Mazu's map is full of nasty surprises - actually, several maps have tough combat. The speed map packs are so good lately!

This is amazing; this quality - and from a set of maps created in such a short time!

As always, there is quality differences in a map pack, but in general, i am envious of this gang of mappers for:

• their creativity

• their abillity to use the map editor fast and efficient

• their ability to work structured towards a goal.

Well done, everyone! And thanks for sharing!

alexUnder: Got lost and bored in the pipes :( Chris Holden: Nice homage to e4m5! DariusGI: Really liked it! Greenwood: Lots of fun! Mazu: Partially awesome (loved the blue atrium), partially nasty (spawns...).

Played on Nightmare w/ Copper. No saves, aims for 100% completion.

• alexUnder: decent albeit the first part underwater wasn't too great (3/5)

• Chris Holden: a way smaller e4m5, without the frantic action (3/5)

• DariusGi: some kind of castle with some nice fights. good stuff (4/5)

• Greenwood: gameplay-wise it's alright but the map is bland visually (3/5)

• Mazu: small-ish but SADISTIC map with loads of spawn and tough fights (4/5)

• ish: hardly no ammo and heaps of high-tier foes. had to run for my life (2/5)

• iYago: quite nice map visually, gameplay is pretty much average tho (3/5)

• Newhouse: based on e4m8, a "big" speedmap full of nasty fights and traps (4/5)

• riktoi: really tiny map. fights are meh and visually it's not good really (2/5)

• Yoder: the most beautiful map of the set but not very ep4. nice map tho (4/5)

• Vurkka: the start map. not the prettiest but quick and does the job (3/5)

• zigi: mashup of e4m2 and e4m4. a solid map and the best one of the set imo (4/5)

Overall: 4/5 because those are speedmaps and I enjoyed most of it. Would recommend.

alexUnder: not sure if I'm awful at jumping or if there's supposed to be another way to get to the outer ring from the central platform in the stairway room. (I ended up noclipping.) The underwater bit was... okay.

Chris Holden: actually pretty nice (definitely e4m5 vibes), and the difficulty scaling at skill 0 and 1 was good.

Mazu: scales nicely on skill 0, 1. Liked some of the jump triggers in particular, and the atmosphere. I think this is the Mazu map I've most enjoyed out of all your stuff.

ish: super ambush heavy, which I suspect is going to be divisive. (Personally, even on skill 0, I think it's very slightly too low on ammo, so I imagine on skill 1 it will be sparse for most people). Also: I got in a situation in a room with rocket ammo which I have no idea how I'm supposed to get out of?

Yoder: I really liked this (apart from the timing/jumping element), although I agree with RandomQuaker that it's not a very "Ep4 feeling" map.

zigi: I don't think I enjoyed this quite as much as some did - I prefer Yoder's overall - but it's a really nice episode 4 themed map, and probably my second favourite.

ish: Very very hard and unfair but fun with lots of reloading.

iyago: Very nice! Loved the lighting.

Newhouse: Absolutely charming after I was frustrated with a slow elevator for a moment. Lots of good Doom memories, good gameplay, lovely architecture and overall just fun progression and gameplay. Really enjoyed this one!

I don't know why, maybe something is wrong with me, but when I read "underwater tunnels were confusing" it makes me wanna do more & more confusing for real. Like "oh u think THAT was confusing? I'll show u confusion!" :D

Elder Mechanys by Ish is my favorite of the pack. I like challenge with limited resources. Mazu's map has similar mechanics, but incredible hard as usually. It reminds me playing at game console '80-'90. It's crazy finger dancing!

Playing this pack is... well... E4-ic!!!

You guys sure are an inexhaustible source of creativity and beauty.

Thank you for pushing SM every one release further.

The SM series is my favorite due to its retro-ness, richness, and, not least, longevity. Among the first custom content I played were some SM maps and they have stayed with me ever since.

I'm stuck on Mazu's map, which is beautifully difficult. Somehow, I don't tire of trying over and over again (I am obstinate to not save or lower the difficulty). I saw Mazu's playthrough and, let me say, it is as impressive in effortlessness as the map is in "E4-ness"... Moving like that is a skill I never could master and I feel admiration for those that did.

Geothermal Spike (sm217_rickyt23) is a great start to this pack, and enjoyably polished base surrounded by lava (why do the bad guys keep building their bases in lava? They could save themselves so much trouble if they built on rock.) Pleasing progression and some nice set-pieces, perhaps slightly let down but an ending that is a bit anticlimactic. More of this, please!

Payload Pit (rm27_chrisholden) is nicely executed, but a little too linear and too short to really linger in the memory, The whole thing takes place on a long, twisting gantry over a lava river, and feels more like an assault course than an explorable place, It's nice that the health and ammo respawn so quickly, but they do make it rather too easy. Pleasant.

White Blight (sm218_shades) is another really nice little map, this one set in a snowy village. It uses its setting well to provide rather more combat than you might expect in so small an area, and does a good job of changing up the different kinds of combats you wind up in. Plus it's just nice to look at.

Carcosa Docks (sm218_alexunder) is another nice little level, working from a Honey-like sewer through a brief pipework-ridden industrial area into a small town. Each part of it looks great, though no part of it looks much like docks. Gameplay is enjoyable enolugh, but never especially inventive or exciting. All three areas feel underpopulated, especially the climactic, or rather anticlimactic, town. 50% more monsters and maybe a little more visual variation in the sewer section would elevate this map to the next level.

