Review: DHW Map of the Month Competition - July 2007

Details
Title: DHW MMC July 2007
Creator: Various
Released: 01/08/2007
Votes announced: 22/08/2007 (48 votes made)
Length: 15 Levels
Level Format: Consecutive (Players starts fresh on each level)
Story: None
Graphics: Original plus new walls and Doors.
Sound: Original

Special Features: Shading, New Statusbar, On Screen Messages, Timer, Crosshair, full screen, bouncing keys, heart beat.
Dos/SDL: Dos

Initial impressions: The new doors look great and really fit in well with the original wall set as does the shading. The changed Menus look great and this not only makes itself to be different from the original but a further advancement down the MMC chain of mods.
Again like in the June 2007 set, the levels have been randomly placed. This doesn't seem to make much difference to the enjoyment of the set as a mod as each level starts a new and the player isn't looking at the mod as a continual entity but more a sum of it's parts.
One thing I really like are the 'hidden' ingame messages when you do particular things like when try to a find a secret wall you sometimes get a message that states "If you could push it then what?", clever stuff and a nice little hidden bonus.

Gameplay: The gameplay is again fast moving with a lot of thought going into guard placement and challenging scenarios. The inclusion of a Boss in most levels changed things a little as you start to expect one with each new level. Most of the levels were quite large, many with unnecessary rooms but the use of health ammo, treasures and secrets are plentiful to keep the playing going. The fact that most levels had a good amount of competition meant that the player isn't just running around with 100 health and ammo all the time. You can usually judge the amount placed in a level by how much you leave behind and still finish th level on full.

Mapping: The mapping in this set is again quite good but with more mappers there is a greater variance in desgins and styles. One if the most common factors that mappers have used here is to use a Boss in their level. There are some real stand out levels here for me, AReyeP's level is again of outstanding quality, as was Arielus', but the level that I really enjoyed (perhaps becuse it was so different from the rest) was RonWolf's 'Dogs' level. This level made you think and act a whole different way that the others and really like mappers that can make the player have to do that. Again credit to Ack and also Serpens who continued to this these as a great showcase of His mapping ability, something he continued to do in other Community sets made over the years.

My level (Level 9 - Gatekeeper) was made on the last day of submission and was one I was very happy with. It was clearly the smallest map of the set but that wads done intentionally as I wanted to try to make a tight packed, clever little challenge without over loading the map with huge guard numbers and many additional rooms just to fill the map. Just don't ask me why I included a hidden room with 8 Gold keys in it, as I sure don't have an answer today for it! After replaying the level for the first time in 4 years today, I'm still really proud of this level!

Likes: Again, there seems to have been a lot of thought put into most elements of the levels. It's clear to see that the concept had caught on with even more mappers submitting maps for this month.
Seeing the development of mappers is something I'm really enjoying watching as I play through these sets again. RonWolf and Serpens have especially really shown to me that I didn't credit their mapping as early as i should. It's also great to see others in the community that arent really known for their mapping, like Adam Biser, BrotherTank and CodeTech have ago at making maps also, showing they can have a lot more skills than just their coding or artwork skills.
The Exe that BrotherTank created for this is excellent, with lots of little changes that enhance the mapping work of the people involved, in fact, I'm really quite surprised that these haven't been used as the base for other mods! I especially like the 'Tab-T' option which lets the player turn the wall sounds off while searching for secrets. Some of the little things like the mapping controls that allows each mapper to make the floors, ceilings, timers and onscreen messages appear in the colour of choosing plus, my favourite, the hidden messages that appear within the game when you do something. Messages such as;
- Wall Pushing: "Push, push, push why so pushy!?"
- Pushing a statue: "Sorry, it's not your size!"
- Pushing other items: "If you could push it, then what?!"
Dislikes: All the bosses became a little repetitive (especially seeing most, including me, used the same one - Hans). Some of the levels were a litle too big, unnecessarily, there's often some merit in making levels smaller and still achieving the desired result. Plus Level 10 I thought was just ridiculous with 3 Bosses and 2 Hitler Ghosts with very little ammo supplied.
The heartbeat sound, although fixed from it's distorted nature form June 2007's edition, seems to start even earlier now (somewhere in the 70%'s). I'm aware I've ben hit but this I found to be distractive, especially when in a Boss battle with other guards around and you are trying to hear and find out out where everyone is. I can simply look at either BJ's face or my health % to know whether I need to retreat for health or not, besides, when fighting a Boss, I'm expecting to get hit and lose health to some degree and I don't really need this incessant beating in my head at the same time.
The weapon change speed seems to have been slowed down, this caused me more damge at times having to wait that extra time when being attacked.

