the lack of a wad description though.

At least it plays exactly how I expected it to. it has techbases, metal stuff, and well that's all I can say. Other than that, fairly typical community project. Not a lot of names I recognize it seems. Since it's a community project it has ups and downs overall and I don't wanna bother explaining that in detail. short levels, long levels, the occasional fight that feels like slaughter, but even the one with the biggest horde isn't really that hard to deal with. MAP22 is probably my favorite here.

Addition to this there's also a new weapon, a pulse rifle with bouncy plasma projectiles as well as the Hell warrior enemy, Both thankfully used sparingly. Most maps are quick to beat like the original Hangar so there's always a chance to revisit this.

This is the kind of wad you will end up playing when you are doing either a huge f*cking download elsewhere, or are rendering something important, but because speed fluctuates from between 1 hour to 10 minutes to 5 days, you have nothing better to do other than make some sort of attempt to just strangle your ISP in a fit of rage. But since you probably don't have a clue where your ISP is you decide to play a Doom wad instead. And even then, you can somehow finish beating this one all the way through BEFORE your thing is finished.

This wad isn't your average everyday episode replacement. It's something that is made to befit the 1994 era like a tee. I'm serious. you're seeing what I'm seeing, weird aliens that replace zombiemen and for some reason having arch-vile death animations, the Pluto dog from Disney as the shotgun guy, Reptile from MK as the imp, and the alien from Aliens as the baron. Then the items are like random sprites more or less, with glasses as the light amplification visor and a pink dress as the radiation suit. Sounds are wacky as had been with those ambitious '94 authors, and those who know monti's music selection would probably realize yes, that's weird too (neat that a SD3 song was in E1M7). To further drive the point on home, monti manages to make plenty of areas as annoying as possible, in a way to emulate the sheer annoyance of playing Maximum Doom-like sh*tty maps of the 1994 era. Hard to believe he would even think of this kinda thing, but there you go. You've got rooms with multiples of weapons and keys, dumb encounters with lots of barons and cacodemons, and every map has 10 secrets and all are stupid hard to get. Backtracking is incredibly prevalent and so is the frustration factor. Perhaps the only thing it really lacks is the inescapable pits or other silly mistakes that '94 mappers made.There's also these philosophical sayings in these secrets, as well as stupid parody imagery of world leaders and Mr. Rogers among other things. What can I say, this is a mess. But it's also an appropriate mess that fits with the desired theme.

Another year another one of these stupid Doomworld Mega Projects where the quality is all over the place. Oh wait this is MAYhem, so it at least tries to be refined in some way to be "different" I guess. But hey! Looks like overdosing on custom monsters and other dumb stuff is thrown by the wayside for "looking back at the olden days of Doom mapping". Think of it as a 10 Sectors tribute, but each map now has 20 Sectors for double the trouble or so they say. To further it, there's resources used from the alpha and beta, so it all feels more of oldie nostalgia.

-The obligatory MAP11 and MAP20 death exits

-The obligatory MAP21 berserk map

-A joe-ilya map somewhere in the bonus section

-The almost obligatory slaughtermap which may or may not be good

-The late game map (MAP29 in this case) that is more grandiose than it really is and is honestly more troublesome than it's worth

-And everything else in between that is high or low depending on your skill

Oddly enough MAP30 isn't an Icon of Sin map for once, but MAP48 is one. So yes, there you have it another MAYhem, thankfully it was released on the same year as its iteration and not in the testing hell it would have ended up being. My favorite map was MAP14 by the way.

Before I start this I should note that the link is not really the final as they are still bugfixing and well they'll get to it considering I gave some feedback on bugs. This review is on how the overall wad feels to methough.

So I'd say this was a well-anticipated megawad considering I really did enjoy much of the previous Interception (even if many of the levels there seem mediocre now). We've got lots of custom music which is excellent, and the promises of action-packed stuff. Okay so that's there and all. Above all else though, the biggest issue is the overall pacing. There's no short maps in the set aside from MAP31 (which is a gimmick map and doesn't really count as much). Every map is medium to large-sized and it's very likely a player will get fatigued or forget where they are going overall. We can appreciate the long map between other maps in a megawad but not multiple in a row in most cases. That's not even getting to why they are so long. I'd wager that speedrunning this in any category is nauseating, as the pacing of the maps tends to go to a standstill once you don't know where to go. For completionists, it's even nastier, as items are scattered everywhere and monsters are placed precariously, with plenty of secrets in most maps. And my god, stop with forced arena fights. Many of the Boom triggers seem screwed up it makes me wonder why they didn't stick with vanilla compatibility. While anticipated, it blew my expectations to the ground with just how the gameplay tries to do everything to make you regret playing it.

