by Tesculpture » Thu Oct 03, 2019 5:25 pm
I have just finished playing the 1.5 beta, and I did have a lot of fun. The level design reminds me a bit of Golden Souls 1/2, what with platform elements and features not usually seen in regular ol' Doom maps. The money collecting aspect certainly helps make combat a bit more challenging/frantic, with you having to make critical judgements every nanosecond as to whether to rush in close to a mob and risk death, or stay a safe distance and watch a major payout disapears into thin air.
A few things I particularly liked were:
-The Pojo Egg was a hilarious/nice idea, inverting the usual trope of being turned into a chicken being bad. Any chance a of mode where you play through the entire game as a Pojo?
-The bounce pad gameplay of Episode 3, particularly the Abyss level. People may condemn me for this, it would be nice to see a boss fight against a massive Icon-of-Sin style enemy where you have to use bounce pads to get up high enough to take a shot.
That said, I have a few concerns I want to point out:
-Imp fireballs are ludicrously powerful - on my first playthrough, the first imp of the first level literally one-shot me from 100 health! Through out the game, imps would regularly win infights against the likes of Cacodemons and Hell Knights. This didn't stop me from completing the game or having a fun time, but I wasn't sure if it was intentional extra challenge or a bug.
-The poison cloud flechettes don't lend themselves well to the gameplay. Using one (or getting one from a Literal Chaos Device) pretty negates any chance of collecting coins from the enemies you use it against, as picking them up before they fade away becomes impossible without taking damage from the cloud. If it was changed so you are immune to your own clouds, that would solve the problem immediately, but as it stands, I used the flechettes only a couple of times at the beggining then never used them again.
-Another thing about the Literal Chaos Device; you can cheese any boss fight by saving up a large number and spamming them at the boss until one gives you Archvile Flame - will a very low failure rate, it will one-hit anything/everything in your path. I recommend giving bosses resistance to Archvile Flames.
-While destructible trees are a nice touch, rewarding a player with points for destroying them kinda encourages silly behavior, like staying a level after you've found the exit/killed all the monsters, and destroying every last tree to artificially inflate your score. It's particularly a problem in Episode 2, where many levels have large numbers of points-giving trees up on high ledges around the edge of outdoor areas.
-The Heretic enemies, in particular the Gargoyles, look out of place outside of Episode 3. Granted, the Gargoyles do have a lot of features in common with Doom's demons, but the art style isn't quite right for them to slot in alongside them seamlessly.
-While some weapons, like the missile launcher, Argent Chaneler and nailgun have nice, smooth animations that make them feel weighty and satisfying, others like the assault rifle, heavy chaingun, and hunting rifle look really bare-bones, and IMO could use some beautification to match the rest.
Good luck with this, It'll be nice to see what comes next!