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Really funny story about Last Reaction - my stupid ass actually played through that entire map set in March of 2022. I didn't have enough confidence to introduce myself then (and also I didn't want to come off as being too rude by completely dumpstering Last Reaction), so I introduced myself in April. I hate Last Reaction with my entire corpus, and I personally believe that George-William Bernard designed it with 100% malicious intent. I never finished Water Bases and didn't even start Chimera by the way. It took me the entire month to do Last Reaction. I think it would be a good idea to make a new topic just to express my thoughts on it, along with me actually finishing Water Bases and Chimera. One big mega post for each episode. When I've got a good, long day to myself and I don't have to worry about anything.
That's pretty understandable and I recall many of the Last Reaction maps were painful and had a miserable time with them. I think Water Bases was a huge improvement over Last Reaction but still had a bunch of issues and some annoying maps, especially the penultimate one was quite painful. Chimera was initially released as unfinished and there exist modified "finished" versions of it, such as the addon compilation version with a fixed Level 7 exit and a somewhat recent (released last December, wasn't available during March 2022 club event) finished version on ModDB that merged LR&WB and Chimera into one mod. Anyway, I will look forward to your topic one day if you decide to review LR&WB and Chimera and other maps/mods you've played, as I noticed you posted in other topics as well. Would be cool to have a topic dedicated to reviews.
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...and the previous paragraph I wrote brings us here - IIRC these commanders were placed with the sole purpose to keep "taunting" the player throughout the entire level, which was a bold and original trick which worked great, their roaming sounds are distinct and immediately recognizable, so for the whole level you have the thought of a commander being "somewhere out there, maybe behind the next corner" at the back of your head.
I agree, I really like the "scary" sounds used at various times in the Red series (and various maps inspired by them), most of them being unused sounds from the main game, such as when the Overlord, Cycloid, Protector and Queen see you. Also I was actually thinking that those two Commanders are being used to make the player think they can be anywhere but isn't the effect lost when they go dormant after a while?
I think this could have been achieved better if those two commanders showed up at some point in the level or have their recognize/active sound played at certain points in the map with sound effects achieved like the map has been doing with the other creepy sounds. I definitely know there were maps where you could hear an enemy but the enemy doesn't show up. The only examples that I can think of are E1L3: Death Row (there is a tape that plays Pig Cop sound) and the last level of Caribbean has the Sentry Drone sounds when entering in the last corridor before the final boss. These are the examples I could think right now, maybe didn't have the best examples but you get my point. And considering that even Watchtower mentioned those two unreachable commanders, I think if Merlijn were to revisit the remaining Red maps and maybe make an episode out of it, then these two commanders shouldn't prevent getting 100% kills.
About the comments earlier mentioning Red 3 being like Doom 3 before Doom 3 existed, that's funny, it never occurred to me until recently. I haven't played much Doom 3 in the past but now you guys gave me an excuse to revisit it and fully complete it. Maybe the next month or so, when I revisit some id software games I haven't played much.
Anyway, today is the day to cover up the remaining maps that are fully playable in Duke3D v1.5 in DOSBox. Those being RED4, X64-2, RED5 and ABBA. Note that the post is a bit long and I apologize if I sound like I'm complaining a bit at times but let's say that in half of the maps I didn't have the best time doing them, not helped by having some noisy neighbors in background while playing two of these maps.
Red 4
The sequel to Red 3 is not another horror inspired map, instead it takes place on a boat. Duke has to make his way before the boat gets flooded. Fittingly, the map uses the Waterworld midi (that plays in E1L4: Toxic Dump), which adds to the atmosphere.
Gameplay wise, it's alright, I didn't have much trouble surviving in general, although you should note that this map has NO armor pickups, besides whatever pig cops may drop to you, so it can get challenging at times, though I was lucky there were two pig cops early on that dropped two armors in a row (at the cost of taking two strong shotgun blasts), so one got saved for later. There is one Portable Medkit and one Atomic Health that will come handy at times, though at least medkits seem provided in adequate amounts. I recommend finding the only secret in this level, which is a bathroom that contains a few goodies (Freezer, Chaingun ammo, Large medkit) and a toilet you can drink water from. Also I highly recommend saving the one Atomic Health for the end of the level, which will greatly help when spending time underwater and escaping from the flooded place. Not to mention there's a couple points of no return, though until that one point when Duke "faints", you can backtrack to the whole map.
