Just played this and I really, really like it. It's exactly the kind of mood, setting and general setup that I like.
The level layouts were navigable but complex enough to be interesting. The texturing, lighting and sci-fi tech nature of the place really worked well.
The new AI (enemies and NPCs) are great. I loved all of them (even those annoying teleporting creatures). The human NPCs, in particular, were fantastic I thought.
The sound scape and the music were really good.
I loved the interactivity of the world: the computer terminals, the NPCs and the fact that almost everything could be smashed. Even the switches seemed more interactive than normal (i.e. using them to unlock doors and so on just seemed a bit more "real" for some reason - not really sure why).
The story was good and I want to know more.
Things that I was less keen on.
The use of Doom enemies, particularly the bigger ones (and really in particular, Hell Knights for some reason). I'm not sure exactly why but they just bothered me. I think it's because everything else just feels so new or tweaked and then to come around the corner to find the tried, tested and very, very familiar Hell Knight standing there... well, it just felt out of place. It sort of ripped me out of the immersion in the mod. The arachnotrons didn't seem quite so bad (though a mod-specific version would be even nicer) and even familiar enemies from other games (like the Heretic-Imp-alikes) were fine, but others really jarred for some reason. I also felt that their placement tended to be a bit jarring too. There are lots of relatively easy to put down enemies wandering around with big bruisers apparently just thrown in there because "this room needs to be tougher". It sounds like I'm really ragging on this - I'm not (generally, I really like Hell Knights as a good medium tier enemy), but it was the biggest downside to the feel and playability of the mod IMO.
The machine gun felt a bit weak to me. It doesn't seem to do much damage per bullet and requires reloading fairly frequently. As a result, I found it annoying to use on bigger enemies and tended to switch away from it in favour of the shotgun.
Hiding the monster and item count on the automap. I hear what you are saying about your reasoning there but, IMO, you are essentially messing with a player setting by removing them. Regardless of their accuracy, spawning in etc, I like to see those stats when I go to the map screen.
Suggestions:
Make computer terminal messages widescreen friendly. (Perhaps just add a bit more black to the sides of the images?) At 1920x1200, the game is visible beyond the edges of the terminal messages.
Make things even more destructible. With so many items being shootable, it feels odd not to be able to destroy computer panels etc on the walls (i.e. Strife-style).
Reward people with a really destructive nature. I spent ages destroying every single test tube rack in the store room. No reward!
Find something more game and story appropriate to replace overly familiar Doom monsters such as the Hell Knight. This mod sets it's own mood and the stock Doom monsters detract from that (to a greater or lesser extent) IMO.
Better use of reverb environments. Some nice creepy reverby environments would work really well in this mod (see scalliano's Threshold Of Pain Act 2).
