Still Kickin' (KICKIN01.WAD)

STILL KICKIN'

by Kurt Kesler

When I played KZDOOM7 back in 2016, I had two levels left before I had reviewed the entirety of his output: "Phobos - The Underground Sewer Facility" from Ni'mRoD - IXNAY on the HOMBRE (MAP05), published in 2002, and Still Kickin', a solo level released in 2005. I played NIMROD back in 2019, but I wasn't in much of a hurry to play Kesler's final offering. Then, in 2023, it happened: KGZDoom1, Kesler's first published Doom content in 18 years. Since then and as of this writing, there are three new KMETL levels. Will wonders never cease? It feels about time to ride the K train again and close the gap between 2002 and 2023. Still Kickin', at one point Kesler's ultimate work, is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II to be played in any limit-removing port.

This level was apparently made for a project that didn't pan out, so Kesler dusted it off, wired it up with a custom texture pack, and then sent it off to /idgames. In a lot of ways, it's exactly what I'd expect from a late-period Kurt Kesler map. You start off in a naturalistic, rocky wilderness and work your way up to a huge fortress. You fight your way through it and then out to the other side, pressing onward into a cavern and the unknown. Kesler's Doomguy has been on a plethora of commando missions, with KICKIN01 being the latest, so being dumped next to an installation and having at it is pretty much par for the course.

As an author, Kesler favors the combat shotgun with the rocket launcher as a supplementary weapon that sometimes takes center stage. You might actually be thrown off by the big pickup kit that starts the level; both the regular shotty as well as the SSG are given at the same time, but given that the shotgun was the weapon that rose up in the hud, I thought--for a second--that it was the only one that I'd got. The regular shotgun is indispensable for dealing with the numerous cliff-snipers that you're going to encounter. I'm mostly thinking of imps because the rocket launcher does great for the couple of Barons that you'll see dotting the ledges. You will almost certainly want to swap to the chaingun for most of the indoors gunplay as it's hitscanner Hell inside the facility.

The indoor areas make up the most grueling aspects of Still Kickin's combat. Kesler has a fairly strong thematic divide between what monsters are within and what are without and the stuff that's in includes zombimen, shotgun guys, and chaingunners. You'll also find a couple of sizable pockets of revenants, too, and a small Hell noble incursion, but it's the number of commandos and shotgun guys that are lurking in the shadows and teleporting into the map that slow the action of the map to a crawl. Which is a bit of a shame. Maybe I've just lost my edge, because I recall there being a ton of commandos and shotgun guys, including (sometimes silent!) teleport ambushes, in Kesler's previous levels. Part of it may be that the author has included some teleporter lines that allow enemies to warp behind you in order to prevent door camping.

It's interesting how regimented the monster placement feels at times. For instance, there are only two pockets of mancubi in the entire level. They're both big, and they're both located in caves. The outdoor area has a very strong lean toward imps, demons, and cacodemon swarms, with Hell nobles appearing here and there.  The final outdoor battle has a healthy mix of all the non-zombie beasties that appear in the set, plus pain elementals. I'm always happy to see a pain elemental appear in a large, relatively easygoing brawl. It's a monster that immediately demands your attention without the fuck-you energy of an arch-vile.

One of the quirkier design decisions of this PWAD is the pop-up monster ambushes, specifically the ones in the outdoor areas. Kesler has these deep fissures that look sort of like natural landscaping that pop up to reveal lines and ranks of foes, as if they were thrust out of Hell. It's a weird look, but if you remember the one on the front side of the map then it clues you in as to part of the nature of the ambush that occurs in the back side. However, I LOVE the unique look of the base. It's rendered in a bunch of custom assets that Kesler made himself and give it a really solid, dingy and rusted metal look. prfunky made a comparison to the UAC Ultra textures and it's spot on. It's enhanced by a bunch of careful lightcasting with gradients that adds a lot of atmosphere... and places for the zombies to hide.

Still Kickin' is pretty much in line with classic Kesler gunplay. If you've played through the rest of his levels and enjoyed them then you really need to give KICKIN01 a shot. It'll be a bit breezier on HNTR, if still at 328 monsters to UV's 465. It's worth seeing for the base section alone; it's a neat aesthetic.

STILL KICKIN'

AFTER ALL THESE YEARS