#25
Posted Yesterday, 01:00 PM
Played the mod earlier this week as I'm catching up with recent releases and this has also been the first time I've played WG Fang 2, which was definitely the highlight of the project! I didn't care much for the "intermezzo" maps, forest secret level was fun though as it was probably the scariest of all the maps due to the enemies it used, also the multi-leveled one with bat bosses on each floor was neat. I remembered original WG Fang from before and I think the refurbishing and new enemies served the map fairly well. WG Fang 2 was georgeous, this one took me a while to finish, but it looked spectacular and the "climb" made the progression feel that much more satisfying (even when having jetpack from previous levels). The final battle(s) there were challenging and lots of fun and the island-hopping added a lot, I especially liked the island with "crystalline" interior you could enter for a jetpack secret. WG Fang 3 looked awesome as well but it didn't feel as focused as WG Fang 2 with the theme, with latter part dragging a bit. WG Fang 4 was impressive mostly due to the monumental dimensions of the outside area and how it felt like you really had to conquer it, but overall I would say it was the weakest out of these castle maps. The final boss felt like it had a ridiculous amount of hitpoints as I've run out of most weapons when killing it, had to tackle him with jetpack(s) as otherwise the spiders would block the path of my shots and drain the health...
Now regarding the graphics I'm not sure, the new textures looked mostly great as they fit with Duke's general graphic style, but a lot of enemies and props looked kinda out of place (but also had a 90s charm to them), in particular the first map felt weird with all the random sprite clutter. I take it most enemies were taken from different games and sometimes it was difficult to spot what they really were. Now as for their behaviour, most of the time they felt satisfying to kill as they didn't take much hits to finish (sometimes even too few and felt more as a nuisance). I hated the spider-women that shoot sliding spiders at you and tended to prioritise killing them with shrinker whenever possible. The use of original DN3D bosses worked really well. The giant skeleton that spawned tons of smaller ones also had to be prioritised not to spam whole map with his minions and seems he couldn't be shrunk... Cacodemons felt very much like octabrains, but there seemed to be many variants of them. The bog thing in the forest level was probably the most difficult (unexpectedly, too) enemy out there. And barons from hell in the last levels were nice with the destructible guided projectiles, although it seemed that sometimes they took about 10 rockets and sometimes 3 to kill. Oh, and the almost-invisible eyes were nasty!
Overall, a cool little episode that felt quite refreshing to try out. Now I know there's also Zombie Nukem...
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Yeah the bigger maps take advantage of Jetpack towards the end. 