I died once to that bullshit explosion trap after inserting the yellow card and going upstairs. It deleted me instantly from 100 hp and 75 armor. Now I recall same happened in past decade when playing through this map, so I guess I haven't learned my lesson and should have anticipated it. But other than that, I didn't really have much of a problem with the health and I am happy that I got used armor from two pig cops. Otherwise, I don't think it would have been pleasant to spend this map without any armor.
Unfortunately, I missed three enemies. Technically, I missed four but the game thinks I missed three. They are all troopers outside of ship and they are unkillable/unreachable without using the DNCLIP cheat. They are the ones that spawn/ambush you in the control room when you get the Blue Card. Too bad about that, as there seemed a couple others that managed to squish themselves, which I could tell from when the "SQUISH!" message appeared a few times on top of the screen.
There is only one secret to find and it is a bit unusual, as it requires you to press use on an electrical socket. I remembered this from years ago but had no idea it was optional to unlock the secret, I thought it was required for level progression. Also, this time I stood a bit further away and received no damage upon pressing on it. It contains a Freezer, Chaingun ammo, a Large Medkit and a toilet, as I have mentioned above.
I also like the scripted sequences and how you have to escape the sunken ship while avoiding drowning. Once you succeeded, you will be sent to...you guessed it, Hollywood Holocaust! Okay fine, it's the last time I mention this, I promise. Considering this is the only level that ends by crossing a sector.
Overall, this was a fun level but kinda suffered a bit from cramped combat, the unreachable monsters, some annoying explosion traps and the lack of armor, though the latter can be solved by getting lucky with pig cops, which thankfully helped me a lot. Other than these annoyances, this was a strong level and had fun with it. Looking forward to the finale of Red series! But before that, let's take a visit to an alien planet!
Alien Planet X64-2
And now it's time for the infamous map! Honestly, I can relate to what Quacken said earlier. This map suffers from some balance issues, namely the complete lack of armor and the only health pickups come in form of atomic healths. But even if it might seem generous at a glance, you will have a few sections where you will bite the bullet (literally) and spend time with low health, most notably when fighting Enforcers. Ammo isn't really an issue except early on but even then you have plenty of pistol ammo to kill a few stronger monsters, like commanders and protectors. Afterwards, when you get your hands on the shotgun and chaingun, ammo is plentiful for the rest of the map. Just don't try to kill the Overlord that appears at one point early on (you don't even have anything besides kicks and pistol). Don't worry about the kills, as there are plenty of alien floating sharks that you can kill with your pistol and get extra kills, to make up for that Overlord. But that also means it's impossible to tell if you missed any other monsters, if that ever happens. On the bright side, you are guaranteed to get all the kills.
Anyway, you start the map without any weapons. At one point, a Commander breaks out your cage. You will then have to kill him or ignore him. You should just keep firing pistol rounds into him while dodging his rockets and if you can afford to kick him once or twice to kill him faster, while avoiding his melee attack, you should be good. Afterwards, you will have like 50 hp left. There will be some fights with some troopers early on and some protectors. There are a few cheap ambushes that may spawn an enemy behind you while busy fighting the other in front of you and maybe explosion traps but the biggest issue will be the parts where you are fighting enforcers (Mini Battlelords not so much, because in those cases you are given health in advance), you will be guaranteed to have like 30 or less hp and you will probably get killed over and over again until you savescum to win the battle. This persisted for some parts where I was literally with less than 10 hp left and it was painful and not fun at all, as it felt like I wasn't making progress and more like banging my head at a wall until the game lets me get through.
But first, let's go back to the beginning (mini walkthrough). After killing a few troopers and protectors, you will have the Overlord appearing and it's pretty clear you have to avoid him. I'm not sure if you can kick him to death or trick him to kill himself with his rockets to end the map early, I haven't tried that yet and it sounds like a waste of time just to finish the map early, so ignore him and move on. Oh yeah and there's a few points of no return throughout the map but many parts are still possible to backtrack, which may not be obvious and this can be confusing to the player, as you end up grabbing Atomic Health even if you didn't need it (e.g. grabbing an atomic health at 175 health).
