Ramp2024 Reviews, Part XII
The first eleven parts of this set of reviews are on my old Blogger site. Eventually I'll move them over probably...
Anyway, here's Ramp2024 and here's an index of all the reviews so far..
Dig Site by Kribbolous
A wild cinematic experience with exceptional player freedom. When you start putting skull keys on an altar and they make the altar sink with their weight, I cackled. Of course I didn't think that the skull keys were actual gold skulls, but why not? 5 stars.
Dominus by Monsieur E
While there's a lot of inventiveness in the discrete combat encounters here (and they are more discrete than they appear at first), and I sort of trust there's a way to get through it all since I discovered methods for dealing with some really well-designed scenarios that seemed impossible at first, it's just too hard for an oldhead like me. 3.5 stars.
Doomed Caverns by Bennington2024
While I liked the first few arenas just fine, by the time we were combining lava and platforming I was very much done. Also, I'm not sure why I'm platforming after I've gotten very excited to see what's at the bottom of this long, interminable doomed cavern! Just have me keep going down forever! 2.5 stars.
Dependency Injection by Doom Wads
A marvelous and carefully interconnected set of spaces that give both you and the enemy unusual opportunities and resources if you (or, uh, the AI), play your cards right. It doesn't feel like the typical DooM experience at all, but an iteration on it that is something new and very worthwhile. Polished and surprising. 5 stars.
Depot Danger by micuu
There's two "real" fights here, and one you can skip if you are observant. (I was, and felt like I got away with something when I skipped it!) The interior spaces work just as well as the exterior, though the size of the exterior spaces sometimes makes DooM act strange (I saw a pinkie disappear when I was dodging over some train tracks more than once.) 4 stars.
Dromsdollet by Shove82
Beautiful, short, an atmospheric triumph - though I wish the music would have been a little more elaborate. It feels like it never qutie starts. 3.5 stars.
Dubious by Thelokk
"I'll say!" Although there's a great deal of interesting use of space here, the opening is just too much and even if you manage to scrape your way out of it there's just no way to finish it off. This isn't due to me being old, either. That first encounter is just not good. 2.5 stars.
ERCHOU ICAI IDE by JL
What a titanic, cinematic triumph, far beyond what DooM could have imagined. I got all the way to part 3 before it just got to be too much. I think there's just not enough cover in Part 3, and putting the cyberdemon on the balcony above me is dirty business. 4 stars.
Ex Mortis by Spacegrass
The vista overlooking the technicolor, cramped, crazed, cursed cemetery took my breath away, the music threw me through the level like a late night horror show. This is DooM as imagined not in the heavy metal album cover, but as in the chintzy rubber-mask horror movie. Even the "blessings" were tuned just right. I felt I had picked just the right one; then I went back and chose another and felt the same way. An instant classic. 5 stars.
Galactic Riot by CafeCaboose
A lot of good ideas somewhat buried under awkward texturing and room design. I got caught on the floor a couple of times, and didn't always have a clear idea of where to go next. Sometimes you have to backtrack to find things that change. However, the monster closets - often a weakness in maps like this - are quite well used and I found myself trapped unexpectedly more than once! 2.5 stars.
Gloaming of Dione by CrazyToni
A nicely polished little outdoors map with some of the best (restrained!) use of swimming mechanics I've ever seen. And when I got past the archvile and escaped I really felt like I got away with something. Not too big and not too small, just a really nice "jam map". 4 stars.
Gothycke Trappes by Numsoic
Don't let the name fool you, these trappes are quite fair and often very useful in handling some of the advanced monsters that will be released. I definitely think the weak point is the cyberdemon encounter at the end. I could beat it but I feel like a trappe of some kind would be more fun! 4 stars.
Gravity Hurts by Sgt. Shivers
The music and lighting make this an upbeat, fun experience, and the relentless action both coming and going makes this large map just a pleasure to get through. I thought I could get away clean when the spider mastermind started fighting some other monsters, but then I ran into the revenant at the exit and I jumped out of my chair, then laughed. Loved it. 4.5 stars.
Haunted Mansion by Craven Coyote
A great themed level, just an all around fun experience with cackling ghostly voices and levitating candles. The one thing that didn't quite work was that the upstairs doors were hard to make out in some of the dimmer rooms (especially the area past the attic yellow doors). Other than that, a fun little spook em up. 4 stars.
Haywire by Mehzeb Choudhury
Often a surreal/mish-mash level doesn't have any decent fighting in it, and no thought put into exactly how the mish-mash relates to each other or to the player experience. This little level does not have that issue. While there are dead ends and repeated textures and weird spaces, it's clearly all been considered and you move through it with a sense of discovery and excitement. I loved it. The one thing is that the end of the level messages all piled up on each other on the screen. If that was intentional, the effect was a bit lost. 4.5 stars.
Hellportal by DRKV
A pretty astonishing use of the Zdoom engine to do something it absolutely shouldn't be able to do, but ultimately I hit a couple of spots where it couldn't actually pull it off. Amazing, don't miss it, but it also sorta clunks along around the edges. 3 stars.