Final Doom: TNT: Evilution: Military Base Maps

To answer my question last week about differentiating the style, the answer is, "Not really, but we'll throw in some castle and some new computer textures."

Prison: 2/5 Successfully ups the ante from the first "episode" (and that opening plasma gun is a nice treat. But it's just not a very fun level. And the prison theme is very poorly used. People have whined enough about Doom maps not looking like what they're named, but the Doom engine can (and has already with the Wolfenstein bonus map) done a dungeon/prison well. Special unshoutout to the double-quad-teleporters in a lava pit. I love doubling up on bad mechanics AND making you take damage while testing them.

Metal: 1/5 Mandatory secret that isn't a secret and is filled with bad guys instead of loot? Pass. Some poor enemy placement doesn't help.

Stronghold: 0/5 Ooops, all former humans is an acceptable gimmick for one level. Not for two in a row. Possibly the ugliest level I've ever played.

Redemption: 2/5 Aesthetically and difficulty-wise this map belongs in the first episode. A couple weird design choices (too many switches and backtracking) keep it meh.

Storage Facility: 1/5 What if we made a crate maze, but put all the monsters in a teleport trap so you could kill them one at a time and not bother with the maze.

Ugh

SUPER TURBO TURKEY PUNCHER 3!

 I'm not on Doom 3 yet, but I did play a little since I was on a different system earlier today.

STTP3 represents the dichotomy of Doom 3 perfectly. On the one hand, everyone who wanted Doom 3 to just be a prettier Doom 2 can agree that it's a great easter egg and possibly they best part of the game.

On the other, it represents how Doom 3 is the world's dumbest immersive sim, which is not a game anyone wanted.

I think, now that the dust has settled, the general consensus has rightly formed that Doom 3 is a bad Doom, a decent game overall, and a strong (and before its time) example of first person survival horror. I'm going to go against the grain a little and say, overall, it's a stronger title than any of the current gen Dooms.  

Final Doom: TNT: Evilution: Techbase Levels

 Final Doom is the FINAL Doom level set... sort of... for awhile... (Doom 64 would come out a year later, while No Rest for the Living came out in 2010.) 

Released in June 1996, a week before Quake. It consists of 2 level sets. Evilution is by a mapping group named Team TNT. It was originally going to be released for free before id bought it. Plutonia was made fully contracted by id by the Casali brothers, two members of TNT. Besides new levels, there's some new music and graphics, but no new enemies or monsters. I wonder what the story on id releasing these is. Just a final cash grab? Not a lot of background info available on the net.

Like Doom 2, Evilution is grouped into pseudo-episodes, the first of which uses the high tech style from Episode 1 and a few of the early Doom 2 maps.

System Control: 3/5 This is basically rearranged Entryway. I guess slightly better than the original? 

Human BBQ: 2/5 I think this is the first use of "glass" (you can see through, but not shoot through) in an official Doom level. Other than that, a pretty mediocre level. The telefrag "puzzle" is way less fun/more convoluted than it should be.

Power Control: 3/5 You can make doors use one key from one side, and a different one from the other. I think there's a couple no key/key doors in Doom 1/2, but this is the first of the different key style.  Fine, I guess?

Wormhole: 4/5 Decent, but not great, design. But the gimmick of playing the same level twice by teleporting into a second copy is neat. You can skip about 2/3 of the map easily, which isn't something I've seen since back during Doom 1. This means some of the biggest speedruns differences. ~12 seconds to run to the exit vs 4:50 to 100%. Usually 100%ing only increases the time be 2-4 times, not 24x. 

"Hanger": 1/5 Pretty ballsy naming your level after the first Doom map. Pretty stupid to spell it wrong. Bad level either way. Not challenging, just annoying (yay, monster closets!) and weak "puzzles". 

Open Season: 4/5 TNT can't really lock down a naming theme. Some of them are simple E1 style place names, while others are more evocative. Regardless, this is a strong map. "E1 but longer, faster, harder" is a popular theme for good reason. Those first 9 maps are the core of DooM that the whole community has played a million times, and they're great levels. But they're also short (or tight) and easy. This isn't a particularly tough level, but it's a bit more than the ol' Nuclear Plant and co. Starting the reactor (or whatever it's supposed to be) to open the final door is a neat mini-set piece, and closer to something out of Duke 3D or Dark Forces than Doom. This is a great way to end the "episode." Next time, Military Base. I'm curious to see, aesthetically, how different it is from this "tech lab" set.

