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.
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