[Doom] SACRFICE.WAD - E1M3 UV Maxdemo
Channel: rybacksda
Date: 2011-09-07

Pwad: DOOM "Sacrifice" Episode
Author: Ty Halderman & Robert Taylor
Date:  7th September 1994
Map: e1m3 - "The Morgues"
Category: UV Maxdemo
Executable: Doom.exe
Time: 6:11

Disappointing level. To me it feels like the two authors spent days and days working on the design and thinking up all kinds of morgue-themed rooms and when it came time to add the gameplay, went "oh, it's late and I'm tired, let's just chuck some monsters into the first half and call it a day." The fights in the beginning were pretty dull, and the best way I could cope with them was just to run past as many monsters as possible, and clean them up on the way back. But the second half of the level is so empty you may as well be playing with -nomonsters. Long bare metal corridors may bring out the sterile atmosphere of a morgue quite well, but they're not exactly exciting. And that enormous near-dark hall at the end looks great (by 1994 standards) but there's nothing to do in there.

Again it's clear that the authors have come up with an idea and a theme for the level, then spent most of their time dreaming up rooms to design around that theme. We have a crypt, a refrigerated corpse-holding room, an autopsy chamber and so on. And actually, playing through this pwad level after level, I'm starting to be reminded of Duke 3D level design, where the designers would think of an idea like a burger joint then let that idea dictate the design. Ty and Robert are getting in there more than a year early. Which is almost revolutionary of them, as this is still a brand-new genre - there aren't yet any first person shooters with such an emphasis on real-world environments. The missing ingredient is Duke 3D's interactivity, the way you can always do something to the environment, even if it's only to blow it up. There's nothing for us to do in this morgue, apart from look at it.

The end is slow, but there's no real way to speed things up, you're entirely at the mercy of some very slow rising platforms. That switch at the end would have led to the secret level, if they'd ever got round to designing it. The regular exit is back at 3:43.

Download levelset from idgames here: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=816
Video captured using prboom-plus 2.5.1.2.test.