After you get past the Overlord, you should get the Chaingun. Then kill a few more aliens, floating sharks and face a huge group of troopers that were very satisfying to mow them down with the Chaingun! Unfortunately, that costed me quite a bit of health. So then the pain begins with savescumming when fighting enforcers. Shortly after, you will find the Shotgun and these will be the main weapons for a while. You will have to savescum because you have no choice but to use the chaingun while enduring damage from the Enforcer's chaingun, as this is the weapon you want to use against them, which kills them quickly and often they reward you with 50 extra ammo (or another chaingun but at this point you have the chaingun that is essentially 50 extra ammo either way). I found the Shotgun too slow to kill them reliably and since they have no pain chance, your only hope is they miss.
This is why I absolutely HATE the lack of armor in certain maps, such as this one. And no, there are no pig cops to be found, considering it's an ALIEN themed map, so forget about the chance to "win" an armor. But why not have at least one armor pickup placed somewhere? The lack of armor turns an already difficult map into unfairly difficult, as a single armor pickup would have made a huge difference. And that's without getting into the fact there are no inventory items to be found, nor there are any water fountains to restore your health if caught in a bad spot. Health is very limited and I was really sick of hearing Duke scream in pain and dying or "I needed that!" every time I got atomic health when nearly dead. Ugh. That's why I highly recommend saving often and use multiple save slots, as this map is painful.
Afterwards, you will get to a blue room. Of course, you are ambushed by troopers and enforcers and you only have 30 health remaining. You try to quickly kill them with chaingun and either you are left with 10 or less hp or keep dying. Then kill the enforcer in main control room and you have the choice between two different portals. Here's a hint: They lead to a different place, they both contain one atomic health and another one later on, so you should have around 50-60 or so hp to deal with a couple threats. Apparently, first time I chose the rooms with the enforcers and troopers, so no wonder I had a miserable time, having 4 hp left and trying to kill the last enforcer with the Chaingun took a couple attempts. Afterwards, solve a switch puzzle, the answer is 1-2-4. Use the teleporter to go back. If you are wondering, yes you can get back if you want to grab leftover ammo.
Then check the other path with the Octabrains in lava. This is much easier and if you can avoid taking damage, you will get two atomic healths, on top of what you have, so you should have like 150+ health at this point. Very nice! Also the switch solution is 1-2.
Then you teleport back, go to main control room, shoot the switch, pick up the different looking green card and insert it in the slot (very cool effect, I always liked seeing this in user maps), then the bars should open.
Afterwards, I don't think I need to explain further, as the progression is straightforward. You should jump on a balcony to press a switch that opens some doors near the bridge, to allow further backtracking just in case.
I finally had around 150-200 health for a good while, only to end up with only 1 health remaining and no health in sight, before the platforming part. Had to savescum to kill an enforcer, then kill the commander, grab the Devastator, kill a couple more floating sharks with the pistol and then prepare for the platforming section! I recommend grabbing everything in advance, as this is another point of no return. And be sure to save in advance. I am happy to say that there is no mandatory fall damage while platforming, you can forget about jumping on a platform and instead just strafe into the nearest platform and it's all good, no damage taken, works even at 1 HP!
Once you reach the spaceship, grab the Atomic Health and kill the THREE Mini Battlelords that will show up! You have the Devastator and lots of ammo for it, you know what to do. I recommend saving again since their chaingun will demolish you if you stand too much in their line of sight, especially if you got to this point with low health. Oh and kill the two flying troopers that show up afterwards. Flip the switch to activate the teleporter and enter the spaceship. The map ends afterwards like in Toxicity (and original E1L2 obviously), with the aliens "capturing" Duke.
If you were wondering this whole time, no, there aren't any secrets to be found. I still recommend exploring every corner to find an extra atomic health, as they are pretty much essential to your survival.
Also, I watched DNSKILL's video AFTER I finished the map, to not spoil the experience myself. My congratulations to DNSKILL for finishing the map on DIG without dying and saving. Although, the map doesn't seem that bad if you "speedrun" it but I don't think I would like to deal with respawning enforcers at certain points, not to mention I played with the original DOS executable, so this added to the extra difficulty but if I played in EDuke32, maybe there is a tiny chance I would have had a better time with it?
Overall, I didn't enjoy this map and had a miserable time with it, I would even go as far as to say I disliked it. It didn't help that I wasn't in the mood of playing and the map's music (as I guessed correctly, it uses the E2L4 music) was drowned in the shitty ass music that some neighbors were playing at loud volume (yes, some neighbors were partying during that time in the evening) but the game's sounds could still be heard, for the most part, so there's that. I think I died over 30 times in total, not sure, as I haven't counted them but it sure felt like some sections took me forever to get past.
