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« on: July 09, 2010, 09:54:01 PM »
After testing the demo out at SGC last Friday, I decided to take the demo home and play it there. Having not played a single game of Doom in my life, I got used to the controls and mechanics rather quickly, and now I'm doing fantastic.
The level choice is standard, though it fits for a demo: small, medium, large, and then an extra level. Cut Man is utterly compact and is the level where weird occurrences such as death-upon-spawn (on accident, may I add) and ladder camping. The weapon placement on the level, mainly in putting the dangerous weapons atop ladders, adds challenge in actually reaching the weapons, which is also excellent. On another note, the corridors are long enough to lend a major advantage to long-range weapons such as Needle Cannon and Rolling Cutter, which can make a Cut Man session a pain in the arse. This is a great map for tactical exercises, where one must learn to dodge enemy attacks with finesse.
Metal Man, unfortunately, does not improve on any issues with camping that were present with the ladders in Cut Man -- instead adding numerous new areas to lie in wait for trespassers. For example, atop the conveyor belts, one can snipe anyone below with Magnet Missile, all the while in an excellent position to escape should another enemy get on the belts and to the Magnet Missile camp. The player can then easily pick up the restoratives right below the camping spot, and survive without much of a hitch. These places are commonplace throughout the level, and can often be exploited, though this ultimately cannot be avoided. Regardless, the level makes for interesting gunplay all-in-all, and the weapon placement is better balanced than Cut Man in some areas. As with Cut Man, the focus is on tactics, but with more and more strategy mixed in.
Needle Man lends itself well to close-range combat, mainly with the Ring Boomerang and the Air Shooter among other weapons. While long-range combat is more than possible in some areas of the level, such as the window gallery area (which extends to a larger area via small tunnel), it is generally less effective in a game session than simply cornering an enemy with various close-range weapons. Though this can sort of defeat the need of a large-scale level such as Needle Man, it also encourages more hectic and complex strategy, mainly in finding the most effective weaponry and then flanking enemies in wolf-packs. This, unfortunately, was not something that my team did very well, and we often got pounded because of said complicity.
Skull Castle Interior is the map where the tide turns most of the time, and numerous higher mechanics, such as the background music (which generally is cathartic as always, and often motivates the players to get better), can make for mercurial game sessions when servers are busy. The main issue with the map, as has been said by many other players, is the tele-porter and the place to which it teleports. If another weapon was placed in said camping spot, one that would not be as utterly effective at laying waste to enemies as the dread Napalm Bomb, then many of the camping complaints could be solved -- this obviously only applies to the demo, as the weapon placement differs in the final game. Due to the many close corners in the map, weapons such as Napalm Bomb and Gemini Laser are the most effective, as they can be applied to either lay traps around a corner or to send laser beams ricocheting across walls. This map generally has the best mix of tactics and strategy, as I observed during my game sessions on Nam's server.
To make an aside from the levels: the skins included in the demo fit quite well, being the usual line-up of Classic Mega Man characters. The audiovisuals are excellent in general, with each appropriate sound effect for weapons and power-ups included -- it applies just the same to level graphics, where the sprites of each respective MM level create a fresh atmosphere in contrast to many other first-person shooters, such as Doom 2. The map design is inventive all-in-all, as is the weapon placement, and the music can make or break the atmosphere of a match. Overall, an excellent demo, if unfortunately flawed.
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