GHOSTOWN.WAD - 58.2 - SOUL-SUCKER ======================================================================== Review : GHOSTOWN.WAD Reviewed By : Neal Ziring, nziring@aztech.ba.md.us Date of Review : 9/30/94 ======================================================================== Title : Ghost Town Author : Banjo Oblivion [sic] Email Address : pfleming@eros.otago.ac.nz ======================================================================== **Play Information** Episode and Level # : E1M2 Single Player : Yes Cooperative 2-4 Player : Yes Deathmatch 2-4 Player : Yes Difficulty Settings : No New Sounds : No New Graphics : No ========================================================================= ========================================================================= === Scoring === =============== Scale each from 0.0 to 10.0... (Obviously, 0 is BAD -- 10 is EXCELLENT) Aspect Grade Reviewer's Comments ========================================================================= 1) Theme: 6.0 Theme was fairly simple, a town with buildings. The author established this theme well with the geometry and map layout, but poorly with textures and only moderately with decorations. 2) Mood: 5.0 Not much mood being expressed here. Use of monsters was pretty vanilla throughout: every room had sargents and troopers in it. Lots of imps and other enemies around. Part of the mood was not knowing where you would come upon another enemy, because they keep teleporting in from another room. Nerve-wracking. Use of wall and floor textures was rather odd and inconsistent, detracting greatly from the visual mood of the mission. 3) Architecture: 7.0 The buildings and walls were well made and interesting. All the doors and windows were well placed. Construction of the doors was shoddy, no lintels or door-frames anywhere. Choices of textures was mostly mediocre or just plain wrong (e.g. shifting Nukage texture as a windowsill). 4) Technical: 3.5 There were a number of serious flaws in the technical construction of this Pwad. Lots of HOM, a lot even for this kind of outdoor w/buildings kind of map (author apparently used only DEU's built-in node builder). Several places with veil effect. Lots of places with tiled textures that are not tilable, leading to tutti-fruiti effect. Alignment of textures was very bad. 5) Overall Difficulty: 7.8 Although this Pwas is not very large, it is difficult to finish for three reasons: - no armor - fairly little health - lots of open space around buildings with plenty of windows and sargents shooting out of them. Also, the construction of the initial room is such more monsters are arriving at diverse parts of the map at a steady pace for the first few minutes of play. 6) Non-enemy Difficulty: 4.8 The only difficulty here is remembering which buildings you've been in and which you haven't. 7) Creativity & Inovation: 6.0 The mechanism for feeding additional enemies into the map is well done, as is the start-up of this mission. 8) Level Logic: 6.8 The basic idea of this mission is sound and the execution is fair, but there was no logic or order to the buildings. There was a sense of randomness to everything about this mission. 9) RE-playability: 4.3 The game-play was moderately challenging but the visual appeal was so low that I don't think I would replay this one much. This Pwad might be good for a two or three person deathmatch, because there are so many windows and alleys and other ambush spots. The construction of the start-up room was good for re-play, though, because you didn't know exactly which room you would land in next... 10) Enjoyability: 6.5 Once I figured out where the extra monsters were coming from, this mission got better. I still think it is not so much fun to be shot at from a distance by sargents hiding in a bunch of buildings. Imps or cacos would have been a better choice. ========================================================================= Sub-Total 57.7 Bonus: (0.0 - 5.0) 0.5 For initial room and means of getting to the main part of the map. ------------------------------------------- Total: 58.2 ========================================================================= === REVIEW SUMMARY=== ===================== This Pwad was written to run as E1M2. Take a tip from me - play E1M1 first then continue into Ghostown. With the armor and ammo you get from E1M1, you can survive the first minutes of Ghostown long enough to enjoy it. Otherwise you have to be very good (and lucky) to survive all the snipers. The construction of the ghost town was pretty good, with a nice variety of buildings and corrals and so forth. The texture selection was not so good, and distracted from the effect of the town. ------ Summary Rating: SOUL SUCKER =========================================================================