10th of November 2024

WG Knee Deep 1 | Single/Multi | Author: William Gee | Download

The Review: William Gee's latest is a remake of the first two maps of Doom's shareware episode, Knee Deep in the Dead. It being 2024 with Gee as the author, you can expect a copious amount of TROR effects; and for sure, it's impressive, something one could not fake with spritework. Of course, Doom did not have anything resembling room-over-room, but the remake's layout is still quite strongly based on the original Doom maps and most of it is instantly recognizable; not much beside the cave section had me going "was this in the original?".
The theme is space, the Duke3D equivalent to Doom's "techbase" theme. Quite often the map reminded me of WGSpace 3, in fact. The place is alive with all kinds of machinery, ambient sounds and blinking lights, although not teeming with detailing to the extent that StarCraftZerg's E1M2 remake was. The map is also very interconnected, but in the way the original Duke3D maps were rather than having an open-ended layout. This is good, as it means less time wandering around not knowing where to go, and opening up those routes back to earlier sections helps you navigate the place.
The map is also fun to play with a good amount of monsters and items and quite a few puzzles to solve. There are plenty of secrets (almost 20; I found around half) and there's no excessive reliance on cheap respawns (respawning Octabrains getting stuck in the upper reaches of the map are kinda annoying though). At one point you're given plentiful ammo for the Devastator so you can blast away with it, a rare treat in Duke3D maps (remember when we used to dnstuff to be able to do that?).
As for criticism, the theme could be described as "generic as hell". The map feels more like a collection of rooms rather than a coherent whole, and the natural terrain is often a bit pointy (especially when TROR is involved, although that's understandable). Texturing is all over the place with a different wall texture for every room, which doesn't help establish a coherent theme either. The map's final minutes also soured me a little bit. First you're treated to an impressive (although glitchy) TROR reactor room, but it took me a while to notice there's a mirror in the middle (its rotation makes it invisible to one side at any given time). The mirror being there is an impressive feat in itself, of course, but the gameplay bit involving Shrinker blasts took too many attempts via trial and error. And when I was finally given the key to the exit door, I had forgotten where it was (it was right at the E1M1 start, a bit I had last seen twenty minutes ago).

Conclusion: WG Knee Deep 1 is an interesting remake of the first two maps of Doom. Technology-wise it's as 2024 as a Duke3D map can be with its size and abundant use of TROR. For the most part it's also a lot of fun to play with enjoyable combat and satisfying use of interconnectivity. WG Knee Deep 1 is also pretty much as generic as a space/hi-tech map can get.

Rating: 92