ZDoom

Gez wrote:

lowskill. wrote:As for Hexen... honestly I think the cryptic nature of its puzzles is heavily overrated - and this is coming from someone who has no sense of direction and gets lost in maps all the time. If I can find my way through it surely isn't THAT bad. There are a few unintuitive moments later in the game though (there's a level where you have to lower the water level to gain access to a warp switch, but the game offers no indications that the switch responsible for this actually did something, so you're left with running around until you eventually come across it), but that's as bad as it ever gets.

The worst part of Hexen is the Guardian of Steel polyobject puzzles. You've got to find out that the switches in the rooms at the end of the stairways are for moving the polyobjects blocking the paths around the serpent cages. The thing is that you need to visit both sides, so they have to be set to both positions.

Aka, if you beat the first hub it'll be fine .

There are worse levels later, but not confusing levels IMO.

Phredreeke wrote:IMO Rides Again is a big step up over the original game when it comes to level design. My favorite levels are the Refinery and Gamblin' Boat.

You really think so? I'm 11 levels into the game and cannot really concur. Too many switch puzzles with no hint where to go and several levels that took the vehicle concept too far, i.e. they consist of running/driving around between far away places and lots and lots of backtracking. I wouldn't call it bad, but it's surely not the same quality as the original or Route 66.

The refinery was the one level that really matched the first game in terms of quality.

More than 22 years down the line, I've finally completed not just the second level, but the entire first episode of Redneck Rampage. I'm going to let my end-level result screen speak for itself.

...46 minutes? Damn, and I thought I was slow when I have no idea where to go...

Doesn't sound like a fun map when looking at the results...

RR's maps are quite large. My last playthrough was 25 minutes despite knowing the level.

Graf Zahl wrote:RR's maps are quite large. My last playthrough was 25 minutes despite knowing the level.

It's not that the level is large - it's that at least half of the 45 minute play time was spent not being able to figure out where a key I found actually belonged. The game does a very bad job of guiding you towards things that are usable, or any items of interest.

That's interesting. Well in that case I'd probably win the contest of spending the most time in a level, heh. If I was to play this there's no chance in hell I'm not spending well over an hour on this.

No but seriously, this is a general issue I have with nonlinear shooters, navigating them tends to be a challenge in itself to me due to my heavily underdeveloped sense of direction . It's even worse if the game features an automap like Doom and the Build games, which I could never learn to put to good use and just looking at it makes me sick... although I admit the textured automap is more bearable.

Out of all the wads I've played, Eternal Doom was the only one where I could actually make sense of it. The fun thing is, that I've actually enjoyed the wad, and would go as far as to say that its cryptic nature is grossly overrated. Yeah MAP30 is indeed a pain thanks to progression being literally hidden behind stuff such as fake walls, but it really isn't as unfun as the reputation preceding it dictates overall. I've seen modern maps that eclipse it in terms of cryptic progression with ease...