#doom harmony

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette (2009): Harmony

Well… I finished Black Mesa sooner than I expected. So much for my indefinite break from reviewing. Looks like I need to play more Doom, otherwise I will pass out by the sheer awesomeness of Hades II.

And while I am playing through both Happy Time Circus II AND NewDoom Community Project II bit by bit to not lose my marbles, nor bore myself to death, why not take a look at another WAD that became an official add-on for the Unity port.

Although, I’m not really quite fond of it, to be honest.

G3: Harmony

Main author(s): Thomas van der Velden

Release date: November 1st, 2009 (original version)

Version(s) played: Compatible

Required port compatibility: ZDoom (original)/limit-removing (compatible)

Levels: 11

Remember Thomas van der Velden? He made Revolution, one of the better MegaWADs of the early 2000s; he also helped with the first and third Community Chests. And now, we are looking at another project oh his – Harmony. A homage to the Doom clones of the mid-to-late 1990s. With its plot talking about northern and southern countries of Earth nuking each other out, all men turning into humanoid/non-humanoid mutants, and you trying to save your buddy who has been kidnapped by mutants.

As I mentioned earlier, this WAD became one of the official add-ons to the Unity port of the classic games. I played it before (and by that I mean the original version), and from what I remember, I liked how it looks but hated the music and overabundance of hitscanners (that feel like they got needlessly buffed). Now the question for today is will my opinion change? Will I like or dislike it more, or don’t feel that much different towards this WAD?

There is only one way to find out.

Playing it on the compatible version (I’ll explain why later).

Starting, as always, with a visual side of the WAD, Harmony looks great. The author went nuts with it, showing a lot of human locations (industrial or rural) along with other natural areas (covered in toxic filth or not). Many of them have a lot of details as well.

What I really respect from this WAD, is, like the original Doom games, it uses digitalized clay models. If that’s not impressive to you, then I don’t know what is.

I wish I could say the same about the music. For this review, I played the WAD with the MIDI pack (that is integrated into the compatible version), but I remember playing without it. Long story short – it’s nothing but three tracks of loud cacophony. I don’t know what the hell the author heard in these tracks, but all I heard was cacophony, with #10 being the least painful, and #6 being the most painful.

But at least the WAD doesn’t feel like it wastes your time. Most of the time you rarely backtrack (or at least you don’t use the same route), and you can clearly see where to go and what to do next. It also really helps that the keys are usually close to their dedicated doors, and the maps loop you around in such a way that you can get there easily.

There are also moments where you will encounter some trip mines. These are thankfully destructible.

Now, aside from the original music, you might think that Harmony sounds great. And sometimes I think about it too. But then I start fighting the enemies and I am reminded why I am not that fond of this WAD.

Here is the main problem with Harmony – the difficulty feels wack. Not due to the projectile-firing enemies (since there are some interesting ideas like the entire Weapons Factory), but due to the hitscanners. Because making hitscanners deal more damage, making Hoovy-replacements feel more like damage sponges, and adding some annoying encounters with next-to-no cover is such a great idea, am I right?!

…

Nope-

I don’t really think it’s worth talking about new enemies and weapons since they basically are the replacement to the original Doom enemies and weapons but with some of their parts changed, like some mutants dropping from vents, or centaurs shooting two grenades instead of three rockets.

I can only add that in the original version, Neutron Gun had unlimited ammo and you could chuck grenades on your own without Grenade Launcher.

And as for bugs, I tend to notice some of the trip mines not exploding; there was a hole in there, but no explosion, so I had to shoot a hole again to trigger it.

And to finally answer the question of why did I play the compatible version over the original one is because the Neutron Gun stopped working there (at least on GZDoom 4.11.3 since it worked fine in one of the previous versions I used to play the WAD for the first time). I could only chuck grenades at enemies and considering that I would be forced to somehow evade these wankers, I checked quickly the other version, and lo and behold, the gun worked without any problems.

And I guess that’s all I have to say about Harmony. It’s yet another one of those WADs that have one to two things being questionable at best while the rest of it is great. I do appreciate it more than during my blind playthrough due to the author’s dedication to it (at least one concept art dates back to 2004), but still, I don’t think I would like to try it again (at least for a long time). I think there are better WADs than this one.