Ratings

Dean's Score: 7.5/10
Difficulty: With all the Bosses, much harder then the original set.
Best Level: 3 (AReyeP: Cat N' Mouse)
Worst Level: 10 (RocketBoy: The Chateau)

Voting Results;
1st - AReyeP: Cat N' Mouse (13 Votes)
2nd - Serpens: Sentinel (9 Votes)
3rd - RonWolf: Dogs (6 Votes)
4th - Arielus: Smoothness (4 Votes) & Ack: Shreds of Pain (4 Votes)
5th - Adam Biser: Entryway (3 Votes)
6th - Rocketboy: The Chateau (2 Votes), Dean: Gatekeeper (2 Votes) & Thomas: Redux (2 Votes)
7th - Tricob: retro Shapes (1 Vote), MegaByte: Invictus (1Vote) & Adhesive Boy: Whoops... (1 Vote)
8th - CodeTech84: Familiar Shape (0 Votes) & Haasboy: The One Domain (0 Votes)
Withdrawn: BrotherTank: Hitler's Revenge*
*BrotherTank withdrew his submission when, as the project co-ordinator, further changes were made to the exe after the level submissions were made that caused some undesired asthetic changes to certain levels. I remember being one of the level makers that commented about the changes affecting my level at the time but was dissapointed that BrotherTank chose to take the action of withdrawing his level like he did, I don't believe this was anyone's intentions.

Graphics were again awarded to the winning mappers.

Wrap-up: Another great DHW Community set that had some of the Community's best mappers contributing. The levels and styles were varied but thats a main factor for me for why these are so good and still stand up today.

Where Can I get it?: You can download the mod HERE or by clicking on the screenshot at the top of this post.

You can read AReyeP's review of each level HERE also.

My review of the DHW MMC for June 2007 can be read HERE.

Look out for reviews of the other months of the DHW MMC coming soon!

Disclaimer: All reviews are only my opinion when playing the mod and are not intended to discredit anyone or the hard work they have put into creating their mod.

Review: DHW Map of the Month Competition - June 2007

Details
Title: DHW MMC June 2007
Creator: Various
Released: 04/07/2007
Votes announced: 23/07/2007 (43 votes made)
Length: 10 Levels
Level Format: Consecutive (Players starts fresh on each level)
Story: No
Graphics: Original
Sound: Original plus some additions
Special Features: Shading, Timers, Ingame messages, Enemys bleed when shot, heart beat sounds, bouncing keys, onscreen messages, programable message colouring, cross hair.
Dos/SDL: Dos

Initial impressions: The additional features have been well chosen and enhance the levels without detracting from them Original walls have been used and this is actually a better look base set than the original game, in my opinion.
The timers are a great idea and I just love the bouncing keys, as I do the in-game messages.
The use of walls nd sprites has been done in a very appealing way by most mappres and no one has really fallen in some of the Community dislikes such as multiple Bosses and massive mazes.


Gameplay: The gameplay is fast and there are a few more Bosses scattered throughout the levels. The individual thing about this Community set is that the player starts anew with each new level, meaning nothing you collect carries forth to the next level, so you might as well use everything up! This, of course, is rather an unnatural way of playing for most experienced Wolfers who have always played a lot more conservatively but this gives you a great chance to blast away a bit more recklessly!

Mapping: The Mapping is of a mixed level, as you would expect in a Community mapset. Seeing this was the first of these in the series and the first Community mapset in quite a while, this is a really great result. There are fantastic levels by AReyeP, Ack, RonWolf, BrotherTank and Thomas (the more experienced mappers) but some other surprisingly good levels by others as well (Serpens especially).
There are plenty of secret areas, lots of health and ammo and a good level of treasure used also. Most of the maps are larger and more difficult than the original set but most are very well done and easily replayable.


