Legacy of Rust | HMP | Rerelease | Long OverDOOMed E7
1I'm a couple of months late, but now that I've caught up on the rest of the id-published WADs, I'm finally ready to take a look at what new tricks Legacy of Rust has up its sleeve.
There's a lot of solid quality to appreciate across the two episodes of this new campaign, not least of which is the extremely strong soundtrack done entirely by Xaser Acheron. We're talking strong enough to punch you in the ears with late-game variations on early-game themes, which blew me away.
Unfortunately I'm a little less fond of some of Xaser's mapping work. While his set piece work on the two secret levels is easy to appreciate (though E2's secret level is pretty rude), a couple of other levels he contributed to (E1M2 in its entirety and E2M1 in part) are easily the lowest points. I find it hard to believe this got an entire gameplay pass that apparently found nothing wrong when these two levels are horrendously underbalanced in terms of resources; E1M2 even goes so far as having secrets that I felt I was better off skipping because they left me worse off than I was without them, which last I checked is not how secrets usually work.
Otherwise, there's a lot to enjoy and appreciate throughout most of the rest of the maps in terms of set pieces and challenges. E1M6 (also by Xaser) might've also been a tad problematic from a gameplay perspective, but has some extremely interesting environment details. I felt a little let down by the end of episode 2, as it felt like the last couple of maps devolved into a slaughterfest where you're clearly intended to use the strongest weapon in the game, but the final map still threw in a couple of interesting curveballs. There are definitely a couple of moments in this WAD that I would qualify as "Plutonia-esque".
Speaking of the strongest weapon in the game: Legacy of Rust completely replaces cell ammo and the associated weapons. Instead there's fuel, which tops out at half the capacity of cells, but when you see what replaces the plasma rifle and especially the BFG, you'll understand why.
In addition to new weapons, Legacy of Rust also features new enemies, at least a few of which seem based on ideas behind unused assets from Doom back in the 90s. Out of all the new additions, I think I appreciate the Vassago (the flame-tossing demons) the most, since their projectiles cause lingering area denial. The shocktroopers and mindreavers would have made more sense to me if there were a complete absence of arachnotrons, but those eventually make an appearance later in the WAD too. Meanwhile the ghouls and banshees, while each a unique threat, are mostly annoying; and the tyrant seemed comedic if anything, but mostly unnecessary (part of how the late-game felt phoned-in).
At any rate, Legacy of Rust offers some interesting changes of pace while still very much being Doom, and is a fine addition to the latest rerelease.
00:00 - Intro
06:52 - E1: The Vulcan Abyss
4:40:50 - E2: Counterfeit Eden
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