Doom Musings: The legacy of Doom II MAP24: The Chasm

Some maps gain fame by being infamous, or so they say. Well, who cares about some dumb saying, let's look at an IWAD map that won over plenty of hearts, and caused many hardships at the same time. That map is none other than The Chasm, MAP24 of Doom II, created by the one author everyone loves to pick on the most: Sandy Petersen.

The paraphrased description of this map is a huge expansive cavern, with numerous amounts of nukage below, plus lots of thin walkways that need to be traversed. So this is certainly a map that emphasizes verticality in a strange way, but was easily among the first maps in FPSs to actually incorporate it as such. It's those walkways in particular that made novice players feel like quitting, as balancing was quite hard for those who could only do so via the keyboard. Even more, you couldn't save while on the walkways, because if you load a game, you'll fall through the walkways in vanilla Doom. But at the same time, the challenges of doing so are rewarding. Falling in upon a misstep is bad, but there's usually teleporters to help in most cases. Exceptions are the lava pit around the plasma gun, the central platform before the teleporter to the final area, and the final nukage area itself. These three are nasty in particular, because of the enemies that show up, with cacodemons and lost souls emerging from the bottom. It is also these bridges that are perhaps the thinnest, as the bridges west of the plasma gun are a bit wider, along with the bridge you see at the start and the other bridges to the south of the complex.

Another amazing thing about The Chasm is that more than half of the level is really optional. The quick way to beat this level involves going across the starting bridge, entering the blue key building and getting the key, running all the way to the blue key door, traversing the bridges to the north teleporter, then doing the final area and the blue room with the red key, then crossing the last few bridges, and the exit. So the rest of the level, including the northwest half, the large central complex, and an area at the end of the platforms that actually unlocks the way to the complex itself, are entirely optional. Yet there's quite a lot in terms of supplies and secrets you'd wanna get, and Sandy gives us all the ample opportunities to explore, provided we get the radiation suits and keep to them as much as possible.

Finally, The Chasm has one of the most questionable secrets ever that I've ever seen. The one in question is the invulnerability sitting on a lower perch near a square bridge, with lava underneath it. It seems that this invulnerability is really nothing but a red herring. That's cause you can pick it up, then the floor below will slowly rise to reach the rest, but by then the invulnerability has worn off. There's two tricks I've read on how to get the invulnerability and utilize it. The first is to start by getting the radiation suit nearby on the higher platform, then jump into the lava pit and repeatedly press the outer walls until you are at the level of the invulnerability, then grab it. The other is to jump to the invulnerability and move around on it, but not collect it until you see the floor has risen up quite a bit. But even with these proper strategies of getting the invulnerability and getting off in a fashionable manner, what good could it be used on? The Chasm seems to not have that much in actual combat, although the lost souls far to the north could be a challenge, and maybe the area to the right too, there's just not a really good area to make use of the invulnerability.

And those are the big beauties of The Chasm. It's a level that drops a new and interesting perspective that manages to be a roadblock for some, and it entertains the player because even after quitting or beating it several times, it still feels like there's much more to it, some of it useful optional stuff, other times it's a red herring.

A look back at: Pokemon Snakewood

Everybody has played a game in which they like or are okay with certain things about it, but there's just that one part of the game that people detest so much it makes them question whether they want to ever experience it ever again. Snakewood frankly has a lot of these, and it's crazy to think of it that way, but it's quite true.

While the setting is Hoenn, the unorthodox progression is definitely something, having to surf since Mr. Briney's services are unavailable, having to take the long way to get to Fortree City proper since everything is blocked off on one side, lots of moments where you just end up at the S.S. Cangrejo at random, the diving spot that leads to the top of the waterfall at Ever Grande City, and just trying to get into Sootopolis by way of an abandoned mine where Sky Pillar used to be. There were some sad moments, such as hearing the backstory of Rayquaza being poached, the sense of possible dread that you may not find your brother the champion or his girlfriend, as well as having to kill gym leaders Winona and Norman as the two are zombified (even worse with Winona, since her brother Veracity was there). The spectacle of Wattson being an Inquisition member, a murderer, and a hopeless boss fight is also quite big.

