Random Doom mod review thread

@pintolinh0 Oh damn that thread. There's definitely a language barrier, a bad translator maybe, cause I remember JadingTsunami saying there were no universal standards and then you saying they don't exist in an argumentative manner, as if JT said there were such things.

A review should detail everything the wad has that's just what reviews do, but a description in a .txt is what should only give a short text on what to expect.(not to say Komori's reviews weren't proper ones, though. Speaking of which, I might try those two wads sometime.)

Also this isn't DW, you won't get banned for pretty much everything lmao

Double agree. It's a neat idea but it's difficult to tell what pattern the trail takes through the honeycomb, especially while trying to kite the horde. You're guaranteed to take at least some damage unless you've played it so many times you have some sort of speedrun strat that's choreographed to hell. It's not majorly offensive but it's a pretty big hiccup in an otherwise masterpiece of a map.

1) Yes, we might have language barriers here and there 'cause both translators i use (my own gulliver and google translator) are very flawed. Nonetheless i think there were a clear distinction between the way Jtsunami and I talked about universal standards from the moment i jump in the discussion until his last post. I'm gonna do my best to showcase that below, but JadingTsunami feel free to correct me if i'm being unfair here. I'll paraphrase some parts but i suggest revisiting the 1st page of the thread if you're interested.

good-old the quote above represents 100% of what i'm trying to say. In retrospect, i think that i'll step out of this topic for the moment. Not only it's going circular but also in both 40oz's thread, and on this one, other users accurately presented my stance on this subject way better than i did. But as a closing argument; even tho review has a fixed meaning across medias, the tools and criteria one might use to write a review will differ depending on the media format - so in the case of pwads, mapsets, megawads, etc. i find that the way most reviewers approach them are often inappropriate and involved in unnecessary pedantry*. And imho the suggestions and conclusions that were presented at the original thread, like 'doubling down on the nitpicking/subjective aspect' or 'splitting reviews into subdivisions' or 'having a centralized place to host them' or 'relying on content creators as an autorithy to improve feedback income' - are horrendous and poorly thought out, not differing in the slightest of what we currently have.. instead, just inverts the interest group.


Mind you, it's not a foolproof method and depending on recent precedents at the interested place, you wouldn't even need to make a dummy acc. But it's a very good method to test the swimmable level on murky waters.

Anyway finally for another on-topic post:(My first review ever? Maybe Probably Definitely a waste of time to read)
Back when there wasn't a "true" way to reload weapons in ZDoom, Xaser found a way to do so using ACS, but since a single map with a reloading weapon didn't exactly sound like the best way to showcase a milestone in Doom modding, the community got Zen Dynamics.

Zen Dynamics is a partial conversion mod and has a lot more than simply reloading weapons, and the rest of the stuff is not just there for the sake of being there, I wouldn't have guessed it was made just for the reloading trick if I played it before reading the text file. Yes, not all of the wad is top-notch, but it still turns out to be an enjoyable experience.

The story is the best thing about this mod, and I wouldn't say anything about it, the intro does so way better.

The weapons themselves are higher in power than their Doom counterparts, which is balanced by the levels being difficult. They have alt-fires(save for the SSG replacement), reloading(duh), and select/deselect animations. There are sounds for all of these too. Berserks are portables here, known as "Zen-roids" and they appear as separate weapons(even these have alt-fires! You can use their syringes to attack monsters), doing the same job as the vanilla equivalent, only doubling the damage output instead of multiplying it by 10, since the machete you get is pretty much a straight upgrade over the fist. The pistol replacement is the "viper" which borrows almost everything from the Half-life magnum. It has the same firing sound,has ammo which isn't very common later into the game, and is quite powerful. However, it does look different, with a sci-fi design, and it's alt-fire shoots all the remaining bullets in the cylinder, which is now part of the barrel. The streetsweeper is the shotgun replacement which looks like a Thompson that shoots 12 gauges instead of .45 ACPs, but for something with a drum magazine, I expected a higher fire rate. It's alt-fire accumulates more shells, to deal with the bigger monsters. The ego smasher is a more powerful SSG with a higher fire rate, and is fed with 8 shell chains. The Zen-II is the high firerate weapon, with a ChaosZero variant that uses the same ammo but has more power for a lower firerate, and both of them have burstfire alt-fires. There's an assault rifle with an attached grenade launcher. There's also a nailgun that resembles its Quake counterpart, this time in every way, with an alt-fire that spreads the nails 5 at a time in a spread similar to the vanilla shotgun's. And of course, what good is a sci-fi mod without plasma weapons? You have the Plasma SMGs(yes, you heard that right)which are dual wielded and have a projectile based alt-fire, a fusion cannon that feels like a different version of the BFG, and a railgun which can also shoot projectiles that go through enemies. The rocket launcher replacement, the Scorcher is like a powerup, it's very powerful, but it isn't there when you need it the most; the boss fight. There's a weapon that is best not talked about.

Most of the monsters are modified versions of some of the originals. The maelstrom's ranged attack is one that spreads out in flames when it hits, which can drop your health very quickly. For something that's based on a lost soul and is supposed to appear in the same places as mid tier monsters like the caco, it's not really what you call balance. The cacophyte is a similar one, but it's difference is way lower than the maelstrom. The tortured soul shoots out poisonous fume that is quite powerful, and an incredibly fast projectile as a ranged attack. It is similar to the pain elemental in that it can be dangerous if left alive for long. The hell guard has about the same health as a revenant and shoots three lightning balls consecutively at a time, which is a bit hard to dodge at times. The arachnophyte is a flying spider mastermind with lower health. The imp warlord is an "intelligent" enemy in that it blocks your attacks with its shield when you try to attack it, so you will have a hard time trying to kill it with a rapidfire weapon like an SMG. It has 4 kinds of attacks, one of which include spawning a bat! The shield bouncing away when it's killed is a nice reward for killing it. There's also the hell's battery, which almost functions entirely like a boss because of its multiple attacks and occasional invincibility like the imp warlord, but the mod's weapons don't make it feel like one. The actual boss of this one is something that I won't talk about, again, just for the story.

The level design does the job of creating the atmospheres they were supposed to quite well, but you'll encounter quite a lot of areas that are barely enough for the player to move, and it feels like they were playtested with a Doom mod that makes the player smaller, so the playtester didn't notice anything wrong with the maps. They are hard in that they don't have that much health, but the better weapons balance it. You'll also end up leaving the map leaving a ton of ammo behind, so you can finish the game without ever touching a couple of the weapons, maybe even complete it with just one of them. This also makes pistol starts doable, which might not have been purposefully implemented, looking at the fact that they're basically doing a map without half of the weapons you're supposed to have, although the ammo for some of the weapons like the Viper, the Fusion Cannon and the Zen-II/ChaosZero isn't as common as the others. You can sometimes get lost in the maps, but there's an objective screen which can tells you what to do. A common sight in the later levels is the baby mancubi, which are simply decorations, but they block and are shootable and break when they die, and the variant that is stuck to the roof has a part of it falling down when it dies. Depending on how much you hate mancubi, you'll love killing these. Another nice effect is the falling floor, which unfortunately isn't a common sight in the levels and is seen only once or twice. One of the levels needs you to exit the level in time after heavily damaging the reactor, before it explodes.

The music for this mod wasn't specifically composed for it except for a couple of tracks, but it fits the mod quite well. It's mostly techno, but you probably would have guessed.

Overall, it's a cool mod that just feels like it wasn't playtested in a couple of places, but it's definitely worth a try if you like weapon mods and specific levels for them.