KARTHIK2 (KARTHIK2.WAD)

KARTHIK2

by Karthik Abhiram Krishna

Karthik had a solid string of releases from 2001 to 2003, working with both his brother as well as Brad Spencer of Alien Vendetta fame. He even garnered a coveted spot in Doomworld's Top 10 WADs of 2002 with Congestion Control. Every author has to start somewhere, though, and while he never uploaded this particular level to the archives it was his first finished creation. KARTHIK2 is an E3M1 replacement and was finalized in late 2000. As far as I know it's only available on his personal website alongside a couple of sector tag 666 experiments.

It was shown off, though, on the now dead DoomCenter in a couple of features called Unreleasables. I assume that it consisted of stuff held on to for the authors' nostalgia's sake but would never have published for the enjoyment of others. Similar, I presume, to Sam Woodman's 00_E2M8. I'd like to know more about those misbegotten outtakes. If you love the hot messes of 1994-era PWADs then KARTHIK2 will have you feeling right at home. The layout features wide hallways, cavernous ceilings, simple texturing, and strobe lighting in the indoor segments. It sort of looks like a super-thin spaceship on the automap, or maybe a humanoid figure with a really long and narrow waist.

It's still kind of DoomCute if largely because it uses a surf rock MIDI so that it can't possibly be taken seriously. The track is "Misirlou" and might be familiar to many for its use in Pulp Fiction. It accompanies you down the vast alleyways of monsters, some parts of which - like the Barons - will take longer to kill than others. This can be hastened by finding the secret weapon cache early in the level which has a BFG and a plasma gun as well as a bunch of cells. I think that it would work better just giving the player the PG and max ammo. None of the combat is dangerous since you have so much room to move around in. I think the start has the most potential. It has are a couple of beefy cacodemons and it's perfectly possible for one of the wanderers to open up a door and activate the hallway behind it.

KARTHIK2 is pretty ugly but solidly built. Neil Ziring referred to his sketchiest level, LAKE4 (bundled with BLT) as a "turkey shoot" and that's basically what you have here. A simple exercise in killing Doom monsters. I wouldn't recommend it for the average user but folks who love to claw their way through 1994 (you know who you are) might want to give this bit of totty a spin.