GOTCHA3 - 55.4 - LOST SOUL ======================================================================== Review : GOTCHA3.WAD Reviewed By : Neal Ziring Date of Review : 10/1/94 ======================================================================== Title : Gotcha 3 Author : Bruce Vautherot Email Address : bvauther@pms039.pms.ford.com ======================================================================== **Play Information** Episode and Level # : E1M1 Single Player : Yes Cooperative 2-4 Player : Yes Deathmatch 2-4 Player : Yes Difficulty Settings : Yes New Sounds : No New Graphics : No ========================================================================= ========================================================================= === Scoring === =============== Aspect Grade Reviewer's Comments ========================================================================= 1) Theme: 6.0 Theme is of an office park/industrial complex, buildings and outdoor areas with roads, with a whole battalion of security guards gone of to the zombies. The theme is well supported by the map layout, but not very well by the textures. The main feeling you get playing this Pwad is: a shotgun-armed zombie around every corner, and two shooting out of every window. This questionable aspect succeeds (see below). 2) Mood: 7.0 The mood here is constant injury and fear of open areas. It succeeds pretty well, but could have been better supported with more complex use of lighting. Also, the mood was kinda boring in places because the enemies and other aspects were very homogeneous. 3) Architecture: 5.5 The handling of the buildings and the windows was good, albeit repetetive. Nice balcony near the beginning. I think more variety in room and doorway sizes would have been good. The stairs were built OK but unimaginatively. No elevators used, no moving floors used. Switches used in a very dull way. All rooms and halls were rectilinear. 4) Technical: 6.5 Substantial tutti-frutti effects from use untilable textures. Rather poor texture alignment, w.r.t. both walls and floors. No reject map, plenty of HOM in outdoor areas, especially when using Doom 1.2. (1.666 was better.) 5) Overall Difficulty: 9.1 I was unable to complete this mission without cheating at least once to give myself more health or some armor. This is a difficult mission primarily due to lack of armor (there is NONE!) and health (very very little). The fact that sargents are everywhere, sniping at you invisibly from great distances, makes the level very hard. There needs to be some armor here. There were no puzzles in this mission, just lots of running around in and out of building getting shot by sargents. 6) Non-enemy Difficulty: 3.0 Finishing this level with no enemies in it would be very easy, just look at the automap to see where anomalies are. No keys used. 7) Creativity & Inovation: 3.0 The handling of some of the buildings was pretty well done, but there is no real innovation here. Also, the lack of variety in the enemy selection detracts from whatever appeal the level might have. 8) Level Logic: 7.0 In some sense, this level is quite realistic and logical. You are the only non-zombie non-demon person left at this office park, all the others are either mostly invisible or arm with shotguns and bad tempers, and you have no armor and little in the way of first aid. Realistic, but hopeless. The logic of finding the exit is conventional. 9) RE-playability: 2.5 This might be a good Pwad for playing as a stalker-style deathmatch game, but I would never both to play it again in single-player mode. 10) Enjoyability: 5.5 The first 18 times I started this Pwad, I hated it. After resigning myself to cheating once and giving myself 200% armor at the start, I kinda liked it. ========================================================================= Sub-Total 55.1 Bonus: (0.0 - 5.0) 0.3 To correct the inevitable bias against levels that make me use cheat codes. ------------------------------------------- Total: 55.4 ========================================================================= === REVIEW SUMMARY=== ===================== I'd like to say I enjoyed this author's work, but honestly I didn't. This wad is not really well suited for single-player play. I think it would be good for deathmatch, especially 4-player if you can find a good network for that, but not single-player. I think one of the real wins of DOOM over Wolfenstein is the new variety in monster behaviours, geometry, lighting, and visual appearance that DOOM can give. Not very much of that comes across in this Pwad. The author seemed to be trying to make a level kinda like E3M7 in an office park, but didn't quite succeed. The author says in the .TXT file that this Pwad is intended mostly for Deathmatch. Okay. I'd vote for -altdeath -nomonsters. ------ Summary Rating: LOST SOUL =========================================================================