TDM FM Review: The Creeps

This is a review of one of The Dark Mod’s (a mod for Doom 3) fan missions. It may contain traces of spoilers. You have been warned.

Author(s): Mortem Desino
Version: 1.0
Date released: 2011-10-30
Other info: Halloween Speed Build Contest 2011 entry
Theme: City/Haunted
Download FM here

MD or Mortem Desino is a name I’m sure I’ve read somewhere before, but to my knowledge this is his first mission. And it’s not too bad.

When starting up, I was greeted with a voiceover during the briefing section, which felt very Thief: Deadly Shadows-esque. A little bit of extra effort there, then. Indeed, at several points during the mission there are some voiceovers.

The mission is to sneak inside a “superstitious” family’s home while they’re out for the night, and case the joint. You begin on the streets outside as usual and make your way towards the tree in the centre of the courtyard. From here you fumble your way around, interact with some frobbable objects, and get inside a tower of sorts.

You eventually get around to jumping out the window and on to the roof outside. There’s plenty of open windows and multiple entry points in this mission – especially the Creeps’ manor – making for some interesting routes to take – and limited replayability. Most of these alternate ways you’ll only discover after having gone the long way perhaps.

After entering the Creeps’ household through one of several entry points, you’ll likely stumble upon the main focal point of the building: the dining room. Here you have a few surprises waiting for you.

There’s always the promise of some sort of encounter in this mission. I was expecting to run in to something or someone. I thought I’d be facing off against pagans – who rarely make an appearance in any TDM FMs, or maybe some zombies or a haunt. But there was hardly anything. It’s not really scary at all – maybe moody; a tad tense, perhaps. That’s the aim of the contest I suppose. Zombies and the like are so old hat; overdone, and not many players really like “undead missions” anyway. I don’t.

Hover mouse over pictures for captions, if available.

I definitely noticed the contrasting use of colour and lighting between the starting point of the mission and the area in and around the Creeps’ place. It went from the more traditional blue, brown and grey hues you’d expect, to yellow and orange. This complements the Halloween theme and the season of Autumn (or Fall) quite nicely – even though it’s Spring over where I am at the time of writing this fan mission review.

But all that I’ve spoken of so far is what you’ll encounter on the surface level. There’s also a subterranean section which you’ll need to find in order to finish the mission (especially as far as loot goes on the highest difficulty setting). Here you’ll needless to say, get most of the loot, plus experience some scares, too – predictable, but it’ll make you jump, nonetheless. The style of scares is almost right out of a commercial title like F.E.A.R. – but the first one, which was best in the series. Let me just say that it’s very difficult if not impossible to get a perfect stealth score in this mission.

There was one nice touch that I liked in this mission, and that was another sort of object – an obstacle – to interact with. Up until now I’ve come across locked doors that you either need keys for, or you have to pick; there’ve been locked chests, too. These are the main two obstacles separating you from success, and after several FMs, I’m dying for a little originality. Well, it’s here in this FM, in the form of a mere padlock. You can only interact with this padlock once inside the house, but when you pick it and the window swings open – I must confess that I thought that was rather nifty. It’s a small thing and yet it adds positively to the overall impression I get from this FM. Also, the massive tree outside with the falling leaves was great, if a tad unrealistic. That tree drops leaves faster than my cat sheds hair.

There was that and a bit of texture misalignment, plus some messy management of heights as far as negatives go. You can climb on top of roofs and look in to the empty abyss which is the skybox that surrounds the map. It takes away from the good that this mission had going for it. That and there was another small error in mission objectives depending on difficulty settings. Playing the medium difficulty or “Spirit” was just the same as playing on easy, or “The Wind”, because the loot goal was exactly the same.

But all in all, for this author’s first FM - it’s quite good.

Pros:

+ Multiple entry points for some buildings.

+ Extra effort with the voiceovers.

+ Some tension and atmosphere.

Cons:

- Silly mistakes that could have been avoided.

- Quite short.

FM score: 8.4/10