Blind Alley Y., "Dissolution" (BNDALYY.WAD)

BLIND ALLEY Y.

DISSOLUTION

by Gene Bird

BNDALYY is the fifteenth and currently final release of Gene Bird's Blind Alley series, published in early April of 2004. One could argue that Community Chest 2's "Desecration" is an honorary member, but from what I can glean it was built expressly for CCHEST2. The author has a few more BNDALY entries knocking around on his hard drive, perhaps not to see the light of day. So, for now, there is this MAP01 replacement for Doom II. Earlier entries in the series had a fixed space in the running of a grander mapset but Gene does not appear to have had a particular place for this or the previous release, Forlorn (BNDALYX). If it had followed the same scheme, then this would have been MAP34.

At the risk of repeating myself, the Blind Alley series was originally plotted as the player's counterattack against demonic forces that invaded his or her hometown. Early levels featured concrete locales like a Boardwalk or a Warf with features like libraries and submarines. This even continued up through Spirit World - Headquarters, which featured the façade of a corporate building (with lost soul fish tank!) and adjacent warehouses. Later levels still have occasional DoomCute bits but are in general more abstract, featuring titles like Necrophobia, Redemption, and Retribution. Dissolution is no different in this regard and is a sprawling dungeon / fortress / thing.

The name of the Blind Alley series is in tune with its progression style. As a player, you don't have to worry about making choices between door number one and door number two. Only one of them is going to open and somewhere beyond it will be the switch for the other. This did him no favors in making interesting layouts since they are typically composed of rooms and hallways that end up feeling strung together, sort of like a rail shooter. He got away from this with a cool outdoor yard / atrium area in Necrophobia and he likewise manages to twist things to intriguing effect here in Dissolution. The map has two major forks in the road, with the first prong sending you through a significant amount of combat before you return to take the second.

Speaking of action, BNDALYY is loaded with it. Nothing sets the tone quite like the opening room, feeling like shades of Thy Flesh Consumed and Orin Flaherty with a narrow ledge on the perimeter surrounding a pool of noxious nukage. Oh, and there are four coffin'd up monsters - two of them revenants in the back - posted in the middle section to ruin your day as you deal with beasties on the periphery. Awkward movement and exacting enemy placement is more the exception than the norm. Rather, Dissolution keeps the blood flowing with teleporter ambushes all over the place. It's the natural move to make backtracking interesting and was previously relegated to one or two encounters per map of the Blind Alley series. The nefarious ambushes in Forlorn appeared to be an outlier at first but here it is an established trend.

As with previous entries, you can do much of the grunt work with the super shotgun. It's expected, kind of relaxing, and in some situations a welcome challenge. A few of the fights are structured in such a way that you'll be dying to let loose some rockets, though. The one that sticks out in my mind is after visiting the southeasternmost tip, unleashing an army - with revenant rockets - to wait for you at the other end of a long and narrow bridge. It's indispensable for swiftly taking care of entrenched mancubi, too, whether on the ground or at a higher vantage point. There's another fight that is unusual by virtue of it being a mostly blind drop into a crowded yard, ever a case to whip out the plasma gun if there was one.

BNDALY has rarely looked better. The "Circle of Death" aesthetic of the opening gives way to the marble and metal appearance that has made up so much of Bird's later maps, complete with column-room callbacks to Deja Vu. The one time that Gene gives you something utterly banal like fireplace / DoomCute chairs he delivers it in an unusual, semi-circular room shape. There is an obligatory, intermediate teleporter annex with a cool stepped / sloped floor design and a manicured outdoor yard. There's a larger, irregular outdoor area too, less a yard and more a chasm, and I love the southeastern room with the bridge and how it connects to the circular gatehouse, for lack of a better term.

Playing through the Blind Alley series bears witness to the evolution of an author on a modest scale. The levels would not meet the exacting standards established by projects like Ancient Aliens and now Eviternity but that does not mean that maps of their caliber are no longer worthy of being published. The position of games within the sphere of art confuses the issue. While things like aesthetics definitely have an effect on a PWAD's ability to entertain, there will always be a spot for no-nonsense super shotgun comfort food at the Doomer table.

DISSOLUTION IS THE SOLUTION