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Map review of Ghoul's Forest
by Chimz | November 2, 2024 | 3393 characters
The map was so dark I had to pause halfway and clean my monitor cause the stains were the only thing I could see, and that is with Gamma and Brightness settings set to max.
I had not played the Doom mod though I had seen the first few minutes of it from a stream. Seeing this map, its screenshots and description, I thought it would offer a fair experience. Unfortunately I couldn't find myself immersed.
You are dropped in with no briefing or text. You don't know if you're lost, if you're camping, if you've been woken up by something, nothing. You're just dropped into the map which for some horror mods/games could work but here, halfway through my playthrough I was asking myself what the hell it is that I'm looking for in this map and finding myself clueless as to what the final goal is.
The map is massive with lines of sight sometimes exceeding 4k units, and the problem with that is that the max viewable distance of the map was not set accordingly and so whenever you look off into the distance, you can see the rest of the world being clipped away, instantly breaking immersion.
Wondering off in a giant map is something I can enjoy, having enjoyed my fair share of DayZ and MMO games, but due to EXTREME darkness of the map, I found myself exploring the stains on my monitor screen more than the actual map. Half-Life 1's Horror Mods are notorious for how they force you to traverse pitch black areas with only your small flashlight. This map is no exception and really makes you feel blind. Again, this was both immersion-breaking and handicapping.
I was able to come across multiple landmarks and while I found guns and ammo, throughout my whole playthrough I did not encounter any NPCs or events that required me to shoot.
After 15 minutes of wandering around, finding new locations that were nothing more than empty buildings and going back in circles with nothing interesting happening throughout, I decided to quit. Having researched Doom's actual Ghoul Mods afterwards, it seems I didn't miss anything good, and the gameplay is just a copy-paste of the original with no real change or creativity put into it to improve and elevate it.
With some tweaks, the environment itself can improve and become actually good rather than tolerable. The rest? A whole revamp is required. At the time of writing this, I found the map to be nothing but an empty map with "spooky" sounds placed around.
I'm open to conversation with the Author.
Pros:
- Giant map that doesn't hinder performance (technical)
- Many details (such as graves) that could hinder your movement are made passable (quality of life)
- Layout and fog make it difficult to navigate, giving you the desired sense of being lost wandering
Cons:
- Map is so pitch black it makes Afraid of Monsters seem bright
- Map is mostly empty
- Landmark locations are little more than empty buildings
- No intro or goals given, making you wonder if you're just wasting your time
- Nothing happens during the first 15 minutes. The rest? I don't know, maybe something will appear or maybe nothing will ever happen
- Inappropriate View distance and very simple brush shapes (tree walls) break immersion
Review originally from *
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