Here we have the sequel to the first 1000 Lines Community Project, so the levels will still not be as huge as they appear, well for the most part anyways. We have 34 of them, and to make things sleeker, these mappers all used VOTEX. What the heck is this VOTEX well it's a vanilla-compatible texture pack version of OTEX which people should be familiar with by now (and if you're not get the hell out of the rock you're under). Also included are plenty of music tracks, particularly several new ones byAD_79who composed the majority of it.

So as you'd expect, this being a community project of course quality varies, however consistency is nicely done so that no map (well apart fromone) feels expurgated in a way. Things scale nicely and there's distinctions between short maps, long maps, slaughter setups offered in spades, traditional death exits, yes. Well I was only disappointed in MAP30 but most IOS fights in megawads are pretty bleh anyways.

As for thatonemap. I think after people playit it'll be the one map to be talked about formonths. Let me give you a hint. Revenant rockets

So here we have not one, but two megawads, where each level is done so that the file size does not exceed 64 kb. Which equates to small levels. Hey, this is good, since I can get through it quickly. Of course, <64kb maps tend to be very unmemorable overall, those that try to make things interesting end up making their maps more annoying in retrospect. The more memorable outings are in the limit-removing set, and that set utilizes "YAMFSCMWHO" or "Yet Another Mancubus Fireball Spewing Custom Monster Wow How Original". Scypek's map has the first custom stuff, and was interesting. I am left wondering if Aurelius's map was intentionally glitchy. Overall what else can you expect aside from mixed bag?

And now I hear that there's a 128kb challenge. Personally I'm sitting here waiting for "64kb 1024x1024 32 grid 5 textures 5 flats 69 monsters in the style of joe-ilya Community Project"

When it comes to making your first map, it's honestly way better to make it underwhelming instead of overwhelming. This follows the overwhelming approach, and not in any good ways at all. 7 Deadly Sins appropriately titles its levels after the sins, and at leasttriesto make a level out of each concept. Ultimately it doesn't make anyone happy, in fact, it seems to do everything it can to make you regret playing it.

Sloth and Greed are the shorter maps, but neither are particularly fun even though they try with the concepts (Sloth tries to be somewhat of a starvation map, Greed goes with the first room having you dodge cyberdemons and enter square rooms to telefrag them before the final room where you would get invulnerabilities to take down cyberdemons). Wrath and Envy are more medium-sized, but both have long, drawn-out areas, which are even more prevalent in the slaughtermaps Pride, Lust, as well as the sort-of hub map Gluttony. This combined with the "my first map design" does not abode well at all for this wad as a whole. The two first maps are slaughter maps, but it seems like all the meat is concentrated weirdly, like Pride has the majority of them being in the obscenely huge cargo room and most are imps, while Lust just has LOADS of zombiemen in the beginning while the other areas are milder, albeit still stupidly long and boring. Gluttony tries to spice things up but goes so slowly it's not worth it. Finally there's a game-breaking bug with Envy as that one library room seems to function like a door which means that it can close all the way and be locked out.

Overall the wad is very generic and definitely has the "my first wad" feel. Although inspired by WOS I didn't see a lot in that inspiration, as the textures were not used as well and the layouts are bland and overdrawn. Encounters should be made much more fun too. it helps to look at how other maps were designed, both in design and gameplay, when it comes to making your next map.

Wow, this year feels like FOREVER and yet despite all the sh*t that's been going on this year it seems that Doom megawad making is at its all time high.

Anyways this iteration of /vr/ isn't necessarily timed to speedmaps, it is yet another 2048 megawad though, so sizes are compact and the levels small, for the most part. Luckily no stupid slaughterfests snuck in but there is gonna be mixed quality in general. And sadly, the levels despite using the decent textures don't really stick out, and just sort of feel like levels that you run through without remembering much about them. There's an extra set of levels that didn't make the cut, and it's up to your discretion whether or not they deserved those extra slots (some did have annoying usage of voodoo conveyors which felt longer than needed, so I say yes they deserved it). How far do you think 2020 will go for megawad making?

Well I don't know much of the story behind Rowdy Rudy, considering I never played the first one. But in any case, we got 20 vanilla maps, plus two Boom-compatible ones in an extra wad. And there's some subtle changes to the weapons, namely the pistol is now an assault rifle which I enjoy for reasons obvious and not obvious, while the SSG and shotgun have been made much faster, same with the chaingun. Monster changes are overall alright, each has a niche that works out well, with the best being probably the flame caco. Yes, there's one of those chaingunner types that only drops a clip and replaces the SS, but for some weird reason, a mini version of the spiderdemon exists to replace the chaingunner.