Can it run Doom? Lens wipe edition

 My wife bought some microfiber cloths for work.

Holy crap, that's actually the Doom pistols and zombie sprites (or a really good copy)

That got me wondering if anyone had ever actually ported Doom to a TI-83 (the wipe is technically based on a TI-83+). The answer is... kinda? 

Some of the nicer calculators like the 89 have slightly prettier Doomish games, but you have to go up to an Nspire to get the real thing.

Doom Master Levels: Cranium and wrap up

 Like Dr. Sleep,  Sverre André Kvernmo, got to do a sort of half episode for the Master Levels, titled "Cabal" complete with sort of a storyline. You're a Cyberdemon? (But transformed into a human so you can use all the normal weapons and powerups. Probably not practical to actually get that much custom stuff working in 1995, especially without screwing with the executable/iwad) who has been deposed by the other demons (the Cabal), so you have to go kill them. Nothing fancy, and it's pretty much just relevant in the readme file.

I wonder how far you could get with actually writing a proper story (with dialogue, etc.) in the txt files and then using the levels themselves to show the highlights. Could even go nuts have kind of choose-your-own-adventure it and have the story change based on how well the player did or something.

Bloodsea Keep: 2/5 Great architecture and some fun props (mostly creative uses of stock assets to set up torture scenes), but the gameplay is very much "annoy you to death." So many Lost Souls just wandering around, too many crushers (why do we need to do almost the same switch/crusher "puzzle" 4 times?), even the ammo is annoying. Cranium is very stingy with the bullets (and the chaingun is only found in a couple of secrets) so you're relying on your shotgun a lot here (and the super shotty is likewise secret locked). There's a fair number of 20 shell pick ups, but not enough that you can afford to "top off" and grab them when you have 40 (max shells is 50 by default, and the remainder are wasted). Even a backpack (to double your carrying cap to 100) would've gone a long way to making this level less annoying. The throne that the Arch Vile teleports into at the end is a nice touch. Would've been even better if it'd been the exit or something (instead of flipping a switch next to it, a switch "hidden" behind it, and then going through the teleporter behind the wall).

Mephisto's Mausoleum: 0/5 STARTS YOU OFF WITH A BACKPACK, DAMNIT! Both this and Bloodsea use MAP07 "Dead Simple" as their base. The original map uses a couple of death flags to lower walls and what not, creating a quick "miniboss arena" style map. It's not a great map, but it's fun enough. Bloodsea uses it for the chaingun secret. I don't love secret locking the chaingun, but it's a clever enough usage. MM reuses the miniboss arena concept, but takes it up to 11, sending you through wave after wave of fights, most of which consist of playing ring around the rosie with Revenants. Nothing wrong with Revenants, I'm just not sure why I have to do the exact same fight twice, and a close variant a third time. It ends with the John Romero's head/shooter gimmick, executed even less elegantly than it was in Doom 2. The holes aren't even properly aligned for the headshots. And damn is this map ugly. 

Black Tower: 3/5 I believe this is the highest kill count in any official Doom map, at 380 before lost souls, Arch Vile rezzes, etc.

The basic concept is strong: A 5 level tower (technically impossible in Doom's mostly 3D engine) simulated by teleporters. Secrets and monster placement are mostly decent. There's a few bugs here and there, but nothing horrendous (and less egregious than several much smaller maps in the collection.) The opening in rough, and doesn't really have any reason to be there (why do I need to go flip some switches in a courtyard to open doors INSIDE the tower?) It's kind of got an old school RPG funhouse dungeon vibe. It's not a great level in terms of super tight design, but getting something of this size to work with so few issues is impressive in and of itself.

The Express Elevator... TO HELL: 0/5 It spells TEETH! It takes guts to make a level whose central gimmick (a giant elevator going up and down) fundamentally doesn't work with your engine. Get ready to watch it twitch as monsters clip on doors, and hope none of them bite your feet off from 50 feet down (or up!) Cranium has a unique distate for letting you actually play Doom, preferring to create elaborate gimmicks to annoy you and hope they work. This is like the shitty version of Tricks & Traps, and no one asked for that. It does have a fairly well done secret exit to...

