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): Baddcogg
Date released: 2010-08-15
Other info: Summer Vertical Contest ‘10 entry
Theme: Haunted/Underground
Starting off, this seems like just another “break in to a mansion and case the joint” kind of mission. You collect your thieving gear and get ready to exit via the window when you hear and feel a tremendous rumble coming from the earth.
As you drop down on to the street below, objectives change: forget going to some old doffer’s mansion – let’s investigate that hole in the ground instead. If you’re interested, you can still nip across the road and frob a few coins and gems from a table set outside some unpickable doors – this may or may not be the mansion you were going to visit this night. You’ll have to mind the guards and Builder along the way though.
So getting back to the rift that opened up after the earthquake: dropping down a bit, you’ll immediately notice that this must be a vertical contest 2010 entry. But instead of opting for the usual tower-based mission, Baddcogg went for an underground mission instead – a different way of looking at things, and it still counts, technically. You end up in some abandoned mines which have been sealed off for goodness knows how long, and it’s inhabited by bloody spiders. The big ones are especially brutish; the smaller ones don’t seem to be textured at all, they just appear grey – I don’t know if this is just on my PC, but I recall seeing some screenshots long ago that showed the same thing. In any case, spiders rarely crop up in TDM FMs, so it’s not a bad thing to see them here. You’re better off hacking them with your sword, although the big ones you might want to snipe with a couple of broadhead arrows.
Hover mouse over pictures for captions, if available.
A bit farther down and you go beyond the mines and in to something akin to The Lost City from Thief: The Dark Project, except this is scaled down a bunch. It reminds me not only of Thief, but the better bits of Dark Messiah of Might And Magic as well. Within the building’s walls there’s a nice secret area or two to be found, and if you were worried at some point about not finding enough gems or gold to finish the mission, worry no more, for it is all here for you.
This mission isn’t easy to ghost. A lot of the light sources are inextinguishable, like crystals or mushrooms. Flaming zombies are less likely to notice that they’ve been doused than say, a guard with a torch, thankfully. The two occasions that I’ve played this mission, I ended up running for my life from the entry to the underground building, up the stairs and out again. I found being spotted by the zombies and spiders was therefore too common. The mission isn’t hard, but don’t expect to get a perfect stealth score without a lot of trial and error or patience. This is more Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider than your typical sneaking mission.
I was a bit disappointed not to find any belchers (you know what they’re really called). I was sure as I descended into the depths that I heard sounds that resembled these beasts. These ominous sounds did add a bit to the atmosphere and made me sit on the edge of my seat for a bit.
There are also some bugs – one game-breaking one that I should mention as well. After retreating from the mines on my first playthrough, I got back to the starting area and the mission didn’t end. I had to restart, tried a higher difficulty level, and got through. The only thing I did differently apart from changing the difficulty, was discover the one secret area.
Apart from all this, the mission’s not too bad. A bit on the linear side if not small, though, and involves simple backtracking to get out again. Perhaps a cave-in and having to find another route out would have been in order to make it a tad more interesting or challenging.
Pros:
+ Something a little different in theme.
Cons:
- Bugs
- Linear gameplay, and backtracking.
FM score: 7/10
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