X-treme (demo) (EAXT.WAD)

X-treme is a two-level demo of a megaWAD project that Erik Alm declined to finish, released months after he published Scythe, late in 2003. If Alm had finished out the whole thing then it might have ended up as a gold standard for masochists the world over. As it stands, EAXT is whispered among consumers of ultra-hard mapsets, with the likes of gggmork theorizing whether or not it could be completed in a single segment run. As it turns out, yes, it can, but few speedrunners are willing to cut their teeth on it. The only person willing to do so on MAP02 appears to be stx-vile, whose record you can see played on Youtube.

It's no secret that Erik Alm was a speedrunner who liked to play as well as make difficult levels. This was evident as early as his contributions to Sam Woodman's One-Week Megawad, but he was popularly--or infamously, depending on how you personally took it while playing--known for the difficulty spike in Scythe's third episode. The later levels of Alm's One Bloody Night showed a further affinity for Hell Revealed-style encounters, but with a somewhat reduced scale and married with smaller, choreographed fights that point the way toward the sort of run and gun style that we take for granted in Doom's "modern" era. X-treme is more true to Alm's late-game leanings, an extreme take on Doom II gameplay that feels utterly unforgiving.

EAXT on UV's closest equivalent that I can think of is franckFRAG's Swift Death, especially its final episode, except X-treme's level spaces are much larger by comparison. You start out in danger and you're going to find death wherever you go. Incumbent monster placement as well as ambushes are designed to generate maximum levels of discomfort. There are a lot of Cyberdemons, and they're very handy as focal points for infighting if you're capable of utilizing them as such, but there's a certain paradigm that you have to both think and play in to get the most out of the resources that Alm has made available to you. If you know, you know. Personally, I wouldn't recommend X-treme on UV.

EAXT has three difficulty settings, though, and the other two are balanced for entirely different feels. HNTR will be for folks who loved the combat of Scythe's first two episodes. When you compare the scaled-down / low-stakes firefights to the scale of the installations that these levels are set in, they might feel a little empty, but the combat style is spot on for something that plays fast and fun and Alm's level design is always pleasantly clean. HMP is more for players who want something that hits back hard without feeling like a relentless barrage of sucker punches and it seems the closest in alignment to "modern" difficulty... though I wouldn't have minded a Cyberdemon or two in there. Full disclosure: the starts of these levels on HMP are still kind of hairy, but not "why am I doing this to myself" hairy.

X-treme is an interesting experiment. At first glance, it doesn't seem like its style of difficulty really flowered within the community, given that there isn't a huge niche for levels that true Doom murderheads describe as "deliberately unfun". Its ultimate legacy, though, is Death-Destiny's No Chance, which specifically mentions EAXT by name. I haven't played a single Death-Destiny level but I know NOCHANCE's reputation. It'll be interesting to see what exactly filtered down to it from EAXT in the event that, you know, I get to D-D's catalogue. Back in 2013, a slightly pre-SWTW Ribbiks (by, like, a week) distinguished Death-Destiny's difficulty style as part of a category different from X-treme.

If you love Alm's level design and you haven't tried EAXT, then you really don't have any excuse NOT to. DON'T play this on UV. At least, don't say that I didn't warn you. If you loved the first twenty maps of Scythe, particularly the early ones, then give it a go on HNTR. If you play a lot of modern Doom then you'll probably be fine on HMP once you weather the starts; the lack of Cybies may even make it feel a little undertuned. In any case, it's cool to discover yet another link between Alm and the current scene, regardless of whatever game of "telephone" might be at play from EAXT to NOCHANCE to all of its descendants.

X-TREME

(demo)

by Erik Alm

MAP01

This is a big, aesthetically clean and beautiful Doom II base crammed full of monsters. There are probably a bunch of crazy speedrunner strats that make the most of fun stuff like the BFG pickup. For the layman using saves and tactically, uh, dying (me), the path of least resistance was the combat shotgun above the Hell knight mosh pit. After that, SOME of the fights aren't that bad. Keep in mind that you can skip over the gap in the red key room to wind up on the other side of the outdoor courtyard. You can also lure the BFG guardian away for a much cleaner grab. It feels like a lot of the Cyberdemons are designed to be set upon the lesser demons, but these are speedrunner luxuries. About the only thing that felt magical, and this is with saves, was getting the two elements of the red key ambush to infight with each other. HNTR: This is a very fun level with something like, I dunno, mid-range Scythe-style gunplay in large halls that were originally meant to house Hell Revealed-scale hordes. It's good combat, sometimes light, sometimes challenging. The change in tone between the massive revenant ambush on the stairs to, like, lowly zombimen is almost but not quite ridiculous.

MAP02

When Erik says that MAP02 will kill you in 5-10 seconds on skill 4, he isn't joking. Only the toughest of the toughies should attempt to play through this level on UV. While it's something that I managed to weather with a LOT of saving and reloading, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't regularly challenge themselves with ultrahard maps and mapsets, and I'm not talking about most of the hard stuff that I've played. My advice: enjoy this on a lower skill setting and watch stx-vile's masterful UV-max demo. This is a pleasant-looking installation with multiple tiers of action. It starts out going hard at the player with you surrounded by Hell nobles, thereafter challenged by monsters in pretty much every direction that you could hope to run. The BFG, rocket launcher, and plasma gun are all located in the tall building near the start, but stepping inside will provoke two arch-viles on two different levels of play, and the BFG on the top floor is guarded by an asshole Cyberdemon, one of, like, twenty that are just dying to stomp you flat. This map has almost zero chill. The main exception is the southern section of the base that's accessed via the red skull bars at the top of the BFG elevator. You kind of know that Alm relaxed here because the first room, that you can shoot into, is kind of silly with three arch-viles running around and resurrecting shotgun guys. The rest of the segment up until you grab the blue skull key feels like the weight of the world has been lifted from your shoulders. Infighting is key but some of the primo opportunities, like giving the Cyberdemon guarding the BFG a ride down the elevator to crush the revenant / arch-vile mosh pit for you, require a deft touch and--I'm guessing--a significant amount of attempts. HNTR: Like MAP01, this is a drastic transformation into something that fans of the first 20 or so Scythe levels ought to appreciate, played out in a level that--if you've seen its original monster placement--feels kind of empty, much as I imagine Hell Revealed might. I think that the imp / Baron teleport ambush toward the end is as gnarly as this level gets due to its multi-prong nature.

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