Onto the levels themselves, honestly I can see them actually being memorable! Many of them have sense and purpose to make sense with the backstory, none are particularly huge in size (except MAP22 but that's a bonus map), and all are fun to go through. A few homages to some maps, like one has a Toxin Refinery homage in two places while MAP17 takes after Plutonia well. There's an obligatory slaughtermap at MAP20 but it's actually super easy and kinda disappointing. Overall though, this is one of those romper megawads, where you'll be progressing well and fluidly.

One year ago NoReason had compiled a megawad for NaNoWadMo with the same intentions as this one, speedmaps that are made in the unbalanced slaughter category, with no rhyme or reason in most cases.

Well, the same thing more or less applies here! Maps will have MOD music, hordes, teleporting hordes, platforming (timed platforming for the two Zandronum levels too), death exits at times (and ResetInventory as an added measure). Some maps are quite detracted from the rest of the set, especially MAP25 which isn't anything slaughter-like but still hard. Others are incredibly long they make me question if they are speedmaps, MAP16 is the biggest one for example. again you're probably just gonna put your favorite overpowered weapon mod and god mode everything if you're gonna play it. The spiderdemon has changed, and the cybruiser acts as an additional rocket-shooter again. Have fun not having fun and then having fun I guess.

Ss Clock Out was a one-off wad that didn't actually make the cut for this community project, I got some sort of idea on what I was expecting.Main premise, we're all bored to death while in year-long quarantine, not much we really could be able to do. we've got a new palette, and every time there's a new palette (or custom font)can bet there's going to be some hard gameplay. It's an unwritten rule of modern wads, you know, but it seems like I'm the only one who understands this. So each and every one of the wads we see here deals with no F_SKY (cause you're stuck inside), the nukage is always damaging, and the health pickups are always on water (stimulating the importance of clean hands for health). Also no more than 12 hours must be spent, after all, a long map can really break the flow of the overall megawad, and thankfully nothing really breaks the mold. Must be why Clock Out was taken off.

In any case, we have yet another 2020 megawad that does its rounds and does them well. Expect good level, expect great levels (MAP29), and expect an_mutt to pull an an_mutt. Also the ResetHealth and ResetInventory flags are in effect, and if you don't like pistol-starting every map I suggest you remove those lumps from MAPINFO or something.I was unable to find the secret exit in MAP15 so I had to warp to those levels I guess. The only real hiccup's gotta be MAP26, as the teleporter out of the north section doesn't work (plus an area in the hub has a big HOM and the door on the west side doesn't seem to open). The backside of the lowerable bars that lead to the exit are only Switch Once too, so this level definitely needs bugfixing. Also it's not obvious where to really go and as a result it's probably the hardest level overall.

Touted as "the map to destroy your bitrate" this wad originally was a jokewad in which every texture was FIREBLU. But it became way more than that. The walls, floors, ceilings, torches, switches, and even enemies all are painted in the dark red and dark blue. The level is quite large, with lots of monsters, but revolves into setpiece slaughter, with design reminiscent of Ribbiks and gameplay highly reminiscent of Death-Destiny. It's a tough one because of that, with certain things teleporting in after each switch press or key grab.

When it said "the map to destroy your bitrate", I was a bit skeptical since I play on a laptop now, but sh*t, the f*cking map made it seem like my computer was going to BS at some point or another even when I tried to cool it down. Dunno what it could be that could've caused it, there was lag at some parts when you look at the big area. The setpieces at the north end (circular arch-vile area) and the south end (shotgun guys in the windows plus all the foottroops. it's got the difficulty of death so be prepared for a toughie.

All these damn sequel numbers right? Anyways Doom -1 is more than just your average everyday community project. Doom -1 is an experiment. It's all about one person making something, then another editing on top of that, then another, and so forth. In a surprising plot twist there's more than 32 levels of this, and each intermission screen shows who was involved in the making of each finished level, though you'll probably not be able to read all the names sometimes (then again you're probably a creep if you pay way too much attention to author names than other things in a megawad). Doom -1 allowed the use of custom assets, including new sounds, music, weapon and monster sprites, and even a few new dehacked enemies like a rocket shooting turret.

The beef's of course in the levels themselves, as you may know anyone can add their edits and submit and such. Each level is considerably sized, with MAP15 and MAP18 being the biggest marathons to conquer. Because of this, each level has at least one thing that feels worthwhile. Now it's still in bugfix mode and i've submitted my findings for some of the more heinous issues, but this was a worthwhile experience and its mention in Special Features this year helped me find out about it.

