Come to a Head (SP_DN01.WAD)

COME TO A HEAD

by "Deadnail"

The next PWAD on my itinerary is Esa Repo's Linna, but as it lines out in its .TXT, Espi actually based it on a level that had been released by another person earlier in the year. Deadnail appears to have been primarily an author of deathmatch levels who played in what must be a now-ancient version of ZDaemon. At one point, however, they aspired to make some singleplayer levels, and Come to a Head is the fruit of this practice session. This is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, released in 2001, and is specifically designed for ZDoom. I'm not sure if there's anything going on under the hood that requires it besides maybe the particle fountains, but in terms of gameplay, jumping is required in order to complete the level.

The overarching goal of the project would have been a five-or-so map set whose endings would lead into the next level's beginning, sort of like Cleimos, or Fragport, or Estranged, etc.. They describe this sort of aesthetic as "progressive", meaning that the player would have had the impression of progressing over a longer campaign. Come to a Head is actually the second map in what would have been the series, but the act of designing the two maps was apparently so cumbersome--and the first one deemed so horrible by the author--that they just released SP_DN01 as-is, making it their sole single player release. Most of this level is in a sort of squat, nondescript techbase, but there's a teleporter that takes the player to a series of scattered islands with sheer cliffs in Hell. I am guessing that the first level involved entering the base itself as the start has you on one side of some formidable security bars with some zombie corpses on the other.

This is not exactly a fun level to play. To quote the author on the subjects of secrets, there are "5, have fun getting them all -- you'll need 'em". The only weapon that has been placed in plain sight in the entire map is the combat shotgun and you won't get it until you reach the crisscrossing hallways, the level's major hub. The shotgun and chaingun have to be pried from the hands of zombies and the plasma gun and rocket launcher are in awkward secrets in the middle of dangerous situations. For the former, it's in a radioactive trench, which sort of precludes you wanting to poke around given how little health there is in the map. And, once you get on the high ground of the other side of the sluice, you can't get back.

As to the latter, the launcher is in an area that you can access up to four times but can only leave once due to oversights with single use teleporter linedefs. It's an archipelago of raised islands that you have to jump between while dodging fireballs from a number of directions. Oh, and also there are like three different H2O packs of two cacodemons and one pain elemental lurking about. If you're fortunate then you can probably get away with jumping around like an astronaut and doing the two circuits, one to grab the blue key and the other to hop like Hell on out of there. That's, err, what I had to do on my first playthrough. 

There isn't a lot of health for the ugly combat scenarios. This dearth is sort of counterbalanced with an early soul sphere that, again, is in a zone that you can't go back to once you've moved beyond it. The crate room where the sphere is is painful anyway since you will probably have very little ammo, especially if you squandered shotgun shells on zombimen going in. Regardless of what you have stockpiled away, you're going to have to run around the pain elemental and cacodemon to get the box of shells deeper in the room and cross your fingers that the meatball doesn't puke up too many flaming skulls. Like, you will probably need to indulge in a lot of painstaking, tactical play--including ammo conservation--even knowing what all of the secrets are in order to slay every demon. Chaingun tapping, infighting wherever you can scare it up, the works. I replayed this to see what knowing everything ahead of time and planning accordingly would do and all it really does is give you the opportunity to UV-MAX the level. Whether that process is fun is another question entirely.

It's not a bad-looking map! The texturing is clean, the only ugly bit I think being the roof of the teleporter destination shack. I like the look of the concrete block atrium; it has some decent-looking architecture. The rest of the base is, again, clean, with the slaughter scenes crying out for just a little bit more to distinguish their sterile spaces. The Hell-islands segment is a chore to play through but it looks okay. I wonder if levels with jump courses were a bigger thing back in 2001 than I give it credit for, especially in multiplayer ports like ZDaemon, and the goofy blue key islands are an outgrowth of that. Unfortunately, if speedily platforming through the outdoor area was the intent, leaving most of the intervening monsters alive, then it's completely at odds with the pacing of the rest of the PWAD.

If it weren't for how tight the ammo balance is, secrets included, this could be a decent level to blast through. I would recommend playing it on HMP if you want something a bit more palatable; Deadnail cut out nearly 90 monsters, many of them higher-HP opponents. Ammo is still a bit tight at first, but it's nothing compared to the survival-style of UV, and the islands section downgrades from a total slog to imp dodgeball. Even if you used HMP on your first playthrough, though, I think that you'd still need to use infighting and other tactics to extend your ammo given the likelihood of you finding the secret weapons, especially the plasma gun, on your first playthrough.

I probably wouldn't have sought out this level if Esa Repo's Linna wasn't based on it but, similarly to Fortress of Doom and Fort Scar, it'll be interesting to be able to make a direct comparison, especially with how an author like Espi did or did not overhaul the level. If you want to check it out, then give Come to a Head a go.

Addendum: I only just now found out after a cursory search at the forums that Deadnail passed away in 2023. Deadnail, I'll see you where the sky may be.

DOORER THAN A DEADNAIL