/vr/ - Retro Games

I decided to give Sarais' E2 replacement a fair shot, because why not. Playing on PRBoom+ (for the first half; I'll explain later), UV difficulty with pistol starts; thoughts are below:

E2M1: Sector work is as jagged and haphazard as ever; the gameplay however has significantly improved from previous maps of his, mostly because this is an entirely berzerk focused map. Only secret I found was a backpack of all things hidden behind an invisible wall; what purpose this serves beyond continuous play eludes me. For a vanilla/Boom compatible mapset, it doesn't seem to have been tested in such a setting; -complevel 2 rendered the teleport switch to exit the level unusable, while -complevel 9 gets you through the teleporter to find that the hurt floor doesn't work. The author's ZDoom preference showing up again fairly early on.

E2M2: The level start demands that you "RUN!" Not really necessary; as long as you have some patience, you can Tyson the opening pinkies and spectres without much difficulty. You'll probably want the chainsaw for the enemies that follow though, and it's stuck behind an incredibly tiny switch. Pressing that switch is arguably the hardest part of the map. God knows I didn't see it until I opened up the map editor. Otherwise it plays reasonably well, nothing particularly difficult to deal with monster-wise. The outdoor area looked alright, doofy wooden swastika things hanging above the nukage for edge aside. Decent teleporter ambush, would've been more effective if he had put the monster closet further away from the area so we couldn't hear the pinkies ready to spawn in.