GOTCHA3 - 55.4 - LOST SOUL
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Review : GOTCHA3.WAD
Reviewed By : Neal Ziring
Date of Review : 10/1/94
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Title : Gotcha 3
Author : Bruce Vautherot
Email Address :
[email protected]
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**Play Information**
Episode and Level # : E1M1
Single Player : Yes
Cooperative 2-4 Player : Yes
Deathmatch 2-4 Player : Yes
Difficulty Settings : Yes
New Sounds : No
New Graphics : No
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=== Scoring ===
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Aspect Grade Reviewer's Comments
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1) Theme: 6.0 Theme is of an office park/industrial
complex, buildings and outdoor areas
with roads, with a whole battalion of
security guards gone of to the zombies.
The theme is well supported by the map
layout, but not very well by the textures.
The main feeling you get playing this
Pwad is: a shotgun-armed zombie around
every corner, and two shooting out of
every window. This questionable
aspect succeeds (see below).
2) Mood: 7.0 The mood here is constant injury and
fear of open areas. It succeeds pretty
well, but could have been better
supported with more complex use of
lighting. Also, the mood was kinda
boring in places because the enemies
and other aspects were very homogeneous.
3) Architecture: 5.5 The handling of the buildings and the
windows was good, albeit repetetive.
Nice balcony near the beginning. I
think more variety in room and doorway
sizes would have been good. The
stairs were built OK but unimaginatively.
No elevators used, no moving floors used.
Switches used in a very dull way. All
rooms and halls were rectilinear.
4) Technical: 6.5 Substantial tutti-frutti effects from
use untilable textures. Rather poor
texture alignment, w.r.t. both walls
and floors. No reject map, plenty of
HOM in outdoor areas, especially when
using Doom 1.2. (1.666 was better.)
5) Overall
Difficulty: 9.1 I was unable to complete this mission
without cheating at least once to give
myself more health or some armor. This
is a difficult mission primarily due to
lack of armor (there is NONE!) and
health (very very little). The fact
that sargents are everywhere, sniping
at you invisibly from great distances,
makes the level very hard. There needs
to be some armor here. There were no
puzzles in this mission, just lots of
running around in and out of building
getting shot by sargents.
6) Non-enemy
Difficulty: 3.0 Finishing this level with no enemies in
it would be very easy, just look at the
automap to see where anomalies are.
No keys used.
7) Creativity
& Inovation: 3.0 The handling of some of the buildings
was pretty well done, but there is no
real innovation here. Also, the lack
of variety in the enemy selection
detracts from whatever appeal the level
might have.
8) Level Logic: 7.0 In some sense, this level is quite
realistic and logical. You are the
only non-zombie non-demon person
left at this office park, all the
others are either mostly invisible
or arm with shotguns and bad tempers,
and you have no armor and little in
the way of first aid. Realistic, but
hopeless. The logic of finding the
exit is conventional.
9) RE-playability: 2.5 This might be a good Pwad for playing
as a stalker-style deathmatch game,
but I would never both to play it
again in single-player mode.
10) Enjoyability: 5.5 The first 18 times I started this
Pwad, I hated it. After resigning
myself to cheating once and giving
myself 200% armor at the start, I
kinda liked it.
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Sub-Total 55.1
Bonus: (0.0 - 5.0) 0.3 To correct the inevitable bias
against levels that make me
use cheat codes.
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Total: 55.4
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=== REVIEW SUMMARY===
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I'd like to say I enjoyed this author's work, but honestly I didn't.
This wad is not really well suited for single-player play. I think
it would be good for deathmatch, especially 4-player if you can
find a good network for that, but not single-player. I think one
of the real wins of DOOM over Wolfenstein is the new variety in
monster behaviours, geometry, lighting, and visual appearance
that DOOM can give. Not very much of that comes across in this
Pwad. The author seemed to be trying to make a level kinda like
E3M7 in an office park, but didn't quite succeed.
The author says in the .TXT file that this Pwad is intended mostly
for Deathmatch. Okay. I'd vote for -altdeath -nomonsters.
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Summary Rating: LOST SOUL
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