Bad Dream: 1/5 A "puzzle" level. As you'd probably expect from Cranium, it's not really a puzzle and only sort of works. After the puzzle, you have to fight 3 random enemies, just to keep it extra stupid.

According to Cranium, he was brought on as a replacement for someone else. No one has ever revealed who it was, but I assume we'd all have been better off with their maps instead. What a shit show. Hands down the worst set in Master Levels.

All in all, Master Levels is a whole bunch of mid tier levels balanced by a couple gems and a slightly larger portion of absolute slop. It's probably worth playing through once if you're a hardcore Doom player or something, but definitely not deserving of the "best of the best" billing it was given, even at the time. I would bet there were quite a few good levels on the bonus section of the CD that could've rounded it out nicely, shame id half assed the whole project. If they'd actually taken their time with it I think they could've milked it for a whole series. I guess they were pretty busy with Quake. I think the most interesting thing about it was taking a week to just play through a whole jumble of stand alone levels. Haven't done that in probably 20+ years.

Doom Master Levels: Dr. Sleep

John "Dr. Sleep" Anderson has a relatively large chunk of the Master Levels, at 5. This is the middle chunk of his Inferno series, very loosely themed after the Dante poem. 3,4,5,7, and 8 (although the numbering is a little questionable) are featured here. 1 and 2 were previously released online, and included on the Maximum Doom CD that came with the Master Levels. Map 6 is in Ultimate Doom. Map 9 was never released, and Anderson died in 2018. A few maps have been released since then inspired by it to various degrees.

Virgil's Lead: 3/5 Short, and just tricky enough to be interesting. Makes good use of semi-mirrored rooms, semi-hidden switches, and some non-damaging blood floors. While it makes (somewhat sparing) use of the Doom 2 assets, it really feels more like a Doom 1 map, with slower pacing and mostly tight quarters. Has a compute map, which I think more maps should use, and feels very Virgil. I wonder when he started developing it. The first Inferno maps dropped in 1994, and this would've been a very impressive map a year earlier.

I guess I should be a good English major and give a little background on the mythological references here. Virgil is Dante's guide in the Inferno and real life Roman poet. He's probably most famous for the Aeneid which is basically a Roman themed sequel to the Odyssey. He's pretty popular on best author of all time short lists, though he probably loses to Shakespeare more often than not these days. I guess it was a good run for ~2000 years.

Minos' Judgement: 4/5 This is much more in the Doom 2 style, and stands up against the best maps id designed. Some light puzzling, a few traps, nonlinear, well placed monsters, good amounts of ammo (but little enough to create stress at times). The final courtyard is a nice little set piece with some fun teleporting. Even has a better version of the bridge jump from MAP04. And an automap!

King Minos is the King of Crete and sent people to get eaten by his wife's son, the Minotaur, in the labyrinth. After his death, he becomes a judge of the dead, serving as a gatekeeper between actual Hell and the preceding Limbo in Inferno.

Nessus: 3/5 Pretty straightforward, this was mostly made as a Deathmatch level. Back when Doom first came out, the default was to play Deathmatch with monsters. I assume that was gone by the time this came out, but those Revenants would've been a pain in the ass if not. This is quick, fun, and hectic. I've written before about how a lot of the levels here are tough for the first couple rooms and then calm down. This is basically just those couple rooms. If you can clear the central starting castle, you should have the goods to clean out the smaller mobs in the outskirts and get out without too much trouble. Just need to be quick on your feet and quicker on your fingers. (Also has an automap and, like all the other levels, starts you with a shotgun.)

Nessus is a centaur (the blue one from the Disney movie). Heracles killed him with an arrow dipped in hydra blood after Nessus tried to rape his wife. Later, she smears some of the blood on his robe/shirt when she thinks he's cheating on her and it catches on (magic) fire and kills him.

Nessus is a guard of the 7th circle of Hell in Inferno. Chiron makes him guide Dante and Virgil across Phlegethon, a boiling river of blood that the Violent are trapped in.

Geryon: 4/5 Another strong level, very much in the style of "Minos" lots of monsters, optional areas, non-linear. Hard enough, but doesn't feel cheap. Figuring out the right route takes a little trial and error, but makes things managable.

Geryon is a giant from Greek mythology. Like Nessus, he's killed by Heracles with a Hydra blood arrow when he went to steal the giant's cattle. 

