boxinthewild

[boxinthewild]

I'm beginning my horrendously long foray into the /idgames archive tonight (just for doom2 maps rn), and the first map I decided to play was one BADTRIP1.wad. I have little to no idea who made this map seeing as I was stupid enough to mass extract all of the wads from their respective categorizations and plop them all in one folder and deleting their text files (unbelievably stupid). Horrendous shotgun audio replacement and confusing puzzle designs await me in this honestly quite forgettable and annoying, 90's era map.

This may have been a wonderful doomcute-esque bar when this map came out (date unknown because the wad itself is confusingly dated for January 1st of 1980), but even so, I really do think this is just a sloppy job. Speaking of the date when this map came out, I am under the assumption that the person who had made this wad probably either forgot to set their clock after the CMOS battery died in their computer, or never cared in the first place. I believe this map was made in the ensuing months after Doom 2's original release but whose to say for certain, I'm way too lazy to check and finding the zip it was located in inside of the massive archive makes me want to look for it even less.

Even though this map does have the occasional (dare i say) good(?) combat encounter, i do think this really is a weird showing of classic 90's mapping tropes, weird secrets that may or may not be required to progress the level/not marked secrets, horrendous audio replacements for weapons and/or enemy noises, seizure inducing flashing sector lights, and really really confusing map design round out this trifecta of potentially unfavorable map qualities, I can't help but enjoy the weird out of touch charm of this map.

I lied, I am really annoyed with this combat encounter in particular. Extremely heavy use of the zombie sergeant almost to a ridiculous degree. If I would have to tell you one thing i hate in doom maps, it would be the needlessly heavy use of a hitscan enemy in a combat encounter, to the point where the hitscanners are the most oppressive enemy in the area.

2 Mancubi who are either stuck or have been placed on a weird linedef that they cant see me really make this encounter the kind of needlessly difficult and unfun time it is.

The trap that springs when grabbing the plasma gun is a couple of monster closets that hold 2 Revenants and at the very least 2 floating meatballs. (edit: its 4 flying meatballs)

I went into one of the rooms on the side of that rather large combat encounter and happened across a maze. A shotgunner maze. A shotgunner maze with quite a few of the hallways having flashing lights strobing at different intervals. I didn't think my enjoyment of this map could have been lowered any further at this point in my playthrough. The flashing lights got so bad that I pretty much had to use the lightamp toggle cheat so my head didn't hurt more than it already did.

Oh great, the tower in the middle of the area was actually progression, i could have never seen that coming.

This Archvile/Pinky encounter room looks cool at least.

I am very rapidly losing interest at this point and i finally just got the yellow key so i can at the LEAST get to the exit section.

It leads into a slightly annoying fodder trap.

Which then leads into whatever the fuck this is beyond the door?

At this point my patience has become thin enough to move through an airlock seal.

The exit switch.

I really really do think there are some interesting design choices in the map, I really really do, but there are just so many glaring issues with the encounters that I cant in good conscious recommend this to anyone. My interest pretty much ran out by the last couple of rooms and it really really shows with my lack of thoughts on the map by the end.

4/10

source port used: prboom-plus -complevel 2 iwad: doom2 res: 1920x1080 with 4:3 aspect ratio cause i'm weird