I have been lurking on the forums since 2015-2016 or so and although I wanted to participate to the club in past, this is my first time joining the DWmegawad club. Hello everyone! I am new here! I have joined the forums last year but haven't got around posting because of various real life issues and the fact I started having problems with browsing the forums as of lately (mostly on my PC, while on my laptop and mobile the forum loads up fine). This was a map that I feared playing from a wand start because of the Maulotaur, however, due the relatively generous way you'll probably pick up powerups/weapons beforehand, it's not actually too bad. Curiously, there's only an Ophidian guarding the exit. The Iron Lich ambush that occurs when you pick up the blue key is easy to escape, which might be good because I'd only found one Tome of Power by this point. Unfortunately, I didn't spot this until I'd found basically all the secrets it's possible to access at that point. One case of this is a switch in the titular halls which lowers the platform with the green key at the end of the walk from the starting area. And if you like maps where previous areas connect to each other other, the Halls of Fear has that in spades. I never like features like this because it seems they impede movement for what reason that could possibly increase the fun? Ammo isn't quite as generous as in previous maps, and you'll only have a Crossbow and Dragon's Claw for much of it, even though you can find a Hellstaff in a secret somewhat earlier. Incidentally, I'll just say a few words about halls with little walls sticking out at regular intervals. You'll probably be hurt quite badly after this, so don't hesitate to pick up the crystal vials in the moat. Because I hate side-strafing in such a small area, I died twice. Because right after you pick up the yellow key in the same room, a monster closet opens up with an Iron Lich guarding the Dragon's Claw. Honestly, the vined-walls add some ambience. While you can snipe many of the Gargoyles who comes flooding in from the outside with the Elvenwand, that's boring, so just drop down into the moat on the right? side, run into the passage walking away from the moat and pick up the crossbow, dispatch any nearby foes, then pick up the crystal vials you're probably happy to see. On the other hand, Jimmy's action-packed "Legions" certainly fits this map tome just as well if not better. The default track is E1M2 which is kinda cool. I don't know if I would say that this map and E3M6 ought to have swapped slots - certainly The Chasm is larger, grander in scope, and delivers more in the way of spectacle - but from the heights that Heretic has reached in previous maps, there's certainly a sense of something lesser, something missing here. The Iron Liches and even the Maulotaur have very much been demoted to the role of bullet sponges at this point, crammed into small rooms that the player is compelled to traverse just to slow their passage and soak up their ammunition. It all feels a bit less consistent and coherent than the preceding map, with a fair amount of backtracking as opposed to the cleverly unfolding layout and compact footprint of E3M6 similarly, in those spots where this map is tougher and more able to bleed your health and armour away, it achieves that mostly through environmental awkwardness. We're back here in the realm of "maps named after features that don't actually play much of a role in the map," with the titular chasm appearing only at the very end of the level where it's briskly traversed by players so inclined the meat of the map lies instead in the dungeon complex that occupies about the northern two-thirds of the playing area.
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