Base Ganymede: Complete
Started playing episode 2, got to E2M6, and threw in the towel. Episode 1 was pretty great, with great fights, solid level design, and some fun traps. Episode 2 looks okay, but the gameplay itself basically took everything episode 1 did right and threw it right out the fuckin' window.
E2M1: Not bad overall, but I wasn't crazy about one particular part where you have to just know to shoot four switches. In general I find that shootable linedefs is kind of a bad mechanic unless it's widespread (like SIGIL) or exclusively for secrets. With a custom texture it could work, but with normal switches one expects to be able to just use it.
E2M2: Ramps up the challenge a bit with more enemies. There are a few good opportunities to force monsters to infight, and given your relative lack of resources at the beginning of the map, pitting the imps against the demons isn't a half bad idea. As I progressed further, however, I noticed that they started to just throw piles of imps at the player. This...is the start of a bad pattern.
E2M3: You're a bit resource starved at the beginning of the map, and right away you're faced with a few barons on a ledge. They can't get at you, so it's easy enough to just leave for a while and build up your arsenal before going back and taking them out. Not a bad map, though this is the point where it starts to spawn cacodemons right next to the player without really giving them the ability to fight them aside from unloading a dozen shells in their big, dumb, cute faces. This map wasn't hard, but it was definitely tedious because of this. But hey, you end the map with a rocket launcher and plasma rifle! Awesome! Then you take the exit teleporter and the game forces you into a death exit. Fucking nice. Thanks.
E2M4: Fuck this fucking map. You're forced to pistol start it due to the mandatory death exit in the previous map. While I'd describe the previous map as being somewhat resource starved, this one is a resource drought. The game gives you
nothing other than a berserk pack (which amplifies the damage of the player's punches until the end of the level...or four years, whichever comes first). There are dozens of imps and demons that you literally have to punch to death, and anyone who's played Doom knows that the punch mechanics are a bit wonky, to put it politely. Then I heard a cyberdemon waking up. Walk into a room and there's a cyberdemon on a ledge. Nice. Thanks. There's a teleporter behind him that causes the player to telefrag them, but between having to climb stairs to get to it and how tight the area is, it's difficult to make it there without taking splash damage. There really isn't a reward for your trouble, either, aside from earning the opportunity to grab a shotgun and exit the map. Terrible. If someone put a gun to my head and gave me the option of playing through TNT again or playing this map again, I think I'd pick fucking TNT. As with the rest of the episode thus far, this map wasn't really hard or clever in any way, it was just annoying and tedious.
E2M5: This is where things start to get irritating, with teleport ambushes becoming pretty much the only source of difficulty and every fight basically consisting of a carpet of a single type of enemy. Gone are the interesting fights where you would have to prioritize targets. Welcome to holding down the fire button until everything is dead.
E2M6: The moment that broke me (aside from having to fight through multiple walls of imps which, again, is not very interesting) is when I hit a switch and a cacodemon was teleported so close to me that I was wedged between them and the wall and almost instantly mauled to death. Nope. Fuck you. That's not proper challenge, that's "HAHA GOTCHA! HAVE FUN RELOADING YOUR SAVE!" bullshit. Considering how little health this episode gives the player up to that point, that's guaranteed death unless you know that there's a teleport destination in that particular spot, and the second you know that all you have to do is run past it, turn around, hold down the fire button, and you'll never take a hit.
So, no. Fuck that. That sort of design isn't fun, it isn't clever, and it doesn't
actually make the game difficult, because it's nothing but artificial difficulty. It just makes it into a stupid guessing game that you can easily win by memorizing where the monsters are going to spawn. It's like those rhythm game charts that have nonsensical scroll speed changes just to throw off players or act as some sort of gimmick. The second you memorize them the chart stops being "challenging."
It's important to note that just because Doom is a granddaddy FPS doesn't mean that this is the only way of adding "challenge" to it. There are plenty of examples where map authors were able to make hard as balls maps without them being a total crapshoot. I mean, check out
decino's channel on YouTube for some playthroughs of some cleverly designed, slaughter-y maps that emphasize dodging projectiles and target prioritization.
This one? Nah. Not even close.
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