Verada (Please Consider) (VERADA.WAD)

VERADA
PLEASE CONSIDER
by Paul Corfiatis

Apparently, a vocal portion of the Doomworld community found some of the levels of Paul Corfiatis's Death Tormention to be too easy. I can see that such might be the case while playing straight through but I recall pistol starting the maps to be very dangerous. pcorf's response to the criticism was, naturally, to make a hard level for the critics! Too tough for even the author to beat it in UV. That's not a difficult task to accomplish, though, and you'll see why. The end result is Verada, alternately titled Please Consider. It's a single level for Doom II released in early 1999 in a sort of starbase / techbase style.

Verada is one of the most brutal Doom maps I've played in some time. Any attempt at cobbling together a strategy on UV will be met with horrifying numbers of pain elementals, arch-viles in the worst places, and an ammo deficit that would make Malcolm Sailor blush. There's an invul sphere at the start, perhaps meant to shave some of the threat from the opening chaingunner clusterfuck. You're likely better served saving it for the first arch-vile so that you can sort of get your bearings with the scanty plasma gun and make your way to the berserk pack in the western section. If you aren't any good at punching cacodemons and Hell knights and the like, well, it was nice knowing you.

You'll need to punch in order to save ammo since there are two steps involved in obtaining the blue key. Both come with nightmarish ambushes and each features a spoiler arch-vile. The space is too tight to effectively infight but if you can soldier past the blue key shitfests then you can seek out a few monster closets full of shotgun guys. Doing so should give you more than enough scratch to pursue the rest of the encounters. The secrets help, too, but by the time you reach the outdoor area - containing a megasphere, a rocket launcher and rockets, as well as a BFG plus a ton of cells - everything's just about over. I suppose it's possible to rush through a few of these fights and maybe run back with the big guns, saving tons of time and energy, but that's a quest for speed runners and only one has deigned to record himself playing Verada.

Of course, HMP is the preferable option when not indulging in masochism. It strips out more than 50 of the fuckers including all of the arch-viles, many of the pain elementals, and thinning out just about every monster closet while the exact same weapon kit and ammo surplus remains. Viewed through this lens, Verada is a pretty fun if meaty action-adventure with a few tight spots but nothing you shouldn't be able to handle. Getting sandwiched between the Hell knights and the revenants on your way back to the red key is probably the only really dodgy part. That and maybe the hallway ambush past the north blue key bars but it's much less crazy on HMP. One of the few things to remain the same is the alcove with the DoomCute yellow key mural but there's hardly anything nasty about it... unless you happen to be slap fuck out of ammo.

I think that this will be a fun play for most players on Hurt Me Plenty with a few challenging moments. UV is a non-stop pain train to punish those who dare to describe levels as "too easy" but who will probably be just as quick to point Verada out as being a total grinder. Between The Twilight Zone and TWZONE2, I think this one has one of Paul's more interesting layouts, for what it's worth. Enter at your own risk.

"IT ENTERTAINED ME MORE AND FOR LONGER THAN
ANY GIRL OR WOMAN I HAVE EVER MET IN MY LIFE."
--/IDGAMES REVIEW