The Dark Mod FM Review: Lord Dufford’s

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): stumpy
Date released: 2010-03-31
Theme: City/Mansion

When I played this fan mission for the first time, I hated it. Loathed it; despised it. Call it what you will.

Reading through the briefing, punctuated with spelling and grammatical errors, I didn’t hold out much hope for this one. And looking through the objectives didn’t make me feel much better. It felt silly. It read like a Monty Python sketch, and I knew that this mapper was probably just as “under the influence”.

Starting at one of the city gates, I headed off towards the area with the barrels on the one side of Dufford’s Castle, where the ale was delivered. This was one of the entry points. The objective is to find out what happened to the Lord who resided here, as a favour for one of his fellow noblemen. But I felt guilty about not having explored the rest of the perimeter, so I eventually went back and took a tour, doing a lap around this rather huge map. On the outside, the city looked good. Apart from a rather cheaply designed and lewd Inn sign, a bit of effort was put in, and I could feel the atmosphere, surprisingly.

Feeling more satisfied, I continued on in to the manor itself. This is where I started to gradually develop disdain for this FM. Overly large areas; needlessly wasted space; empty rooms without reward; plain textures; too much emphasis on lockpicking. Only a few minutes in, I went to the main menu, and uninstalled the mission, opting to play another instead.

But after having completed most of the other missions, a few weeks later, I came back. I always end up coming back and giving it another try, like a failed relationship.

I wasn’t any more impressed with the level design, which looked somewhat unprofessional, and looked like it had been hurriedly pieced together without much forethought – sort of like a big box had been set down, hollowed out and rooms just placed in it in order to take up space. I’ve seen other mappers do a lot more with a lot less. There were some unique additions like the waterwheel, however. I’ll give that to this author – he does try out new approaches, even though he’s made only three FMs so far that I know of, the others being “The Illusionist’s Tower” and “House in Blackbog Hollow” – the latter being his best by far.

But there was a reason behind this incomplete feel given by the author, stumpy. This FM was not supposed to end up being released to the public – it’s more of a test level, and it shows. It could have used more polish, some proofreading, and a lot of beta testing, to say the least.

But once I started to focus on the story and the objectives and not on the flaws with the design, I started to get into it. Things really start picking up when you reach the first floor, and enter Chaz’s room. Out of all the rooms in the manor, this had the most appeal. This is where you start along the trail which will lead you from clue to clue so you can progress through the mission. The clues aren’t all that obvious and you’ll stumble across some by accident, but still.

Entering the sewers below the streets yielded some surprises, and upon getting back inside the manor, I started to understand why there was the need for such seemingly unnecessarily large areas. Because there’s a lot going on in the centre and underneath the manor. Plenty of secret rooms, hidden staircases, and vaults awaited. More than halfway through the mission, things were getting good, finally. And in the end, the story tied up quite nicely, with maybe one or two loose ends, inaccessible areas, and the promise of more to come. Nothing better than a few unanswered questions when all is said and done.

Lord Dufford’s bears similarities to another mission – and no, it’s not Lord Bafford’s Manor from Thief: The Dark Project, despite the name. LD tries to emulate what makes “Heart Of Lone Salvation” such a great FM, what with its plot twists, awesome storyline, and its unparalleled uniqueness; inventiveness. But it fell flat. I only really started to enjoy this FM more than halfway in, and that’s rather a shame, seeing as it had potential – great potential, but it just came out half-baked in the end.

Pros:

+ good effort on story, characters, fantasy writing.

+ plenty of secret areas and surprises.

Cons:

- level design, particularly those large, empty rooms. Those were an eyesore.

- needs more beta testing, polish.

FM score: 6/10

TDM FM Review: House in Blackbog Hollow

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): stumpy
Version: 1.0
Date released: 2011-10-29
Other info: Halloween Speed Build Contest 2011 entry
Theme: Builder/Haunted
Download FM here

Stumpy has made two missions in the past – neither of which I enjoyed much, to be honest. But “House in Blackbog Hollow” (which I will from now on refer to as HIBH – not a rude word) is mostly better than said missions. In case you’re wondering – the missions I speak of are “Lord Dufford’s” and “Illusionist’s Tower”.

You start off on the streets hidden away in an alley of sorts, and make your way in to the large area ahead. You’ve got two patrolling guards here but they’re easy to avoid. First thing you’ll notice is the large black house – more on this later. The mission is to grab some ancient treasure outside a warehouse nearby. But it turns out it’s not that simple: some bastard got there first and nabbed it – and he’s hiding in the house you couldn’t help but notice earlier.

I managed to enter the place after several minutes of mucking about; missing the obvious way in. After seeing a pumpkin kill a nobleman sitting at a table, I knew I was in for something else. From then on, I was wary of every bloody pumpkin I came across. I tried shooting them with arrows, or slicing them with swords – to no avail.

And there were spiders, too. Very large, patrolling spiders. This mission pretty much has everything scary you could possibly want in a mission. Never mind zombies – they’ve got nothing on seemingly invincible pumpkins.

Stumpy pulls some tricks similar to the ones seen in “Illusionist’s Tower”. Upon entering the house, it grows larger than initially thought. It’s positively massive with several floors to explore. There’s some interesting illusions besides this, such as walls that can actually be walked through to reach the corridor behind. It wouldn’t have been so obvious if it hadn’t been for the spiders, that basically showed me it was possible in the first place. Otherwise I’m sure it might have stumped (no pun intended) a few people. There’s also a crying baby, which turns out… not to be. Rather creepy, that part.

 

Hover mouse over pictures for captions, if available.

There aren’t any guards anywhere, but you’ll come across some corpses every now and again – these are supposedly the people who lived here before the curse came along. I won’t spoil it too much for you, so that’s all I’m saying.

After some looking around, you reach the study near the top of the mansion and discover that there’s more to the pumpkins than you originally thought. The pumpkins you avoided earlier actually need to be collected and taken to a temple beneath the surface. They need to be used to end a curse that resulted due to the mansion being built on top of the temple. Sounds similar to the old “house that was built on top of a sacred Indian burial ground” cliché, but nonetheless. That’s what we were all expecting to come out of this competition: clichés.

So we went from trying to retrieve the treasure to helping end the curse.

The mission was enjoyable in the end. Stumpy pulled out the usual tricks; some new, and others old. From what I can tell, he’s not as amateurish as I thought he was initially and has shown that with some general messing around in DarkRadiant, he can put a decent, and sometimes challenging map together. But this mission is his best so far, because it doesn’t stray too far from the norm as far as a TDM mission goes. The level design isn’t anything too special, but it is a step up from the likes of Lord Dufford’s large, empty, uninteresting rooms. The soundtrack that accompanies the FM consists of some new tracks, as well as some old ones with a twist.

Lord Dufford’s was an average at best mission for several reasons among which included some gameplay faux pas that could have been avoided with some beta testing. That and it was a bit too loony for my liking. And Illusionist’s Tower was too frustrating – it tried to be overly technical. This mission is a sort of happy medium, or balance between the expected and outrageous. It’s not too challenging, and the best bit of the FM will be the story, more than likely, which isn’t bad.

Overall the FM is unconventional, rather wacky, but for this Halloween Speed Build Contest – it works; almost perfectly.

Pros:

+ Good story.

Cons:

-  Not that challenging.

FM score: 8.8/10