Blind Alley 8., "Retribution" (BNDALY8.WAD)

BLIND ALLY 8.

RETRIBUTION

by Gene Bird

The Community Chest series might be sleeping, supplanted as it has been by institutions like MAYhem, but it was a pretty big stepping stone in marshalling the Doomworld community. A bunch of authors who were making PWADs from 2000-2003 contributed with a fair number going on to fame if not fortune. CCHEST is notorious if for nothing else than a high number of previously-released contributions from Gene Bird, Sphagne, and Daniel "Bad Bob" Trim. GB's levels all came from his Blind Alley series, a rainy-day mapset that he had developed since 1997, then taking the time in 2002 to finalize and publish maps as individual releases. Retribution, aka BNDALY8, is one of his older works, as the author takes care to point out. It was originally slated for MAP08, hence the 8 as an alpha-numeric designator, but as presented here is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, published nearly four months after Redemption in October of 2003.

The Blind Alley series has the ghost of a plot and generally enough stabs at understandable DoomCute realism to back it up. The player is relaxing at his or her home when demons attack the city. You launch a counterattack that takes you both through and beneath the city, with the final confrontation taking place in some kind of nightmare world. Retribution doesn't have much of a strong basis in reality when it comes to most of its structures but there's a special note regarding the final room and its amphitheater / viewing box structure. It apparently owes its existence to a Native American ball court at Wupatki National Monument in the state of Arizona in the USA. If I recall correctly, then I've actually been there!

Retribution has the hottest start of any Blind Alley level that I've played. The opening structure is a pretty cool triple layer fudge cake. You start on the floor in the open air, surrounded by an upper caged tier with some monsters poised to take hot shots, but with a murderous four-cornered obelisk in the center. The player pressure may not have anything on modern standards of difficulty but it's very real. The way in which progression unleashes monsters at a fair distance from the player creates an organically evolving combat scenario. As was the case with the inset crypt of Waste Processing (BNDALYT.WAD), you cannot afford to be ignorant of monster positioning when transitioning heights. Gene's method of opening distant pockets of monsters makes this an even more likely scenario.

When out of the frying pan you will find that the fire isn't so hot. The "Nirvana"-style linked teleporter layout takes you to a small, underground arena. I was shocked to hear both a Cyberdemon as well as an arch-vile but both of these unholy terrors are rigged to die as part of a central crusher spectacle while you duke it out in the outer ring. The next jaunt takes you to the bulk of the level's square footage, which has a ghost of an urban theme with a handful of squat, rectangular buildings to navigate. /idgames reviews suggest that the open area minimizes the threat that the monsters provide. This is always a dicey proposition when hitscanners are involved, though, and Gene has never been hesitant to deliver zombies via teleporter ambushes.

There isn't a lot of guile involved in what could be called the level's second half but I appreciate some of the architecture. The megasphere shrine and its almost-floating ceiling panels are mid-'90s as all get out and brings a smile to my face, here. I also enjoyed how the lower half of the southwestern building collapses into a water pit - definitely not something that I was expecting. The amphitheater is a good piece of realistic macrotecture and succeeds mostly at fooling you into thinking that you've got cover while you deal with the viewing box, only for monsters to pop up the stairs. The surroundings are a little plain, but I don't know how much more Gene could have gotten out of this area in vanilla when given the dreaded visplane overlord. It's interesting to see this take such a turn away from the indoor room-and-hallway chains to a (mostly) outdoor experience.

Retribution won't take place as my favorite overall level from the Blind Alley series but the opening firefight displays a side of Bird that I never would have supposed existed. It has me even more intrigued to bear witness to the final two entries, Forlorn and Dissolution. If you want some decent old-school action with an early hot start then you might want to give this one a try.

RETRIBUTION IS THE SOLUTION