Of all the stuff mentioned in runner's up, I find Gods & Guardians to be the absolute strangest pick out of all of them. Maybe it's because Wraith777 has a very unique way of creating vanilla levels, or maybe I'm just not that used to the style ever since I played Alpha Accident. In any case, we have 7 levels to throttle through. They exemplify adventure more than combat. There's lots of exploration, and this is especially true for MAP04 and MAP05, the biggest levels by far. The combat is of the classic Doom variety, too easy for expert players but a fine romp for everyone else. prepare to get lost. There's an Icon of Sin match in MAP06, the final actual level, with MAP07 being more of a bonus level or anything.

Word of warning: try not to play this with mods that modify monsters since MAP06 and MAP07 use a 666 tag for certain enemies. Also is that supposed to be a glide marker in MAP07?

aVOIDby@bolon667:

-The punching of enemies that show up, you basically punch them out of the ring, then you have a cyberdemon at the end with an invulnerability timer.

-The next one I think is supposed to be a "find your way through maze" thing but it was bugged and I couldn't see anything so I basically trial and errored it while cheating cause it didn't work properly.

-The final challenge is in three waves where you get a plasma gun, rocket launcher, and BFG respectively then fight off waves of demons, imps, mancubi, and finally a cyberdemon at the end (where you can finally move your character so you can see it, although you can only shoot upwards), note that the cyberdemon does fire in a completely different mannerism than you'd expect, watch out he gets tougher each time.

It's a simple time-killing wad of sorts, either you'll retry a lot, godmode it and get bored, or you'll just sort of like it. In any case, it is unique.

While rummaging through everything that has shown up in the Cacowards of 2020 I stumbled upon a prequel to a runner-up by accident, but here we are. Leave it to jazzmaster to come up with interesting ideas for a TC, this one combining elements of the Doom clones while incorporating the Doom monsters and several other new ones. Health bars can help in determining how much it can take to finish off the enemy in this mod, plus you get several interesting tools of death to use. the crossbow felt great against singular opponents, the raven and serpent staff do the jobs of the Heretic Dragon Claw and Doom shotgun respectively, while the Hellforge Cannon is obviously the rocket launcher. The former two weapons require White mana to use, which is dropped by most enemies and can be replenished with blue potions, while the Hellforge Cannon and another fire-using hand weapon use Black Mana, requiring purple potions. Some of this stuff is inventory items, along with several powerups to also help.

There's RPG elements to this stuff too. The main map is this huge-ass hub that thankfully has several warps and even has enemies reappearing once you revisit some areas. The towns of course are where your allies are, so check the quest log and buy stuff that's really all that's necessary. jazzmaster makes sure you keep the run-and-gun action going, so it's recommended to run past most of the enemies that reappear as you go about the quests which are required to progress. The separate levels are either one-off side quest levels where you can find treasure (oh and there's chests to loot, by the way), or fight bosses, and the main levels although much smaller than the hub offer incentives to progress, even the bosses. Certain enemies are buffed and have names, and these enemies are bounties which you can trade for more moolah.

Overall this isn't one to pass off, as it does an interesting premise along with decent gameplay so that you're not gonna get bored with it. Just remember not to lose yourself in the hub and you're fine. now I shall play Abysm 2, which actually was the runner-up.

After some thought, the most annoying thing about (G)ZDoom wads may not be that they try to flash you with all sorts of visual effects or are overdosed on scripts or whatever it is everyone else hates about them, but the fact that I gotta get a new version just to play some of the newer stuff due to compatibility issues and all. I'm sorry, I love sticking to just using a slightly outdated version without all the super effects. Even worse is when I actually cannot play some of these newer GZDoom versions on my laptop without it crashing, so for this cacoward runner-up I switched back to my slightly-corrupted desktop with hardware renderer and it worked fine.

So Abysm 2. I've outlined pretty much the gist of what to expect in the review of Abysm: Dawn of Innocence, so look for that review in a different status update. In any case, the main expansions would be a class selection screen (hunter, sorceress, alchemist), which determines starting weapons, as well as stat skills, which can be boosted by talking to an NPC. And guess what, it's an action RPG TC, a bit like Zelda II in some ways and like most other Action RPGs. Plus forging weapons by trading in Iron Shards (common drops) as well as trading in souls to power up mana-based weaponry (interestingly, these are rarer, so the best place to get them is to target named monsters). An unfortunate circ*mstance is that upgrades can only happen once, which kinda sucks but I guess things gotta be limited. I went with the sorceress class and most of my damage output came from the mana weapons at the expense of other weapons not doing enough damage. Other new stuff would have to be some cheesy one-liners uttered whenever you gib enemies as well as that f*cking fog that annoyed me a lot.