Then this is compounded by all sorts of silliness, much of it anime and pop culture references. The Madio Pokemon are horrible, most of them knowing Teleport only and just being bad at everything. Kingmadio takes the cake though. Just WHY would you have a Ghost/Dark type with Wonder Guard?

Also what's with these weird Egg mons? What's with those Denjuu? What's those Glute mons doing as a consolidation prize for a pet that dies in Fort Draco's endless plains? What IS the endless plains? Why are the Deadly Seven members so silly and have ten members? Why couldn't I catch most zombie mons? How come Senex is a catchable mon who is an old gentleman? More importantly, what kinds of craziness did it take to take down Senex? There's just a lot to take into consideration, and then there's stuff I outright could not believe I saw.

The Inquisition Boardroom alarm tripping maze is TERRIBLE. Also compounded by other parts of the boardroom too, which have those random encounters on X-tiles, plus one that gives a Level 80 encounter. The whole sequence seems never-ending. Having to figure out that you need a mon with Thundershock to power an elevator in the S.S. Cangrejo as well as a Ditto who can transform into a key to leave it will never be seen easily by players. Lots of one-way locations in places like the Madio Cave and Abandoned Mine really hurt progression, and the same with the Necropolis and it's SUPER TRICK MAZE which honestly is the worst maze ever conceived. Making a walkthrough for this was an utter nightmare, but I managed to do it. Here you go.

A look back at: Pokemon Ash Gray

Ah, it's been awhile since I talked about another rom hack, and I beat this about a month ago yet still haven't posted a look back. Whatever. Ash Gray is one of the more notable Pokemon rom hacks due to its stunning dedication to the anime plot. Almost every episode is covered, including the first two movies, and it unfortunately still isn't finished because once I got done with the second movie plot, it ended there. There's just doses of familiarity wherever you go in Ash Gray. Routes and cities are modified to look like their anime counterparts, so in other words places like Pallet Town are much larger. Then you get all the routes and the events that happen. So much dedication!

And even with this dedication to the anime plot, you can always take sidetracks and do stuff like oh I dunno, catching Pokemon Ash never caught and training them, as well as actually beating the Pokemon League and the Elite Four (this will of course require amazing setups and everything, because they made this place an ACTUAL challenge, can only bring three mons + no healing items). Then it goes to the Orange Islands where you can Surf and such. While Misty and Brock/Tracey don't actually tag along with you everywhere you go, when the plot demands it, they show up for those premiere episode plots. And so does Team Rocket in LOADS of places. Admittingly these guys could get on your nerves, but that's kind of their whole point.

While you can always derive from the main plot by not using Ash's main team, or doing stuff like evolving Pikachu or Squirtle, getting fancy rewards for doing so is pretty cool. The idea of unwinnable fights is not something Pokemon games could actually employ well, but I'm grateful that there's still possibilities of winning those fights (let's say you over-level in Viridian Forest before battling Brock's Lv14 Onix the first time). There's still a few glitches, perhaps one of the more horrendous things is when I lost the Pokemon option in the menu one time for revisiting an area I probably shouldn't have. No HMs is a huge plus, but it would've been better if I got the climbing kit before Orange Islands since you can't go back to Kanto in this hack, sadly.

As I did with Victory Fire, here's a walkthrough I made. As you might expect, I made it because other walkthroughs for them were sadly incomplete. And this will be incomplete too should the creator make a new patch and all. But overall this was quite an enjoyable trip down memory lane from a game perspective.

