• Arrival (9 levels for Doom II, 2021). UV pistol start. 2/5. pretty lame set, the first couple of maps were fine but it just never really grabbed me...the design style is a bunch of huge encounters where you kind of constantly engage another wave of hitscanners and revenants from each arena having tons of lines of sight to the other big rooms but it was all too sloppy and had bad pacing. i would recommend the first level though bc it has hundreds of hitscanners that you can carve through with a PG which is always fun. also go docked a point at the end bc after kind of not enjoying the back half anyway the last level broke and i had to idclip to get to more fights. Nice job mapper!

• Total Control (1 level for ZDoom, 2005). UV Max. 4/5. great sprawling techbase map that has loads of options for routes and doubling back to manage your ammo, remarkably fun for a map that holds back on the weapon & enemy tiers until very very late (you don't even get a SSG until like 75% of the map is over and it only has 1, really well placed, archvile). it has one slope and doors that open sideways and all kinds of sound replacements + dynamic lighting, fun ZDoom shenanigans aeshtetically but all very classic doom combat design. my only complaint was that it was too dark but i could changed my gamma settings i guess.

• Thunderpeak (2 levels for ZDoom, 2008). UV pistol start. 3/5. Another ZDoom set, the first level was a pretty neat little power reactor setting where you had to divert power to unlock more parts of the map. Fun texture work and theming, the combat was whatever and used a variety of expanded custom made enemies like the rocket launcher barons which I enjoy fighting. 2nd level was just a boss fight with some dumb looking dehack enemy with like 3 bazookas and a chaingun lol.

• Swim With the Whales (3 levels for Doom II, 2013). HMP due to being a ribbiks map. 4/5. beautiful set of maps, and the bonus level was a blast. i got lost a couple times in the 2nd level bc its hard to figure out where to go with all the monotone shaded blues but i eventually found the life and keys i needed. excellent fights, not as difficult as some later ribbiks except for the final battle of the 2nd map which is a slaughtery mayhem where its easy to get stuck on the geometry but it was a fun fight to figure out in between dodging 5 cybies wandering around and the chaos of this big well on the side that constantly spawned lost souls.

Thanks Pablo and Sub-Actuality for the great sigs!

sourdough fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Nov 5, 2022

• Hell Ground (7 levels for Doom II, 2009). UV pistol start. 3/5. pretty interesting set of levels from the mapper who made EPIC.WAD, which is amazeballs. parts of this hint at that same awe inspiring sense of scale that really shouldnt be possible in doom, especially since the huge structures arent just set dressing, you spend most of your time actually delving in and exploring massive buildings which is really cool and hard to pull off with doom maps. unfortunately i think this set is just a bit bloated, maps 5 & 7 especially, they just go on and on and on, the combat is rarely very difficult and the level design is fairly linear. felt like a slog by the end but i did enjoy seeing what insane looking architecture would be propped up next...here's some cool screenshots to give a taste.