But for the most part, aside from the stuff that makes this more of an action RPG, the rest of this plays out quite a lot like Abysm 1. You've got the super-big hub map where you go on quests in your hometown, then you have smaller maps that have the jazzmaster design tropes (general linearity, not too many monsters, good sense of direction, etc.),have warp waypoints to use, monsters respawn whenever you exit towns, sidequest areas where all you gotta do is explore, and a compelling story about being a slayer and hero for your town. Each individual area has some form of boss or super treasure room, especially the sidequests, and much of the Doom monsters make reoccurences as regulars (although palette swaps are around too) in addition to some of the Heretic and Hexen enemy mainstays who's behaviors all get modified and such.

What can I say, it's a sensible adventure TC that is wonderful to prod through. Leave it to jazzmaster to come up with some of the more innovative ways to make a TC.

Well what can I say. The holy sh*t quotient reaches new levels each year, and we get perhaps our biggest yet with Ar Luminae, easily the biggest of the Cacoward winners of 2020.

And, sadly, the least accessible one.

In order to even play Ar Luminae, you gotta have the latest GZDoom (so 4.5.0, although I guess the last few latest versions MAY work, but it seems that 4.5.0 is the best in performance overall), tinker with the settings appropriately, hardware rendering MUST be on,and above all else, your rig has GOT to be able to handle everything. Amazingly despite my desktop being corrupted with its USB ports and all, I wasable to actually play this map. But only barely as some fights got impossible due to lag issues. In any case I'll describe what I can.

Vibrant, visually-appealing setting and design is compounded by fast-paced gameplay designed to use@Tango's Supercharge mod, which certainly flairs things in many ways. It really does help to play on the lowest difficulty level (if at all) because you want to check it all out. 20 secrets, and while I as the expert secret hunter had no trouble finding all 20 of them, you're gonna be banging your head just about everywhere to figure out how to get each one. And the design and gameplay are compounded by the sheer girth of the level. There's LOTS of ground to cover, as well as a few innovative arena battles. One section has you finding four blue switches, and you fight a cyberdemon variant in each one. Another has arachnotrons continuously respawning on conveyors on your way to getting the yellow skull key and a new Stomper weapon (pretty much necessary for that part). Another has interesting poison clouds rotating around while monsters teleport, another has hexagon platforms that sink into the lava plus archviles that can be crushed instantly by shooting switches.

In a way much of the level feels like at least twelve levels in one, since there's at least one puzzle in each particular "segment", if you will, and the ultimate goal is to get this weird artifact. But of course, prepare for multiple hours of justgettingto it. I should mention, that final battle is a test of endurance and patience, even though it's just fighting waves until you can open that core up. Even on the lowest setting that fight can drain you easily.

So even though I was BARELY able to play this wad, I bet a huge impercentable chunk of people won't be be able to due to how much it contains in every single Dooming aspectand how much will slow down your systems. These megamaps are certainly something, but in my opinion, we shouldn't be getting too ahead of ourselves.

(I played the low spec version of course)

Probably the main highlight of this year's cacowards, due to it gaining a ward along with its soundtrack.Then again, they all are winners, so I should shut up. In any case, Bridge bridges the bridge into another epicly-designed level with absolutely surreal architecture that pushes GZDoom to the limit, but not to as humongous as Ar Luminae. It was far more playable in that regard. Of course, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. This one functions essentially by giving you the hub, allowing you to choose your destiny as usual, but then you're going to deal with setpiece slaughter in droves. Just imagine those epic cacodemon waves coming around, especially one particular area at the south end that unfortunately I noticed you can fall into the center and get stuck or something, which isn't cool. Most of the other areas work fine though. I'd say the biggest surprise was after my first trip back to the main yellow key area the first real slaughter just showed up. The endgame fared better than the beginning by far.

"Wait a second there's MORE megawads in 2020?" YES! For some reason whatsoever@DyingCamelhas this stream thing and a bunch of non-Mayhem-related schmucks come together and well I don't know the details or what actually transpired during these things because sadly they don't mention what were the guidelines for this session in the textfile. Someone may as well respond what you guys were supposed to be doing because I don't know.

But from what I played, it lures people into a false sense of security. For an uninitiated player the first few maps seem like quick and dirty speedmaps, nothing exciting but nothing offensive. It makes you think that this was a speedmapping session of sorts. Then MAP05 happens and you say "wait this isn't a speedmap this is a full-blown odyssey". And then every map from MAP08 onwards is some form of slaughtermap, designed for maximum pain and zero pleasure. With some maps having numerous megaspheres or invulnerabilities scattered one must wonder if they made this stuff as a joke. These maps definitely don't play like they're beatable levels and 0% of filthy casuals in the community will find this to be a fun wad. Who wants to dispute?