Doom Musings: The legacy of TNT MAP30: Last Call

So I've done my first Doom Musings on two particular PWADs, two that at this point in the modern Doom community, have pretty much fallen off the wayside in terms of overall popularity. This time, my latest lookback legacy post deals with a single map from a single wad. I'm talking about TNT: Evilution's final map, Last Call, by Jimmy Sieben. Yep, we're analyzing what made this particular map tick, in comparison to other maps in the IWAD, as well as its imitators, what it did wrong, and what it did right.

Let's start with what it did wrong, and if you've seen the post where I outlined the best and worst Icon of Sin fights, it landed at the low end. But why? Well when you fight the Icon of Sin, you basically have to shoot its lava-filled brain. This worked with Doom II and it worked with Plutonia, but it did not in any way work with Evilution. You can fire rockets at that brain but it will not work. The walkthrough for this one shows that in order to actually hit "below the hole", and the way to do it is by stepping onto the step just below the upper platform. That's the spot. It's really counter-intuitive, just going to the second last step, and if you somehow figure it out, you'll be getting that boss brain by then. Perhaps even more surprisingly is that the rocket launcher isn't the only weapon that can damage the boss, because the way Romero's head works is that the base of the sprite is the one to be damaged, which was impossible without cheating in Doom II because of the higher level preventing traditional hitscan or otherwise attacks from ever reaching it, meaning you have to rely on blast damage from rockets*. There have been quite a few Icon of Sin battles where you could damage the Romero Head without the rocket launcher after this one. Requiem MAP30 and Demonfear MAP30 to name just a few. So even though this probably seemed like a mistake (or a really devious trick by TeamTNT) it somehow managed to make other Icon of Sin battles seem a little more different.

Now let's look at what Last Call did amazingly right. You know what it is by now, that torch puzzle. Step on the wrong block and you are instantly dead, by way of telefragging a voodoo doll in a different sector. For its time, this was the most innovative puzzle, a testament to TeamTNT's glorious strength, that they decided to never seem to do ever again. It got a few imitators, off the top of my head I know that Illuminatus, Twilight Zone 2, and Good Morning Phobos have all imitated this puzzle, but it worked out quite well to be the best thing about the level. The usually inattentive player will also generally not pay attention to the fact that the torches in the starting hallway are in the order of the solution to the puzzle. But to actually give the solution by way of this vague hint makes the whole trial and error aspect of the puzzle a little easier, as to take a good screenshot of the torches (or just drawing a map) will help in getting through this amazing maze.

But what about everything else in between? It's fairly average, just some monsters in rooms here and there, a cyberdemon on a platform, hmm, is this a curved staircase that gets built? Interesting. Wait, why am I interested in this you ask? Perhaps because if you were to IDDT or look at this map in an editor, you may be asking what are those square sectors? Well, I believe that this level is the first level in TNT: Evilution, and perhaps the only level in any IWAD, to make utilization of dummy sectors. Nowadays, maps will utilize these things for all sorts of tricks, like lift raising to certain level, making teleport closets without sound tunnels (there might've been a few of these beforehand in MAP29, but still). However, this is the one level that manages to make the spiral staircase part seem quite genuine in an IWAD map, using sectors that are supposed to be unreachable and linking them with the spiral steps accordingly so the thing builds properly.

For a level in an IWAD, that's quite an accomplishment. It has the bad part somehow managing to make unique Icon of Sin battles after it, its good part still stands the test of a death puzzle, and the usage of dummy sectors is definitely one of the reasons why this is a legendary level in its own right.

*But of course, at least in TAS runs that managed to somehow utilize a pacifist way of beating Doom II's Icon of Sin, it is possible to damage and destroy the Icon of Sin there, but it's one of those "one shot" things that requires the boss to spit out enough arch-viles, and given the probability of an arch-vile spawning from the boss, that's something non-TAS runners will never be able to accomplish. Seriously watch Karl Jobst's video about pacifist runs. And then there's the newly-released Pacifist run of Plutonia's MAP30, relying heavily on luck of the pain elemental draw and cyberdemons infighting.