Still, when the time will come, I’ll check MAP12 and 13 from 2022 Unity version along with the extra MAP15 from the 2023 compatible version.

And as for the 2009 roster of WADs, it looks like we have a trip to Doom I with the next WAD.

I’ll see you then.

[cherrychan-0110]

Fuckjn idiotssss

🟪💥

[avidgladiator]

Do you guys think LOR-1E could run Doom?

[canon-divergence]

hey guyssss!!!!!

im ok now!!!!

btw i stumbled across this webcomic while trying to figure out ways to escape safely,,,,

it may have popped up cuz of my wording but it was called "home-stuck"?????

should i read it?????? ive heard its very long,,,,

[autismswagsummit]

Wheel of Doom Round 1

[heritage-harmony-records]

NEW ALBUM STREAMING NOW!!!

Tales from Beyond the Firmament is the new album by Rijeka, Croatia based psychedelic/stoner/space rock act The Freak Folk of Mangrovia, released June 28, 2024 on No Profit Recordings.

Listen to the full album now:

[ariaofsorrows]

did we all just forget about grimoire of souls or what?

[cocoabubbelle-newblog]

Do current Marvel Writers hate Professor Xavier or something?

[austajunk]

Okay, just checking!

How about...A3 for Hajime and Tsumugi?

What a cute crack ship! :3

[chibishortdeath]

did you know Dissonance also has the Simon wraith.

Yes! And if I remember correctly they are found in the Wailing Way and the Shrine of the Apostates (also known as Heretic’s Grave) both in castle B, which is near where the Smiling Statue (which looks a lot like Carmilla) can be found. :3

Also, the Energy Circle being found here, over a particular seemingly important marble coffin no less, is interesting considering it’s the whip upgrade that lets Juste spin the whip like Simon can in CV4 (albeit in way more neat of a circle lol).

Also on the topic of items, there’s a lot of interesting furniture descriptions too.

The Hero Statue and the Tall Clock seem pretty obvious. Simon would’ve been the most recent hero of the time and really the first of his family to get very much respect for it. The clock just directly mentions Juste’s ‘granddad’ so like yeah.

The Smiling Statue just straight up looks like Carmilla’s mask and is probably a Jojo reference since Carmilla is one lmao anyway but I’m not sure why she’s called a Goddess here, pretty interesting. These other two just had some weird descriptions of a presence in general.

The only thing I can’t figure out is who the Sage Statue is even supposed to be. The other two seem to have a pattern, so I’d expect like a Skull Statue or something to be Death/Dracula (as he was a skeleton ghost in Simon’s Quest) or something, but no it’s just some old guy. Maybe he’s looking so smug because he knows he’s out of place and messing with us lol. And the names of the statues also have some kind of relation to who they are (Carmilla smiles, Simon is regarded as a legendary hero) but the word ‘Sage’ just kinda doesn’t relate to any character I can think of other than like idk one of the random old guy towns people, but why would he get a statue? It’s odd, hopefully I’ll figure it out eventually tho.

Harmony of Dissonance has a lot of really interesting details in it, especially Simon’s Quest references, that make sense considering it takes place right after it and revolves around the plot of Maxim trying to recreate the glory of that last Dracula battle from it while not knowing the context behind why Simon did that, so they’re pretty intertwined in that way, it’s really cool :D!!!

I should probably make more general long analysis posts about these kinds of things sometime if I can actually gather everything into one place, cause this kind of random detail gathering stuff is really fun hehe >:3c. This also kinda just ended up a rant that left the topic and went to others so whoopsie (XwX)

[cherrychan-0110]

Harmony and Horror x Dark Deception doodles

[razormain]

making the difficult decision to pull for ruan mei instead of firefly next banner 😔

[blaylists]

how do you want it?

[rochenn]

im trying to sleep but some cunt with a beautiful voice is siren-chanting in the yard

[pixelatedquarter]

okay time to make your predictions (only for Pete to lurk here and thwart them, hi mr. wentz, please log off tumblr):

What slots would become The [album] Rotating Slot Of Death, assuming they kept it mostly within album like we've seen with TTTYG, IOH and FÀD?

[queen-scribbles]

Have some Sha’reii from her Ruhnuk run, bc my sunset gal is v pretty