subway21 by neil ziring - this map for e2m1 was released on july 24, 1994 when doom was on the market for less than a year. given the tools that authors had to work with back then - kudos for a job well done

Difficulty: 5

i played on ultra violence and really, did not find this all that difficult. of course, in this day and age - we've come to expect much more difficulty than was expected in 1994. there was more than enough health, ammo, etc... lying around and while i was caught out a few times, and even found myself low on health once or twice, that situation didn't  last long and by the time i finished the map i had enough of everything to do the entire thing over again. if you are a high level p layer,  i might recommend nightmare for this one. even uv players might find this doable on nightmare - so basically, just step up one level from where you normally are. the only thing that might make it difficult on nightmare, even for awesome  players, is the sheer size of the map and the well hidden secrets you need to uncover in order to complete the map

Design: 7

this is a tough call. it is well designed with lots of little secrets and hidden areas to keep you hunting around for that elusive solution to complete the puzzle, but it also suffers from what many maps suffered from back in the day - lack of detail. this one is very large, with lots of large, wide open areas using the same texture. it doesn't really look like any subway tunnel that i've ever seen, either. personally, i think dethrail says "subway" better, but then again, that was a zdoom map and i designed it nine years later.

Playability: 7

maybe i'm just not observant enough, or perhaps the secrets and switches were that well hidden - either way, it took me far too long to complete this map because i spent alot of time going back over ground i had already covered, in order to find a switch or some other object i needed in order to progress in the game. also - a couple of switches which bring you back up to platforms are sort of in the dark, making them nearly impossible to notice on the first pass - more of a thing than anything else

Overall (Not an Average): 7

overall, i enjoyed playing this map. if i had spent a bit more time being observant, i might not have spent as much time wandering around an empty level as I had. can't really blame the author for that one. lol

take my advice - try it on a harder difficulty than you usually do and enjoy the nostalgic ride that is 1994.