That being said this is the first wad I played that had the 3D Pinball music in one map. That's something right there.

On a dark Doomy highway there's a cold cut in my hands. The warm smell of roasted turkey and ham rises up through the air. But I can't eat the f*cking thing because my jaw will dislocate. Sorry.

Imagine if Eviternity, Eternal Doom, Sunder, the NOVA wads, ZPack, and Mutiny all had one bastard offspring. This is the result. Take the OTEX textures and level designthat made Eviternity famous. Take the super-long slaughter gameplay of Sunder. Take the longevity of Eternal Doom, Take the collaboration mapping efforts that Mutiny had. Take the Megiddo maps from the NOVA series of wads. Take the mixed bag that was ZPack.Here you go. The Mapwich 2. You can check out any time you like. BUT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE.

So let's see. A GZDoom megawad of 22 maps using the rapid-fire gameplay of Supercharge yet again. These levels, unfortunately, are VERY LONG, considering the Sunder-style gameplay as well as the huge amounts of linedefs that can tank certain rigs. Be prepared to spend days with this. The slaughter gameplay compounded with Supercharge's effects really does slow things down. There was a buttload of freedom with how these wads were made, and it seems that there are no rules (according to cacoward judge Not Jabba), so you're required to use IDDQD if you want to enjoy yourself.

Personally though, the more I went the less I enjoyed. Many, many of these wads really work well standalone, but multiple long ones back to back is exhausting and the threequel for the Mapwich series needs to have much shorter levels if you want more people to enjoy them. Linedef candy and slaughterfests are one thing, playability and difficulty are another. Ask yourself, how much do you expectplayers really want in these levels? And speaking of working well standalone, apparently Ar Luminae was a part of this set at one point, but it was so damn big that it had to be standalone. Yet I spent more time with Mapwich 2 than with Ar Luminae. Go figure.

Nevertheless, if you feel like warping to levels to see just how badass they can be, be our guest. Insane_Gazebo himself took part in this one making MAP20, which was great. Dragonfly and our creator of 2020 Bridgeburner made a fun finale. And if you're a masoch*st, have fun with MAP21. Everyone sure went overboard with this Mapwich, but limits are limits. And still those voices are calling from far away.

-MAP10's lost soul swarm.

-Much of MAP13 (if you can handle it). Reminds me of The Hag's Finger

-MAP16's endgame. Best map in the set by the way, but the open space is safe to run around with.

-Most of MAP17, final battle in particular.

Other good stuff:
Maps aren't as gargantuan as Sunder, so each map shouldn't take more than an hour even if your at your slowest.

With the exception of a few switches that are often out of the way in arenas, it's impossible to get lost.

Salty moments of mine:

Framedrops on MAP13 making platforming segments impossible (not author's fault)

Salty moments:
Music was bad so I turned it off.

Highlight not-to-miss moments:

The graphics are amazingly grotesque and neat

Weapons aremore fun to use

Other good stuff:
The Seraphim and Old King are decent boss enemies

Ending was cool

Salty moments:
Felt like most of the monsters just felt like crude reskins or something, was hoping for more uniqueness.

Levels felt shorter than they should have been, some feel like filler maps

Overall a nice, quick TC that paved way for a bigger sequel. 4/5

Powered up weapons from Augur of Ophanim:
Hiveslayer shoots either bee bombs or shotgun-spread homers
Gore Blaster shoots either ricochet shoots or chaingun-rate-of-fire shotgun blasts
Adjudicator shoots railgun-spread freeze shots and crazy punches
Pod bomb shoots fire bomb or bouncing frag grenade with shrapnel
Both crosses increases in spread for primary fire and power for alt-fire

Bloodrail is stronger and may even have a rapid-fire railgun moment (had it happen once, don't remember how to replicate it)

Bone Mortar shoots either a bouncing super-explosive or a fireball-spewing explosive
Molten axe can shoot flamethrower-style and I think it regenerates ammo faster