Likes: The aditional features are fantastic (except for a couple of minor side effects mentioned below) but really add something to the mod with out taking it too far away from it's original self. One really great thing that was added (for the mappers) was the ability to colour code your ingame messages, crosshair and timers. This was done by placing a certain wall number on a predetermined spot on the mapping grid and the corresponding coloured item would appear in game. Ostensibly, this game each mapper some additional control over other elements of their level.
The shadeing, where used, looks great, The "bouncing" keys looked amazing and I always love in game messages, especially those hidden ones! The heat beat sound was good but I thought at 65% it was a little high to start having it come on and it became a little annoying after a while.

Dislikes: There's a couple of glitches in the coding. While I love the addition of the bleeding guards feature, what happened to me in the screenshot below is a rather unfortunate side effect. If the enemy squirts out some blood in the doorway then once the door closes, you can't reopen it, meaning you are stuck from going through that door, hence generally making it impossuble for you to proceed any further in the level.
I also had some sound and graphic glitches. Generally the sounds wouldn't play through the menu and I lost them a couple of times in game, plus the heartbeat sound never quite sounded right to me either. I also got a graphic glitch where a vertical line appeared and stayed there for a few levels distorting things a bit.

Ratings

Dean's Score: 8.0/10
Difficulty: Harder than the original on most levels.
Best Level: 5 (AReyeP - The Citadel)
Worst Level: 7 (CodeTech84 - Luger Me Now)

Voting Results;
1st - AReyeP: The Citadel (12 Votes)
2nd - RonWolf: Secret Corridor (7 Votes)
3rd - Ack: Here goes Nuttin' (6 Votes) & BrotherTank: Deja View (6 Votes)
4th - Thomas: Out of the Blue (3 Votes) & Tricob: Paths of Peril (3 Votes)
5th - Serpens: ABandoned Dungeons (2 Votes) & MegaByte: Gun & Run (2 Votes)
6th - Adam Biser: Forbidden (1 Vote) & CodeTech84: Luger Me Now (1 Vote)

Graphic Awards were given out to the winners!

Wrap-up: A really great Community set that is fun to play. I like that the warp feature is left in so that the player can jump to any level at any time and have a look at their favourite mappers levels, or as I once did, played the levels in the order of popularity from the votes that were cast. the mappers invovled have all put in big efforts to produce quality maps and although there was fame and glory with the votes, I don't think anyone was disappointed with their level and just happy to have contributed.

Where Can I get it?: You can download the mod HERE or by clicking on the screenshot at the top of this post.

Lookout for reviews of the other months of the DHW MMC coming soon!

Disclaimer: All reviews are only my opinion when playing the mod and are not intended to discredit anyone or the hard work they have put into creating their mod.

Review: The Garrett Game

Details
Title: The Garrett Game
Creator: DasFooz Games
Released: 31/05/2001
Length: 10 Levels (1 secret)
Level Format: Episodic (Replaces Episode 1)
Story: Very vague, but new
Graphics: Original Wolf 3d plus new hand drawn
Sound: New sounds, original music
Special Features: None
Dos/SDL: Dos

Initial impressions: This is one of those Wold 3d mods with just terrible hand drawn sprites made in Paint. Yes, we've all seen them before - they are generally the creating of the incredibly untalented (artisticly) or the lazy. There seems to have been little care put into the hand drawn graphics with most resembling very little at all, and the new walls (as seen below) amounting to not much more than a series of squiggles and coloured patterns, with some writing. The screenshot below is the opening room of the mod, but thankfully, for my vision and my sanity, traditional Wolf walls have been used mostly throughout.
All the enemies have been redrawn and my best guess for what they are meant to be are a thin, deformed midget and a snail?
The creator calls this 'The Directors Cut' but I'm not sure he's aware of what this actually means. In relation to a film, where this is most commonly used, it means that the Direcror is releasing a version of the film more closely to his vision than the studio initially allowed him to release, for whatever reason. It's a little hard to imagine anything like this happened here, who knows, maybe I'm just taking things too literally...

