The Dark Mod FM Review: The Rift

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.

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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

Thief and Thief II over at Good Old Games

I received this info this month while visiting Cheap Thief Missions recently. It seems as though GOG finally got a hold of Thief Gold and Thief II: The Metal Age!

Going over there to have a look at the games’ pages, the user reviews are in and it’s 5 stars all round – and it should be, because these truly are classic titles that served to inspire further games that took a more stealthy route rather than all-out gunplay.

They both currently go for $9.99, but that price may well drop as time goes by, as the average price for games on GOG is about $5.99. But still, both games for $20 – that’s not too bad at all. Of course, these are digital downloads and both game are a bout a CD’s content in weight. For those of you who don’t have a decent internet connection, you can still get these games as retail products, with boxes and manuals – everything. And they’re not too expensive. Really, from Amazon you can get Thief and even full Thief series bundles (including Deadly Shadows) if you shop around a bit for less than $9.99 and shipping is free. So while digital might be more convenient for those in the first world, in my opinion GOG should lower the price for competitive reasons soon.

Now all they have to do is get System Shock and System Shock 2 on there – they’ve been two of the most demanded titles yet to appear on GOG for some time now. Then the Looking Glass collection would be a little nearer to being complete.

TDM FM Review: Samhain: Night on Bone Hill

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): PranQster
Version: 1.0
Date released: 10-9-2011 (Oct. 09, 2011)
Other info: Halloween Speed Build ‘11 entry
Theme: Haunted
Download FM here

This is the first entry in the Halloween Speed Build contest of 2011. The title and loading screen that shows up is quite striking. It could be the name of a horror movie – probably not a very good one, but still.

In this FM, you’re off for a bit of tomb raiding, similarly to “Down in the Bonehoard” from Thief: The Dark Project perhaps. The ultimate goal is to nab a ruby which belongs to a noble family which came from pagan roots. And you plan to do this on the night of All Hallows Eve.

You start off in the graveyard outside and notice that you’ve somehow recently developed the very sneaksie ability to levitate – very handy. This is a bug that has been reported by several people (but I noticed it was fixed on my second playthrough using v 1.07). After deigning to set your feet down on the ground, you make your way past the tombstones and on to the entrance to the mausoleum. Here you see a group of pagans leaving after having paid their respects to their deceased relatives. PranQster was very keen to show off the new “plaque mask” here that was made by Nosslak, as well as the pumpkins by Springheel. But the masks don’t always appear for everyone which meant some had to download the texture separately.

Seeing the candles and the pentacle at the entrance, I got a feeling that things wouldn’t be so serene for long. Inside the mausoleum there’s some nice marble textures, and ahead lies the ruby you’re after. Just snatch it and it’s mission accomplished, right? Wrong. I almost bought in to it. But then the floor gave way and I ended up in water-filled tunnel below. The skeletons down in the water give an ominous look in to what lies ahead. It looks like I wasn’t the first sure-footed* thief to go after the treasure…

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Inside the caves there’s a nice showing off of lighting and colourful hues – reds, oranges, blues, greens; all colours of the rainbow from nicely placed light sources. Lovely. The place is filled with spiders, too, and this has led to some of the more anxious types being unable to progress in this mission. There’s some original ideas here, such as bats flying around which cast a light on the walls and ground, so there’s an extra bit of a challenge in avoiding being spotted by the spidies.

And being able to get to the crypt level where the sarcophagi are by climbing the spider’s web is a nice touch. PranQster demonstrated this knack for being inventive and introducing some fresh ideas in his previous, and first ever FM: “The Siege Shop”.

In the crypt area you need to find several switches or levers to find your way around, and this is all while having to put up with zombified skeletons who have sometimes erratic and unpredictable patrol routes (which was intentional on the part of the author). The King’s crypt is in this area and you’ll get some of your objectives here. Some of the loot is hard to obtain though and requires a bit of negotiation. You can also tell that there wasn’t a lot of beta-testing in this FM, as some people would lock themselves in the King’s crypt, and were unable to get out. Beta-testing was closed for this FM, according to the notes accompanying the download.

There are some other rooms that will open up as you accomplish objectives, and one of these areas even has a maze to navigate.

Samhain isn’t a bad mission. It’s got some good ideas. Not doing any beta testing is a recipe for disaster though, generally speaking. I understand that this is a speed build, and it shows off at least above-average quality for such a build - at least superficially, minus a few missing textures and such. But technically it could have used more time in development to get rid of some annoying bugs.

* sarcasm

Pros:

+ Original ideas.

+ Creepy.

+ Not a bad looking mission at all.

Cons:

- Some bugs.

- Some silly mistakes.

FM score: 8.1/10