Doom Map Talk #17:Hell Keep, Slough Of Despair, Pandemonium, House Of Pain
2And, We're back. Episode 3 of the original Doom and what was the last levels that most first Doom players saw in 1993. This is the real deal here with Inferno where we're on our way to destroy hell itself. Again, like in previous videos, what is seen here may not reflect on how Doom looked in all its glory in the early 1990's.
Opening up this episode is "Hell Keep", This short romp through a gatehouse of hell is our first true look into hell's power, The map is one that even today still irritates me, It aggravated me as a kid quite a bit. We start with our pistol and there's two ammo boxes, Cacodemon at the door to this keep wasn't worth my time wasting those bullets and on Ultra Violence there's two of them which is.. yeah. I went Hurt me Plenty for this episode of Doom Map Talk as ultra-violence was tearing me up after this map.
The strange Rocket Launcher secret right before the end of the map is something I knew about in the past but its very odd to place it in a room full of imps. We then enter "Slough of Despair"... This map is just.. pain which resembles a hand but yet on intermission screen its a bunch of tombstone symbols, I won't lie this is my least favorite map in Inferno for more then a few reasons.
From the word go, We are hunted by Pinkies, Former Humans, Lost souls and spectres, and the open layout of Slough of Despair will make it hard to avoid getting surrounded if you negelect to clear out the sloughs in the middle of the map or get the monsters infighting. Ammo's tight, There's a few really mean traps that still get me to this day and "Donna to the Rescue" sets the tone of Doom's heavy metal gore and action getting put past 11.
E3M3, Pandemonium is when things take a turn, A combination of not just UAC techbases but the demonic corruption we saw in The Shores of Hell mixed together to make a map that still is in my memory. Opening this map is another personal favorite music track named "Deep into the Code", Bobby Prince's best impression of metal group Slayer. The map itself, I like to believe, is some kind of hellish military base. Secrets about though again I don't remember where they all are but I took what I could, and Pandemonium is a good warmup before the storm hits.
The storm? E3M4, "House of Pain". This map gave me a lot of nightmares in the day as a kid, and it still gives me a chill with its usage of "Sign of Evil", the blood damaging floors, crushers, green marble walls and sinister traps. House of Pain has some of the best action of Inferno with a bunch of setpieces I can easily get through without much effort, though I know when to pick my fights and when a invul begins to flash, time to go back to weapons even if I have a berserk pack against high tier barons of hell.
Map Talk #18, later in the Month will tackle "Unholy Cathedral", "Mt. Erebus" and "Warrens", These three maps are just an appetizer before the endurance test that is Limbo and the final map of the Episode.
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