Therefore, I agree with Quacken when comes to complaining about the map but not when comes to the final rating. If I were to rate the map, I'd give it a 5/10 or 6/10 at most, if only for the impressive visuals and scripted sequences (I guess the map is inspired by Xen levels from Half Life?). But gameplay wise, it wasn't that great. Let's hope the next map is better.
Red 5
A great follow-up to Red 4 and the conclusion to the Red series! I wasn't disappointed when playing it. I only found it annoying at times where I keep getting shot a lot of times and even got killed a bunch of times. Not as bad as X64-2 or the following map reviewed but still, plenty of deaths. I won't offer a full walkthrough but I will still give a few advices, trivia, etc.
The map uses the famous Plasma song from E2L8: Dark Side, which adds to the atmosphere, since this map is more in the vein of Red 3 rather than Red 4.
At the beginning, don't forget to grab all the supplies around the area, such as a couple ammo pickups for shotgun/chaingun, Armor and an extra Pistol. They will all come handy later on.
There is a code with a bunch of switches that can be easily seen on a monitor. Here is the code just in case:
BCDF 2357 !*-
There is only ONE secret to find. In the Security room that you unlock later on, you should find a switch. Shoot it and it will unlock a door. But be VERY CAREFUL at the various Trip Mines that will appear, as well as a few Sentry Drones showing up. These will easily kill you, so it's important to retreat in the right moment. Once you clear this corridor and access the room, you will find a Red Pig Cop, several slimers/eggs, a Portable Medkit, Armor and Shrinker!
Please note that there are a few points of no return. You want to have a backup save handy just in case. The points of no return are the platforming in the water corridors and then towards the end when doors shut behind you.
Initially, I was missing two monsters but after looking up with cheats (don't worry, I quit the game afterwards to reset the cheats), I found one trooper "stuck" in some dark corridor. That leaves one more enemy that disappeared somewhere that I wasn't able to find, most likely he got warped inside the walls. I loaded an earlier save before a point of no return, backtracked and found that inactive trooper. Then later I did a bit of savescumming to kill one or two troopers below a door, so their corpse can be squished, to trick the game into adding an additional kill. In the end, I ended up with all the kills.
Overall, while I got frustrated at a few points, I must say that I enjoyed this map for the most part. I think some parts towards the end could have used a bit more health placed around, I didn't have much fun being stuck with 20 or so health and getting one shot by a pig cop around the corner or from fucking miles away because they can be bastards sometimes and snipe you with perfect accuracy. No, I didn't feel like using the Medkit because I found it in the map's only secret place and I wanted to see what if I never found the secret, can I still survive the last ambushes? The answer is yes, as long as I save often. But then again, the text file recommends saving often, so I don't feel guilty if I did that recently when playing these maps.
On a more serious note, how will the next map compare?
Another Big Base Attacked
An impressive snowy base themed map that comes packed with a cool midi song. Since you start without weapons while taking damage (basically you start with 67 Health), it is recommended to grab the pistol and the armor right ahead of you! Don't forget the Shotgun around the corner as well! Oh yeah and behind you, there are some unreachable troopers, two of whom you can kill with your kicks through the narrow door opening (no you can't fully open the door). But the rest flying troopers are unreachable, as you can see their shadows on the ground. Don't worry, as there are a bunch of slimer eggs in this map that will make up for the missing enemies, you can still get "all" kills at the end.
With that said, as impressive as the map is, I found it pretty damn hard at times, despite the generous amounts of armor and somewhat generous health. At the beginning, it wasn't so bad and I felt confident I can get through this map without much trouble. And I was enjoying my time with this map and the cool scripted sequences, also funny how there was a giant sized Protector Drone (as in twice the usual size, not boss sized). But then when getting to the outside snowy area and getting my ass kicked over and over, the map stopped being fun and had to rush and start save-scumming to get past these annoying parts. On top of the noisy midi, Duke continuously screaming in pain and some loud ass idiot neighbors, it was really getting on my nerves and makes me wonder how I managed to get through this map in a decade or so ago, as I really don't remember struggling so much before compared to this very recent playthrough.