The story is an interesting one, although I'm rather confused by it's happenings and certainly feel very sorry for the player if this was indeed to happen;

"You are Garrett. Someone has been plaguing your dreams and now you must find him/her and give him/her the ass-kicking of a lifetime!"

So, I guess the aim of the mod is to track down Him/Her and ask them to let me get a good nights sleep? :P

Gameplay: The gameplay is ok, not the best but far from the worst I've played. It's not a difficult or really challenging mod, guard placement and mapping certainly don't make things any more difficult here either. The maps aren't big and run fairly linear although there's certainly no need to go into all areas as there are quite a lot of rooms, including secrets, in each level with little or nothing in them.

Mapping: I'm a player that like to find 100% of everything in a mod, If the creator has gone to the lengths to put something in there then I want to try and find it. In saying that, there's nothing worse than a mapper jepoardising their own maps by making areas inaccessible. Most of the time it's bad mapping where the mapper has forgot to include a door or secret passage, and for me that's just sloppy. Unfortunately we have a case of it here in this mod as well. Play testing is something every mapper/mod maker must do exhaustively before release, the last thing you want is to have someone find something like this;


The red line shows the only connecting walls where you can access the funny looking secret man area shown above. As one can plainly see, there is no door, and there is no secret walls to access the area. Having this mistake means that the player can not only not explore the full map, and the mappers creativity, but also is unable to get 100% kills, ammo and secrets on this level, as it contains all 3, and no, there isn't a teleporter of anything like that to get in there. I just really struggle to understand how mod makers keep missing things like this...
Level 2 is just a smaller version of Level 1 with different walls, this I find to be rather lazy, unless you are going for one of those 'dejavu' type things, which in this case I can't find myself giving the mapper credit for trying to do.
Level 9 (Boss Level) is unchanged in design from the the original except for different wall types being used, just something to change it a little to personlize it would have been better then just using id's levels.

Overall the mapping is ok, there's some incredible laziness and sloppy mistakes but at least all the levels look fairly different and they aren't all made up of connecting same shaped rooms that are there for little or no purpose.


Likes: At least the creator has (attempted to) move away from the Nazi theme of so many Wolf 3d mods. However, to do this, you probably need to not use walls with Nazi flags or Swastika's on them, as this otherwise makes your antagonisers look like either Nazi sympathisers or are indeed Nazi's themselves. This of course, is not addressed in the incredibly expansive new storyline!

Dislikes: The sloppy mapping, there's instances of no floor codes, inaccessible ares and levels being reused. If you take the time to release your own mod, please, at least do your very best to make it as mistake free as possible!
The new artwork is very poor, anyone with a rudimentary ability as Paint could make better then what's been made and use here. I encourage people to make their own sprites, but when they are so badly done that it would have been better if you'd used the others then this subtracts from your mod, not adds to it.

This is apparently the Chaingun replacement!

Ratings
Dean's Score: 5.0/10
Difficulty: Easier than original
Best Level: 6 - Not for any specific reason.
Worst Level: 2 - Because it's just a smaller version of Level 1!

Wrap-up: Not a great game really, with some complete lack of care used here with the sprite and some wall replacements. This is one I'd highly recommend to most players

Where Can I get it?: You can download the mod HERE or by clicking on the screenshot at the top of this post.

Disclaimer: All reviews are only my opinion when playing the mod and are not intended to discredit anyone or the hard work they have put into creating their mod.