For enemies, theShadefunctions a bit like a hitscanner, but those are just fast shotgun-like pellets. TheBilepodis an interesting gasbag, and there's aVerminmonster too that spawns from it which has 1 HP and is pretty annoying without your melee weapon. TheCultistis this game's chaingunner, while theBrandedseems to be this game's imp. Sometimes the Branded respawns (asBranded2) and continues attacking, meaning that the best course of action would be to freeze it with the adjudicator to prevent it from respawning. The second level gives theButcherandGravelord, which function like demons. A spider-like enemy called theLustbeastseems to be the arachnotron. There's aHangmanenemy which shoots another projectile and reminds me of something from Earthbound, but also becomes a weakChokerupon defeating it the first time. TheFallenseems to be another meaty projectile shooter, and also flies. ALowerenemy looks like the Goresack from Shrine 1 but functions like a suicide bomber. AMawenemy seems to be like a Lovecraftian cacodemon, but its projectiles remind me of Hexen's dark bishop. ThePunishedis quite reminiscent of the revenant in looks but fires three high-speed projectiles. The annoyingBruteenemy shoots explosive projectiles that bounce. TheLighthousefires a flurry of homing projectiles and is real lanky. AHellhoundenemy was also seen, being another melee enemy in some way, although you can summon your own as allies with the Hound Staff. Episode 3 has theApostle, originally a boss crony enemy, but becoming more common in that episode. Episode 4 retrieves the Matriarch from Shrine 1 and rebrands it as theSister, functionally similiar to its original counterpart. There's also theBrazen, which shoots bright green projectiles at a rapid pace.

As for levels, overall they are much better. Secrets are around, and there's such thing as "soul secrets" which are like Blood's super secret or something. The first level shows that somehow, the player from the original Shrine has somehow been imprisoned and stuck without weapons, until he gets a new one from a voice above. The levels are more refined from their Shrine 1 predecessors, and are slightly longer to deal with, but none of these maps should take over 10 minutes apart from boss fights and at least one major level. Ritual Ward (MAP05) is a neat little city map where things pick up well. It also introduces the exploding barrel equivalent too. The following level, Clockwork Cathedral, is quite a trap-filled level, as well as a multi-tiered boss fight against a bigorgansort of thing. Six turret things to attack first, then you hit the heart (which doesn't really do anything) and then from there repeat two times. The second episode starts off incredibly strong with a surreal section, before the forest and then a dark encounter with the Lighthouse enemy. Much of the rest is fairly lukewarm for this episode, but theHawkbossat the end is unique enough to warrant mention as a tough two-stage boss. MAP11 was another cool city map, and YET ANOTHER boss level in MAP12 featuring theHorsyman (later Horseman), originally riding is horse at first while shooting spread shots, he gets off the horse eventually and goes bullet hell on your ass. Made even more annoying by Shade enemies being summoned into the field. Turns out he's the one responsible for the incarceration of the player. And yes, another boss map, against aCrusaderMobenemy who fires slicing projectiles and has Apostle allies (functioning a bit like cacodemons) on MAP13. Also the Hound Staff at the end. Later levels don't fare as well in design to be frank, such as the bad maze in MAP15 (MAP17 has quite a lot of design potential but it doesn't offer as much in gameplay).Ophanim, the boss of MAP18, is another bullet-hell riot, but without any added monsters in it and a number of obstacles making it easy. The first secret level MAP31 showcases a familiar level from the first game but enhances it and even gives off an EvilTusk enemy at the end with your arsenal against you. The end of episode 4 is againstDagon, which spices up boss levels by having you defend certain Sisters called Domineereses, against a horde of monsters, as they are the only ones to defeat Dagon. It's easy to mistake them for something else and accidentally kill them. Episode 5 further spikes things up with a strange platforming area with multiple gravity moments. A more enhanced Sister is on the chessboard at the end. Carnival part was f*cked up and didn't really care that much for it, but I experimented with the adjudicator to find my way to the soul secret on the next level. It seems that Origin is a buildup to the titleless final boss againstAzaoth, another multi-stage boss fight, throwing you in the black void first, then a maze area where Azaoth has a nasty melee charge (noticably the boss seems to throw mortar projectiles if you use your own. Another fireball spewing segment later and he becomes a big heart thing with lightning and mortar. This is unfortunately where the game outright crashed, because one attack has him spewing all around him but it ended up lagging to the point where it crashed. After cheating I found out that was the final stage of the battle and ended up at the endgame, a rather decent ending to this character's legacy. One other thing to say about Azaoth, he seems to have no mass value, as evident when you hit him with the Bone Mortar he just FLIES somehow, and that ends up kinda funny when he's in his last form.

So overall, Shrine 2 is a neat odyssey TC with strange weapons and monsters to tangle with, the levels are all mixed and some are still very easy to go through.

Highlight not-to-miss moments:

The soul secrets if you can find them.

Weapons, level design, and monstersare much, MUCH more different than in Shrine 1

Other good stuff:
Using the powerups to spice things up, although it helps to have at least one of each for reserve if necessary.

