WAD Review of OCTAGON.WAD By Cameron Newham. (cam@iinet.com.au) Copyright (c) Cameron B. Newham, 1994 ===================================== Title : OCTAGON.WAD Author : ????? Email Address : Samneric@connected.com. Misc. Author Info : ????? Description : This is an E1M1 replacement pwad. It's texture protected against shareware play. Written with DEU 5.0 and run past BSP11x.EXE, it supports 4 players. This level contains only the enemies you might expect to find in an E1M1 - Sargeants and Imps. Your only weapons are shotguns and a chaingun. Good hunting! FTP : ocf.unt.edu ====================================== Well, it's Sunday again and time for another WAD review. Before I get stuck into the review, I'd just like to say thank you to all those people who emailed me regarding the Warehouse.WAD review. Lots of nice comments, and because it was such positive feedback... here is another review! Oh, one other things - I do this in spare moments, as I am writing WAD's too. I am hoping to review one a week. Anyway - enough of this and onto the review. Well, I rarely download and play other peoples WAD's and I have no idea why I downloaded Octagon. I think I was half asleep. I must say that given the above description you'd think this was a damn boring WAD but I am pleased to say nothing could be further from the truth! I took one look at the opening scene and said to myself "There's gonna be a review of this on Sunday". Octagon grabs your attention right from the start, mainly due to it's octagonal start room - almost like a lake-side gazebo. It was a nice lake view, but I was here for more serious stuff than picnic's beside the lake - I was here to toast evil. I started off with my trusty pistol but soon had a nice shotgun in my hands as I entered an underground maze of twisty passages, cleverly overlaid to give the impression of multiple levels. These passages were populated by imp's and sergeant's (as the description says) and, I have to confess, even after many hours of playing Doom, I jumped when an Imp unexpectedly ripped me from behind! Clearly the author of this WAD has done an excellent job at setting the scene with good use of light levels and textures. I finally exited the maze and was confronted by an "ornamental" pool of deadly acid, surrounded by a walkway with a dozen imp's in sight. I'd also seen a chaingun but couldn't get it because I couldn't fit in the narrow space it was in. I had fun straffing and blowing the heads off the Imp's, then it was up onto a very narrow ledge to retrieve a blue key-card. Having retrieved said card, I worked out how to get the chaingun and then entered the main "building". It was now clear why this WAD was named "Octagon" - most of the floor plan is made up of octagonal sectors. These sectors form huge columns and hide many of the evils of this level. Did I do some running! I survived and, with my trusty chaingun, soon had the area secured. I scoured the area and found a few "secret" doors which led off to various other sections of the level. It was in one of these sections that I found a novel idea for wall climbing. I'll let you play the WAD and see what I'm refering to - and I thought it was rather well done. After searching around for a while I found a rather interesting switch, which when thrown, causes rather a large change to the main octagon room. Several more Imp's fluttered their way back to Hell in the process. Well, all good things must come to an end and I found that end in the form of a blue door and an end level switch. On exiting I found that I hadn't quite killed everything and my "secrets" was only about 75% - so it would seem that my afternoon ramble through the Octagon wasn't complete. Octagon is what I would call a "nice little level". The only criticism I could level at it is that the blue key-card was found in the course of events (you'd have trouble *not* picking it up!) and there was at least one piece of equipment that I never used (a radiation suit). Octagon provided heaps more ammunition than was needed and was fairly easy to complete (I played on "Hurt me plenty") but this is fine considering this WAD is a drop in replacement for E1M1. I didn't find out if Octagon has difficulty levels implemented, but one would expect it to be only a little more difficult on Ultra-Violence. In summary, Octagon is well designed and executed and plays at the difficulty level it claims. I have no hesitation in recommending this WAD to Doom newbies and seasoned players. I certainly enjoyed it and look forward to more WAD's from this author. On scales of 0 to 10. Layout: 10 Textures: 10 Difficulty: 8 Level Logic: 8 Funness 9 On Cameron's overall scale of 0 to 10, Octagon.wad scores a 9. - Cameron (cam@iinet.com.au).