Review: Robocop 4 - The Delta City War

Details
Title: Robocop 4 - The Delta City War
Creator: Little Snapes & John Bucksnort
Dos Released: 06/01/2001
SDL Release: 20/04/2013
Length: 6 Levels (0 secret)
Level Format: Continuous
Story: None
Graphics: Original Wolf plus some new
Sound: Original Music, New sound effects
Special Features: None
Dos/SDL: Dos/SDL

Initial impressions: This looks OK, but nothing like the Movie in anyway that I remember, I guess that's why this is Part 4! Although there was never another release, it does state this is only a Beta version. Not sure why it was released if it wasn't finished, and I guess we'll probably never know now.
The mod does have a nice look of it's own although there's some rather confusing things you notice straight off. Firstly the pistol has a sound like a machine gun and secondly, the odd mixture of guards. You get the guy in the screenshot below (Who just looks weird because of His height), the Officer from Wolf 3d, Giant Rats as well as one of the grunts from DooM. To be quite honest, they don't really all mix together very well. The new wall and sprite set, although very sparsely decorated fits quite well with the remaining Wolf ones that have been used and help give the mod a look of it's own.
All the level contain a (not obvious to find) hidden key. I know a lot of people are against this, and I personally don't think the player should have to be forced to search for secrets if they don't want to, but there are better ways to hide a key, such as showing a glimpse of the key behind something, than just having the player get to a locked door, be unable to proceed and then have to backtrack throughout the level searching for a secret to find the damn key. I'm not sure why the mapper chose to do this but at least by Level 3 you realise you are just going to have to search for the key containing a secret on each level.

Gameplay: The gameplay is fairly straight forward with nothing to test the player too much. The maps are of average quality at best with a mish mash of seemingly randomly placed sprites and guards. This could of been a lot better decorated though with a lot of large empty rooms with little to no decoration. Guard placement is fomulaic and highly predictably, making this not much of a challenge at all.

Mapping: The mapping isn't outstanding if you compare it to a AReyeP or RonWolf but for 2001, when this came out, it's actually somewhat decent, except for the appalling maze on Level 6, I don't know how anyone could of thought that was a great idea!

 
"I know would could make this mod better, a maze that takes up half the level but does nothing!"
Please, not this, nobody likes these, especially if there's no secrets, no keys, no bosses, no health, ammo or treasure and really no point of why you have put this in your mod.
Outside of this the mapping is somewhat decent, the maps are rather small and nearly every level in the entire mod is the one same wall, but at least they aren't full of empty or superfluous rooms for the sake of it, like some other mods from this era have had. There is a respectable amount of secrets and health, ammo and treasure isn't always easily to find unlike some other levels I've seen in mods lately.

Likes: The game was easy to play, didn't take too long to complete and at least had some decent, although non matching, selection of enemies. There wasn't a lot of searching around required through empty rooms and passageways for the way to go, in fact it's all fairly straight forward, which can sometimes be a good thing, and sometimes make things a little dull.

Dislikes: The maze on Level 6 was terrible and completely unnecessary.
For any aspiring mappers, please learn how to use the silent guard feature, otherwise you mod won't be challenging to most players, everyone will just do the same thing at every door they come to - Open it, fire one shot, and wait for every guard in that room to come to them. You have to mix it up a bit!
No Boss - Even if this isn't complete and even if the levels aren't going to stay the same after the final release at least throw a Boss in as a bit of a challenge. The mod also just ends with a frozen wall when you get to Level 7, surely you could of added an end game trigger instead! (*Thanks to Andy_Nonymus for updating this and adding an exit elevator in the SDL release!*)

Why do this? I mean that's a stone wall in the middle of a wooden one! And Barney, WTF?

Ratings
Dean's Score: 4.5/10
Difficulty: Not very difficult at all
Best Level: 5
Worst Level: 6

Wrap-up: This was OK but nothing special. The enemies all look good, in their own rights, but a set of guards that seemed to have more in common would have worked better. Also a larger use of differing wall types, more sprites and and non hidden keys, plus a Boss would have improved this mod a fair bit. The main problem is, none of those things are particularly hard to implement into your mod either, which is why this mod is rather disappointing. This also has nothing to do with any of the Robocop movies I've seen and I guess is really only a tribute in name.
I can't really recommend this as a must play, unless you have to play through all of the makers mods or something, otherwise their are a lot better mods from this era that I would suggest playing instead.

Where Can I get it?: You can download the mod HERE or by clicking on the screenshot at the top of this post. (Updated to SDL version 20/04/2013)

Disclaimer: All reviews are only my opinion when playing the mod and are not intended to discredit anyone or the hard work they have put into creating their mod.