The Real Crusher (CRUSHER.WAD)

THE REAL CRUSHER

by "Black Void"

The original Community Chest was an interesting hodgepodge of folks who had already had long and storied careers, like Rex Claussen, Stephen Clark, and Samuel Villarreal, as well as authors like Sphagne, Gene Bird, and Daniel Trim, who had released a bunch of solo levels over the previous year or two, some of which found their way into the collection. Black Void doesn't really fall into either of these categories, instead standing alongside Simon Broadhead and Will Hackney as one of the less-defined contributors. Black Void is sometimes remembered for Captain Mancubus, a Doom II episode that they created alongside another author named Epyo. This, however, is The Real Crusher, a MAP06 replacement for Doom II released mid-2002.

When I saw the title of this map, I thought to Kim Bach's The Abandoned Mines II. "Oh, a remake of 'Crusher'!" I thought. Black Void was sure to point out that they had a different idea of what "Crusher" was supposed to be in their head. But--there's something in the .TXT that ought to give you pause. "No, there is actually no ceilings crushers what-so-ever". Well, okay. I don't know how exactly you can go about calling this level The Real Crusher and not have any sort of crushing special inside of it, but I'm game for some kind of surprise. That was so much of the fun of Doom 2 In Name Only, after all; seeing how the authors decided to interpret the level names.

Well, The Real Crusher barely resembles Doom II's MAP06 in any shape, form, or fashion. This is a sloppy-looking cave crawler and dungeon delve with tons of irregular room shapes and oblique angles. If "crusher" is evoked in any sense then it's a sort of feeling of claustrophobia that some people may feel when they're below ground, with their anxiety simulating the mountains of earth pushing down on top of them. There aren't really any narrow spaces that evoke this feeling, though, just a lot of big, dark, and mostly flat-floor caves that the level opens and then closes with. The middle segment of the map starts out with a psychedelic mishmash of red and green goo before turning into a sort of tucked away wooden-paneled stronghold, offering your sole glimpse of the sky in one of those cross-covered skylights.

The best approximation that I can give of this map is an aesthetically simple but solidly-built '94 map. Either Black Void or someone pretending to be BV dropped a comment on /idgames that disparages the look of the level, going so far as to suggest that it was created without once referencing the grid. Say what you will, but the jagged room shapes give it a leg up over pretty much every rectangular room-and-corridor map I've played. The false walls where you deal with the red and green goo give it something of a psychedelic feel, especially when paired with the floor lighting in the earlier, darker portions of the map. The Real Crusher loses something once you make it to the brightly lit wood and marble segments. It's sort of like Lovecraft's quote about what a boon it is that the human mind cannot process literally everything except instead of the ability to collate all of the information received it's the room's too dark for you to see it all and instead of going insane it's being bored with what you're seeing.

This is damning with some faint praise, but there are some charming aspects within its bizarre level design. One of these is the yellow key, which is blockaded by a protective shell when you approach it, making for a fun keepaway "trap". The second half of the marble section--the one that isn't fullbright--looks pretty cool, texture alignment aside, and I like the jagged shape of the paired blood pools that you have to judge through. I kind of want to know where the opening sort of mine shaft area came from because it doesn't really resemble anything else in the map. Also, check out the smooth-looking curves on the pond of water found in the middle of the final hub!

The combat is passable. Some of the segments are frustrating because you're battling spectres in the dark and you're pretty much just shooting on faith. In other places, the light and shadow works because you use the silhouettes to judge exactly where the monsters are. There's an early trap that got me good, a really simple one for the combat shotgun that you ought to see coming from a mile away. Generally speaking, though, most of the gunplay is low-impact (for me) combat shotgun and occasionally rocket launcher action with a few feel-good places where you get to slaughter imps or, in one particular room in the western wing, spectres.

The Real Crusher isn't much to look at but it works and is memorable for being, if nothing else, a strange trip through a gauntlet of quasi-psychedelic rooms reminiscent of '94 weirdness. Whether this is a testament to the amount of effort it takes to disrupt the enjoyability of Doom II's core gameplay is a question to be answered by critics who are more cynical than I.