GHOSTOWN.WAD - 58.2 - SOUL-SUCKER
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Review : GHOSTOWN.WAD
Reviewed By : Neal Ziring,
[email protected]
Date of Review : 9/30/94
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Title : Ghost Town
Author : Banjo Oblivion [sic]
Email Address :
[email protected]
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**Play Information**
Episode and Level # : E1M2
Single Player : Yes
Cooperative 2-4 Player : Yes
Deathmatch 2-4 Player : Yes
Difficulty Settings : No
New Sounds : No
New Graphics : No
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=== Scoring ===
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Scale each from 0.0 to 10.0... (Obviously, 0 is BAD -- 10 is EXCELLENT)
Aspect Grade Reviewer's Comments
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1) Theme: 6.0 Theme was fairly simple, a town with
buildings. The author established this
theme well with the geometry and map
layout, but poorly with textures and
only moderately with decorations.
2) Mood: 5.0 Not much mood being expressed here.
Use of monsters was pretty vanilla
throughout: every room had sargents
and troopers in it. Lots of imps
and other enemies around. Part of
the mood was not knowing where you
would come upon another enemy, because
they keep teleporting in from another
room. Nerve-wracking. Use of wall
and floor textures was rather odd and
inconsistent, detracting greatly from
the visual mood of the mission.
3) Architecture: 7.0 The buildings and walls were well made
and interesting. All the doors and
windows were well placed. Construction
of the doors was shoddy, no lintels or
door-frames anywhere. Choices of
textures was mostly mediocre or just
plain wrong (e.g. shifting Nukage
texture as a windowsill).
4) Technical: 3.5 There were a number of serious flaws
in the technical construction of this
Pwad. Lots of HOM, a lot even for
this kind of outdoor w/buildings kind
of map (author apparently used only
DEU's built-in node builder). Several
places with veil effect. Lots of
places with tiled textures that are
not tilable, leading to tutti-fruiti
effect. Alignment of textures was
very bad.
5) Overall
Difficulty: 7.8 Although this Pwas is not very large,
it is difficult to finish for three
reasons:
- no armor
- fairly little health
- lots of open space around
buildings with plenty of
windows and sargents shooting
out of them.
Also, the construction of the initial
room is such more monsters are arriving
at diverse parts of the map at a
steady pace for the first few minutes of
play.
6) Non-enemy
Difficulty: 4.8 The only difficulty here is remembering
which buildings you've been in and
which you haven't.
7) Creativity
& Inovation: 6.0 The mechanism for feeding additional
enemies into the map is well done, as
is the start-up of this mission.
8) Level Logic: 6.8 The basic idea of this mission is sound
and the execution is fair, but there was
no logic or order to the buildings.
There was a sense of randomness to
everything about this mission.
9) RE-playability: 4.3 The game-play was moderately challenging
but the visual appeal was so low that
I don't think I would replay this one
much. This Pwad might be good for a
two or three person deathmatch, because
there are so many windows and alleys and
other ambush spots. The construction of
the start-up room was good for re-play,
though, because you didn't know exactly
which room you would land in next...
10) Enjoyability: 6.5 Once I figured out where the extra
monsters were coming from, this mission
got better. I still think it is not
so much fun to be shot at from a
distance by sargents hiding in a bunch
of buildings. Imps or cacos would have
been a better choice.
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Sub-Total 57.7
Bonus: (0.0 - 5.0) 0.5 For initial room and means of
getting to the main part of the
map.
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Total: 58.2
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=== REVIEW SUMMARY===
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This Pwad was written to run as E1M2. Take a tip from me -
play E1M1 first then continue into Ghostown. With the armor
and ammo you get from E1M1, you can survive the first minutes
of Ghostown long enough to enjoy it. Otherwise you have to be
very good (and lucky) to survive all the snipers.
The construction of the ghost town was pretty good, with
a nice variety of buildings and corrals and so forth. The
texture selection was not so good, and distracted from the
effect of the town.
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Summary Rating: SOUL SUCKER
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