DOOM II MAP 14 HOMAGE
by Tom Mustaine
by Tom Mustaine
Tom Mustaine submitted four maps to id’s Master Levels for Doom II. id released three of them in one form or another, while the fourth languished in obscurity for quite some time. Mustaine eventually saw fit to release it on his blog as a historical footnote. TWM01.WAD wasn’t necessarily rejected for being a subpar map; rather, it was rejected for being essentially a rewrite of "The Inmost Dens", after which McGee told Mustaine to "go make some of [his] own geometry!"
The comment is pretty spot on. Mustaine adopted a different color scheme, using a dark techbase green for the inner buildings and the dark brown grit for the outer wall, but the rest of the architecture is a spot on MAP14 knockoff (albeit in the MAP03 slot). There are chaingunners on lifts in the corners to facilitate between-map movement, buildings floating in water, keys to access switches that lower gates, and, well, play it yourself! It’s a little smaller than "The Inmost Dens", I think, with the building interiors pretty boring. Most of the remaining interesting bits have been cribbed from the original map.
As for some neat things McGee DIDN’T do in the original… There’s a rocket launcher hidden underneath one of the buildings, kind of like a crawlspace. I thought that was pretty neat. The arch-vile is in a completely different place, too, serving as the map’s telegraphed climax. I think the layout makes this one a bit easier to deal with as well. And, uh, that’s really all I can say. There’s even the bit with an arachnotron in a side-area and the transitions, like the line-triggered doors and leaps onto jutting platforms, are the same.
Tom Mustaine’s MAP14 "homage" isn’t a bad map by any means. It just fails to distinguish itself from the original or all the other homages to "Inmost Dens" that have been done since its release. It has a few nice things going for it, and it’s an interesting historical curio, but unless you’re dying for maps similar to McGee’s or have a burning desire to play Mustaine’s releases, I’d steer clear of this one.
AN INTERIOR DEMESNE
The Doom 2 map is called the Inmost Dens. Interesting article, I might try that map.
ReplyDeleteMy mistake; Mustaine referenced it as Innermost Dens on his blog and I didn't bother to check.
ReplyDeleteAlso potentially interesting as a historical footnote: This map was nearly included in the Playstation version of Final Doom - with proof of it being found via magazine articles of beta versions of the game.
ReplyDeletehttp://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom2_Map14_Homage
it's especially interesting to me since _I_ was the one that identified it from the magazine photo!
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