(Doom II) Swim with the Whales: Map 02 - Ride the Dolphins (UV-Max Speedrun in 11:23)

Channel:

D0M0

Subscribers:

131

Published on January 21, 2025 9:30:21 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKciqIVrf1g

Game:

Doom II: Hell on Earth (1994)

Duration: 0:00

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4

Runner: D0M0
Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.28.2
IWAD: Doom2.wad
PWAD: swtw.wad
Complevel 9 (Boom Compatible)

Date: 2025-01-21
Map: 02 (Ride the Dolphins)
Category: UV-Max
Time: 11:23.20
Attempts: 389

Comments:
There will be a commentary video released for this with a palette change to it later on either today or tomorrow (Jacek may have influenced this decision for me on VC one night). There's simply a lot to unpack with this map.

Ride the Dolphins is a very well made appetiser for the entree that is map 03. This map imo is probably on the same level of difficulty as Fire and Ice, many of these fights can go very wrong if you make a slight mistake in your play. I love the visuals for this map, the dark contrast that the dark greys and blues create amongst the void-like setting is mind boggling. How Ribbiks manages to execute this so well is also mind boggling.

Onto the map itself. The map starts off with the hardest fight, the bridge fight as many call it. The objective is simple: Kill the HKs and revs, grab the plasma, kill the cyber and get out. What makes this hard though is to get decent ammo in terms of rockets, you need to use the cyberdemon's rockets to your advantage. If you stick close to the HKs, the cyber's rockets will hit the enemies that are the closest. If you back away, the cyber will fire rockets towards you or the monsters that are further away than itself. Once the cyber starts infighting, you can then rocket your way through the HKs (you should also take out the revs first since it means there's less projectiles to worry about).

Then it's a task of killing off the arch vile at the start, triggering all the enemies in the lobby room and moving on to the first half of the map.

With the first half, there's nothing too serious to deal with. I will say that the fight with the cacodemons and arch viles can be quite gnarly if you make a wrong move. The trick is to simply try and get the revenants to infight the barons and then rocket the cacos whilst the arch viles can't see you. Then you go in for the arch viles and create your own safe space. Often you can miss a couple cacos round the corner and they will come to bite you.

Before you tackle the second half, you have to go through the second hardest fight of the map. This is known as the conveyor-belt fight, where you face 2 cybers at once. The gimmick is that if they go too far off centre, they will be teleported onto conveyor-belts and then back into the middle. This makes it hard since you need to become more aware of surrounding projectiles. The simple trick is to just strafe around the cybers, spam the plasma and hide behind the pillars if you get too cornered.

The second half is also not too serious. The mastermind fight can get quite gnarly if you don't use the invuln's time effectively. I actually screwed up with grabbing the key on my first clear. I completed everything flawlessly, but forgot to grab the key!

Overall, I love this map. It's given me a taste of what's to come without filling my appetite up too much. I will need to leave it for quite a while before I tackle the main, since it is notoriously very difficult! I need to use that time to improve my skill ceiling and tackle other hard-ish maps.

Link to wad: https://rbkz.net/doom/
Link to sourceport (DSDA): https://github.com/kraflab/dsda-doom
DSDA Leaderboards: https://dsdarchive.com/wads/swtw

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