Salty moments:

What's with the sprayaround attack that the final boss uses that tanked my system?

Insurmountable may be a perfect term to describe tourniquet's Mutabor, a surprisingly Vanilla-made level that is just rife with green and brown. Perhaps we've seen more than our fair share of the color scheme in Miasma and numerous other well-designed levels by other authors, but Mutabor delivers more than just its color scheme. It's a level rife with life, enemies are abound here, but the vast majority are of the small enemy variety, so the kill count rises fairly quickly. Be mindful of arch-viles and sniper enemies around most of the corners though, and note the verticality as the landscapes often change shape all around. It's hard to even pinpoint where you are in many cases. The yellow key is now a green key, while stuff like the health bonus and soul sphere have also been recolored green. The chaingun is now ST's minigun while the SS and Keen are replaced with former human enemies that don't drop much-needed supplies.

But really, the main draw here is how, at least in the main level, the difficulty settings are all over the place. Notice that thesecondskill setting is called "Onslaught". Looking at the monster counts, well imps, hell knights, barons, mancubi,and revenants, etc, they all seem to be more numerous in the standard UV rather than on the lower settings, but a look at the counts for arch-viles, zombiemen, spiderdemons, cyberdemons, and the two dehacked monsters show up far more. There's 350 Chaingun sargeants (that's what they're called) on Onslaught as opposed to 35 on HMP and 59 on UV. What the heck. Weapons and other pickups are also strangely separated according to difficulty, and Onslaught features the least amount. You get the minigun early, but the only OTHER weapons to get are a rocket launcher (five are present), a chainsaw, and a BFG9000 (can find up to three). With all of the chaingun sargeants, the main issue is going to be pacing as the hitscan hell is unleashed to make you cower in fear while you only get a minigun for much of the way. Essentially, Onslaught is the Nine Inch Heels difficulty setting, so play that at your own risk of sanity (and that's even if you cheat). I think ITYTD has the same thing as Onslaught except with the usual ITYTD bonuses.

Secrets are all over the place in this map and are often multi-step and difficult to access. For convenience the exit can be accessed with any key, so if you get one key and find one key door, you can in fact leave the level should you have lost the will to progress on. That being said, the real challenge is conquering it, getting every secret, every monster closet, every item, enough to take an hours worth of time. Most places can be squeezed through well though, and as a whole Miasma and other maps manage to still be tougher than this, assuming you're not on Onslaught setting. There is a second level, as well as an exit level in MAP03. The puzzle level, however, didn't seem to work (I assume you're supposed to press the switch behind the start, and a bunch of voodoo dolls were supposed to teleport into the buildings and such?

Highlight not-to-miss moments:

The secrets if you can find them
The design and most of the setpiece encounters

Other good stuff:
Difficulty settings are weird.

Salty moments:

Puzzle map didn't work right.
Onslaught difficulty gives only the minigun for a weapon for most of the entire way. Took me thirty minutes to find one of the five rocket launchers.

Yikes, another standalone release using the newest GZDoom release, okay. And yet another TC, although it's actually very short with only five levels. With this being version 1.2, could there be more in store? Who really knows. First impressions had me thinking of Adventures of Square right away, and when you strafe, your character has a very interesting lean. What do you fight? ROBOTS! And they blow up quite nicely. It's sort of Adventures of Square meets Descent but with 2.5D sort of ordeal; you fight many different robots, some are simple turrets, others are mobile. Some are quite bulky and difficult to bring down with loads of hit points and usually lots of firepower. Snap (I assume this is the character name) has only one weapon, a blaster that shoots until it reloads (or until you finish shooting, in that case you auto-reload), and he can also kick things. In the game, there's canisters which function as powerups, the beer item is useful for increasing max HP, while others give you limited ammo powerups like spread shot, rapid fire, bomb blast, homing beam, mirror laser, flamethrower. The sad things is it means that if you pick up two different powerups, you basically use only one of them, and when its exhausted you go back to the default blaster, which means they have to be consolidated quite well.

As far as levels go, the first is bleak but sets up for the later ones, which are both bigger and badder. 4th level is quite an odyssey. 5th is a simple boss arena. Got super annoyed with his attacks being impossible to dodge though. One thing that's quite interesting is that the difficulty levels do more than just increase the enemy load, but also offer different level routes. This adds to the replayability of this rather short TC.

Highlight not-to-miss moments:

The powerups are great

Got that Descent-meets-Adventures of Square feel.

Graphics are top-notch

Other good stuff:
Difficulty settings offer different level routes and replayability

Salty moments:
Final boss attacks nearly impossible to dodge.