A couple of days back I saw a post on Newdoom announcing that ReX Claussen's latest work, a three-map set for Doom II had been completed and released.  It was called From the Ashes of Fear and I immediately downloaded it.  Having played some of ReX's earlier work, I knew that this one would be a quality release, and I remembered reading updates and seeing screenshots from these levels on his site while he was building them.

Now I was actually planning to watch a movie tonight but somehow it became 2:30 AM which was too late to start a movie, so I thought I'd play some of Ashes instead.  I just got through playing one of the maps in the set (MAP15) and it was simply awesome.  So, thought I'd write some comments on this map before going off to sleep.  If I miss anything now, I will edit this post from office tomorrow (heh, heh).

I played the map on Skill 1 for two reasons — one is cowardice, and second is because I wanted to walk around and admire the architecture without worrying about getting picked off by monsters.  Turned out to be a good decision too, and it was a very well-spent twenty-five minutes!  I was reminded of one of ReX's earlier maps from a few years ago (wicked_5 I believe it was), which was remarkable because he made you walk through the entire map without encountering any monsters, and once you reached the end, you flipped a switch which activated many doors and other rooms in the level, and also populated the map with enemies.  This one wasn't like that map exactly, but I was reminded of it because MAP15 does involve quite a bit of revisiting areas which you've been in before.  I loved the way ReX paced the map, the flow was entirely logical and whenever you returned to an area, he used it to stage an interesting fight.  I had no problems with health/ammo while playing the map (but then this was skill 1, things would have been much tougher on the other skill levels, though I'm sure that things would have been balanced well).  Gameplay was great, nothing else to say.

Above are a few screenshots I took while I was playing the level.  It's a pretty big map and has lots of large, open areas and some dark, claustrophobic areas.  I love the way he used lighting to create atmosphere (one of the screenshots above, for example), and the greyish tech-base look I would say is "typical" of ReX (rather, it's what I associate with his work, from whatever levels of his I've played).  It's a very beautiful looking map, and I liked the use of symmetry both in appearance as well as layout.  At the end of it all, it was a solid map, and I'd even go so far as to give it a 10/10 rating.  Great work!

That's not all though — this level set is constructed to mimic Doom II's secret level placement, in the sense that there's an alternate exit in MAP15 leading to MAP31.  When I reached the end of MAP15, I was about to walk in to the exit, when I noticed the alternate exit just next to the normal one.  Only, it was blocked off, so that made me want to go back and find out how to unlock it.  That's something I will probably do over the weekend.  This map set also comes with a good amount of "DVD extras" including a text file that gives you hints on the secrets, so that will come in useful, also, I will probably just play the other two levels here starting from scratch.

Nothing more to say, got to go and sleep now.  Tomorrow is Friday, which means I will go into "weekend mode" from the morning itself and will try to leave office early.