In Inferno he's a kind of Manticore thing:

He flies Dante and Virgil between the 7th (Violence) and 8th (Fraud) circles.

Vesperas: 0/5 OK, I take back what I said yesterday. THIS is the worst Doom levels I've ever played. Nothing but annoying traps, never enough ammo, that stupid invisible ledge "puzzle", clipping glitches. This is an absolute shit show from start to finish.

No direct mythological context here. "The Sicilian Vespers" was a rebellion that occurs in the time of Inferno, and some of the figures from it are referenced (generally in a negative light). Dante was involved in various conflicts around the time, some of which were related.

I think Anderson is probably still the best designed in Master Levels overall, but man is Vesperas bad.

Doom Master Levels: Jim Flynn

 Jim gets two levels in the Masters, the start of a semi-episode taking place on Jupiter's moon, Titan.

Titan Manor: 4/5 This is a kind of odd one, more puzzle/exploration focused than real combat. It kind of feels like someone was making an action/puzzle/horror game ala Resident Evil or Tomb Raider (though the Master Levels came out in 1995, the year before either of those franchises started. Once again, DooM was ahead of its time) in Doom. I don't know that I'd want to play a whole episode of them, but it's a fun one off.

Trapped on Titan: 1/5 To date, the worst Doom level I've played on this blog. Overly long, unthematic, poorly balanced (way more ammo and health than needed, but not distributed appropriately), glitchy, puzzles that aren't puzzles, secrets that aren't secrets, a pointless Cyberdemon... In Flynn's defense, this doesn't feel like a Doom level, and would probably play a lot better in a more 3D (way too much awkward vertical play) engine. Even a modern source port with vertical would go a long way to helping it. 

After Manor, I was excited to grab the rest of the Titan levels, but Trapped has largely killed that for me. Maybe some day down the line.

Doom Master Levels: Tom Mustaine

 Tom gets one level, but it's a good one: Paradox

It's a castle style level, one of the more common themes as far back as Doom 2's "The Inmost Dens." You start on the outside, with the option to run left or right up the ramparts, while shotgunners and Revenants take pot shots at you from the center. You have to sort of peel back the layers, working from the outside to the inside, picking off small groups as you acquire more weapons. Most of the arsenal (minus the chainsaw) is present, though a few come so late that they're kind of pointless. Health is fairly plentiful, but there's no armor (save a single megasphere in a secret) which leads to an interesting dynamic. It's real easy to die if you get caught out, but also easy to pop yourself back up even if you're low. I wouldn't have minded a slightly harder ending (by the time you get through the yellow key room around the midpoint, it's basically over unless you get careless).

4/5 solid level. Better than a good chunk of the actual Doom 2 levels, and the strongest I've played so far at around half way through the Master Levels.

Doom Master Levels: Christen Klie

Christen Kile is the most prolific contributor to The Master Levels, with a half dozen (over a quarter of the total collection to his name.

The Catwalk: 3/5 That triple ledge room is kind of cool, but it gets backtrack heavy towards the end.

The Fistula: 3/5 The three story elevator was cute. Otherwise, functional if generic.

The Combine: 3/5 It was at this moment that I realized these aren't in alphabetical order, but are (mostly) grouped by author. This level has some fun bits like the steps out of the slime pit, but is drug down by Klie's obsession with gimmicks like multi-switches (that only sort of work due to the fact that you can hit switches from above/below).

Subspace: 2/5 The shoot door>lost soul swarm puzzle at the beginning is tacky, and once you've cleared a room or two the difficulty takes a nosedive. Klie continues with his "unreachable shelves" but doesn't really back them up with actual puzzles (did you look for the switch BEHIND YOU!?) 

Subterra: 2/5 (Why is Paradox here on the level list?) Starts you underground (ha!) with a shotgun, which is nice. Has one of those clustered teleporters, which I've never been a fan of. The easiest of today's levels.

The Garrison: 3/5 A well placed berserk alleviates the early level ammo shortage. This is Klie's largest level, and gives you more monsters and guns to play with. Would benefit from a bit tougher end, but the final bridge raise is kind of cool.

Not really enthused with any of these levels, but I think they'd have rated pretty decent back in 1995. Like I said, part of the appeal of them (today) is reliving that feeling of downloading (or getting a disk from your friend) with a blob of random stuff to shoot through on the weekend and hope they're good.