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Thanks to
bzzrak for the review!
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Breach
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Doomworld thread!
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Title : Breach
Filename : breach.wad
Release date : 2015-12—28
Author : Viggles
Email Address : alun.bestor@gmail.com
Description : Sprawling techbase medley
with surreal interludes
in hell. Assume the usual twaddle about
teleportation research gone awry.
Discuss the
review in the Forums!
In 2015, Alun "Viggles" Bestor released his first level since
the mid-90s, Breach. It won a Cacoward on Doomworld in 2015. Moreover, it
comes bundled with Doom Retro, the classic, refined source port. Breach
requires a "strong limit-removing" port (> 32K segs), so I'm sorry, Vanilla
purists, you won't see this beauty of a level.
I played this level using Doom Retro 2.3.2, on HMP difficulty. So what do I
think about it? Shortly, it absolutely kicks ass.
But that's not much of a review, is it? Soooo...
The level is set in some sort of invaded base. You can already guess the
plot, right? The starting area looks kind of just abandoned, but later all
Hell breaks loose, literally. The level takes you through entire abandoned,
broken, destroyed facilities, some rocky caves covered in nukage and a
couple of hellish areas. The selling point of Breach is its truly beautiful
detailing. Every single little thing is beautifully detailed, with nukage
flowing out of pipes, cracks in the floor and on the walls (one particular
crack appears on the ceiling as you move toward it!), brick stones hovering
above the void, lights in the walls, snakes coming out of a gargoyle's mouth
(I can't really describe that accurately), all sorts of fancy techy
thingies, and, everyone's favourite, crates. Viggles even manages to create
such works of art without using any custom textures (except all-black ones)!
However, it might slow down your FPS quite noticeably. Not all the time,
only sometimes.
The difficulty (on HMP) is quite fair, with classic gameplay elements, like
chaingunner and revenant ambushes, fights on toxic waste, but doesn't overdo
the slaughter moments, and its 205 monsters will provide a fun challenge.
The dominant gameplay element is: you enter a weakly defended area, start
exploring things, then you're suddenly teleported to short areas in Hell,
then you return to that area, but it's significantly expanded, with, you got
it, monsters all over the place. The author does it really well, so I'm sure
you'll enjoy, even if your Doom skills suck, like mine.
Also, there is a really weird telefragging section, but don't worry about
it, you'll see what I'm talking about.
I don't have much to say now, so, do yourself a favour and go play Breach.
You won't regret it. At all. It'll take you around 40 minutes if you don't
spend too much time looking for secrets.
One thing to conclude the review with: Viggles says that this is just ONE
HALF of the level and that he might release the other half one day. Hell,
even another 20 years would be worth waiting if it turns as good as the
first one!
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