Really, the map could have used a bit more health placed around the white snowy area, so the blue key ambush didn't feel so damn hard to survive with both health and armor at 52. No, I didn't fucking see a large medkit and an atomic health hidden away in some corner and I had no medkit remaining in the inventory, though I felt more like I needed RPG rockets to do this battle rather than health, because even with the hidden weapons I found on the ledges, I was out of RPG ammo, the Devastator ammo wasn't enough to kill the Mini Battlelords quickly before they fucked me up and the Shrinker was unreliable with the autoaim hitting the center of the enemy, sometimes even shrinking a Commander was a hassle when the projectile clipped through his body or hit him but he didn't shrink.
It was so miserable that the map stopped being fun after the 10th death or so in the same part, which meant it was the time to savescum like crazy to get past this madness, with one mini battlelord managed to get stuck in the entrance while I shoot him with the Chaingun in the arm, only then I was able to catch a break for a while. It wasn't until I got through this hellish part that I found a Portable Medkit and an atomic health spawned on the way to the base. After that, I still died a few more times in some parts but at least the balance was a lot better.
Anyway, instead of complaining and disappointing everyone reading this post, I will now be positive and say I really liked the last ambushes, as Maarten gives you more than enough health to deal with the them, with the second medkit I didn't even need to use, as I already had an unused one in the inventory. Having a full portable medkit, 200 health and almost full armor felt like I was properly equipped for the job. Just be careful with the bridge getting destroyed because if you fall down, you die. At the end, you get attacked by various monsters, mostly troopers, octabrains and commanders. Afterwards, some more monsters will appear from behind. Kill them and then you can push the nuke button to end this map.
There are TWO secrets to be found:
1) Just before reaching the room containing the "giant" protector drone, there is a vent you can break. Inside, you can find an ARMOR.
2) In the warehouse, there should be a monitor showing the room blocked by a red forcefield. Near the monitor, press on the panel to disable the forcefield. If successful, check the monitor to confirm the forcefield has been disabled. Afterwards, go to the now accessible room to collect a RPG and an Atomic Health!
Note: I believe both secrets are still reachable, even if you are far into the map. As long as you don't get past the destroyed bridge, near the end, you can still backtrack and collect them.
Overall, the design is immaculate, the new song is fantastic, the map is epic and I appreciate the challenge but at same time, I had a miserable time with the map and I think some of the parts were too hard with the little amount of health you were given to deal with the alien scum. I feel like Maarten went overboard with the Mini Battlelords in contrast with how little RPG ammo you were given to deal with them. Either that or I really had bad luck and getting hit often, not helped by playing the DOS version with keyboard only controls, which meant slightly slower reflexes than usual. But still, I died like 20-25 times in the whole map, so it's justified to get pissed off.
And if anyone suggests to lower the difficulty, not only you would have to restart the map from beginning but there also won't be much of a difference in gameplay, maybe about 10-20 less enemies encountered on easier skills (which isn't worth it, as the map contains 200+ enemies) but otherwise, spawned enemies are unaffected by skill settings and the damage Duke takes is exactly the same across all skill settings. Therefore, the experience would be almost the same and I feel like playing on CGS is the intended way to get the most experience, anyway.
In the end, I liked these maps and they were clearly some of the greatest Duke Nukem 3D user maps from the 2000s but I didn't have as much fun as I hoped I would have, especially when compared to all the previous maps I've reviewed in this month, which felt slightly better balanced and had more fun when playing them. I'm hoping the gameplay will improve once I get to the remaining Maarten & Merlijn maps.
Have a nice day!
EDIT: Merlijn posted while I was writing. I don't have time right now to respond to everything but I have to say that it's good I remembered Red2 Zombie Edition from Alien Armageddon and about remaking Red3-5, it's fine if they won't get remade (I was more thinking about remastering them in vein of Red2 remastered) but I still think the Red series should be officially released as an episode in the future with some minor fixes. Just to have an official definitive/updated version of the episode.
About Doom 3 comparison, I understand now. Everything is clear.
I also wanted to mention Imperium episode, because if I remember correctly, some of the maps were inspired by X64-2, right? Which means, weren't both Maarten & Merlijn mapping for Imperium? If yes, then sorry I didn't include in this month. Although it can easily be nominated for another month, maybe coupled with another DukePlus episode. Cheers!
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Duke 3D #1
ck3D, on 13 May 2023 - 05:56 AM, said:
