Game:

Doom II: Hell on Earth (1994)

Duration: 4:08

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89

While I was fooling around looking for Duke Nukem 3D mods, I was inevitably going to be attracted to something that featured some form of Doom content. No, not that godawful fuckfest BlooditeDrakan is punishing himself with. Something that's actually playable.

http://webspace.webring.com/people/ue/eddym4814/id155.html

This one calls itself a TC, but the reality is that it's nothing of the sort; it's simply a conversion of some Doom II: Hell On Earth maps to the BUILD engine's MAP format. In other words, it's a bog-standard mapset. But is it any good?

Mixed bag, really. The maps themselves are (regarding geometry and layout) perfectly fine; they are literal straight conversions using the WAD2MAP tool (something which refused to work for me when I tried it a decade or so ago) so there's no random reshaping or laziness. Sure some things have had to be edited due to the way certain DN3D features (such as keys) work, but nothing that completely ruins the experience. Well... almost.

One thing that really drags it down though is the simple difference between ammo pickups; it's not particularly obvious here on MAP01, but where any ammo/weapon carrying monsters in Doom would drop items all the time, Duke 3D randomises that... and then further randomises how much ammo is in a dropped weapon. What's worse is the distinct lack of standard pickups for the basic weapons. Oh sure, it dishes out some ammo, but compared to Doom II or even the standard Duke maps, things are probably more than likely to go catastrophically wrong.

It can create a horrendous scale of fake difficulty when many of the Assault Troopers/Captains and Pig Cops refuse to drop Clips and Shotguns, leaving you with a Mighty Foot and whatever ammo you were trying to save for the invariable 'boss' waiting at the end (and by Christ, it's no breeze). Not even the Chaingun Cannon can be kept reasonably loaded, because Assault Enforcers aren't known to hand over their unspent rounds. You really have to make shots count, because there's no telling if the game's just going to stick two fingers up and leave you to hang.

Health on the other hand is all over the place though. There are more portable Medikits here than anywhere else (enough that you can waste several with no problem), so at least it doesn't take the piss from all directions.

Still, it's enjoyable. It's not perfect, but at least the creator had the brains to adjust enemy health so that it wasn't an impossible adventure. Worth looking at out of curiosity, but don't expect to find your new favourite mod or anything.

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