Carcosa Docks (sm218_alexunder) is another nice little level, working from a Honey-like sewer through a brief pipework-ridden industrial area into a small town. Each part of it looks great, though no part of it looks much like docks. Gameplay is enjoyable enolugh, but never especially inventive or exciting. All three areas feel underpopulated, especially the climactic, or rather anticlimactic, town. 50% more monsters and maybe a little more visual variation in the sewer section would elevate this map to the next level.

(@Spirit, if you're easily able to delete my accidental duplicate comment -- I inadvertently double-clicked) that would be welcome. If not, no worries.

The hits just keep coming with Ransacked Balaneion (sm218_aesopolis), a lovely level that uses two or three novel environments and can only really be criticised for not getting enough gameplay out of them. The garden where we start is beautiful, the largely wooden hall of the early combats works well, the wooden house on stilts where the climax takes place is also a pleasing envronment. Best of all are the glimpses of gorgeous far-off places that the poor old Ranger really wants to get to. I would have loved this to be a lot bigger.

More quality in Runic Rampage (sm217_greenwood): a fairly long level where you make you up a runic stairway with lots of side-areas which you need to visit to unlock barriers. Never especially inspirational, but also never dull and never less than competent. It's perhaps let down by a slightly anticlimactic ending, but props for not going with the obvious shambler.

Neophanemia (sm217_ish) is the first clunker in this pack, for me (although I know tastes will vary). The reduced gravity feels unmotivated, the extreme ammo shortage is an unsatisfactory source of difficulty, and the connections between parts of map feel odd and arbitrary. I made my way uncomfortably to the exit with not many more than half the kills, and even when I went back to noclip around I couldn't find plenty of monsters. I don't get it.

Overcast Outpost (sm217_stickflip) is an elegant design that lets you see early on some of the places that you will visit later. It's nicely put together, but feels a bit samey by the end -- and at it's a short level, there really ought to have been ways to avoid that. BUT the final boss is properly terrifying.

Sewer Authority (sm217_yoder) is a lovely example of what a small map can be -- atmospheric, frenetic, goal-directed. But it leaves an aftertaste of disappointment because the ending feels incomplete. Having found both (easy) secrets and killed everything, I had only 61 or 67 kills; and there was an obvious but unmarked secret with a double-barrelled shotgun and some ammo, which seems impossible to reach. Am I missing something?

Only now, when I have finished reviewing all the maps in this pack, does it become apparent to me that I have been writing about sm217, not sm218!

Yes, I am a dumbass. Rather than copy-paste my reviews across, I will leave a note on sm217.

And I will return to this pack later!

... And now to play this map-pack!!

We're off to a good start with Snake's Wondering if its Tail Tastes Nice (sm218_alexunder). It begins on a small podium in the middle of a square pool whose edges are too high to climb out into the surrounding room. Instead you have to explore a network of underwater tunnels and deal with the set-pieces in the three or four areas where you emerge at the end of them. Lots of fun to be had.

My big quibble with this one is the abrupt ending: despite finding all three (easy) secrets, I arrived at what proved to be the exit with only 49 of 62 kills. Somewhere in that map lie another 27% of monsters on top of the ones I killed. Where?

Purgatory Passage (sm218_chrisholden) is nicely executed, but rather too easy and maybe a bit too derivative of Hell's Atrium (e4m5). Not his most impressive work for my money.

(BTW., Now I notice that in the comment above I described Chris Holden's sm217 contribution as "nicely executed", too!)

Palace of the Elder God (sm218_dariusgi) is exactly what you would expect from a map of this name in an Episode 4-based speedmap competition. It's nicely put together with a clear progression and plenty of combats. Another that I would have been happy to see continue for much longer.

More goodness in Respect Your Elders' World (sm186_greenwood), which really nails the intense brutality of the best parts of Episode 4. It has one of those contrived progressions where you have to drop down into an extended sewer adventure in order to move up one level from where you start, and judges the difficulty well to keep you on your toes especially mid-game.

I can't say I enjoyed Shady Better Sin (sm218_hcm), although I admired it. I would probably have had more fun on Normal skill than my usual Hard, but by the time I realised this I was deep enough in that the sunk-cost fallacy prevented me from starting over. I had to cheat early on: having not found any secrets (I ended with only one of the seven) I had nowhere near enough ammo, so I gave myself 100 shells. With that done, I was able -- just, with many, many reloads -- to finish with 105 of 136 kills. I know where there's one ogre that I didn't kill (up on a ledge and I wanted to conserve ammo) but I have no idea where the other 30 are.

If I play this again, it will be on Normal.

BTW., I only now figured out that HCM is Mazu.

Well, i gave up on Elder Mechanys (sm218_ish). It was another, like Mazu's, that was so hard on Hard that it just wasn't fun -- not least because of the dearth of ammo. So I swallowed my pride, restarted on Normal, and was mostly enjoying myself until, after the zombie interlude, I found myself teleported into a small caged area with a box of rockets, a quad, and no apparent means of escape. If someone can tell me what I need to do from there, I'll pick it up again, but for now I'm done.

Columns of Hopelessness (sm218_iyago) is much more tractable, and feels like actual fun instead of work. It's maybe a little bit by-the-numbers, with its very E4M2ish opening, but that's easy enough to forgive. Not necessarily one that will last long in the memory, but a blessed relief after Mazu's and Ish's maps.

Stir Fried Dissolution (sm218_riktoi) is unexceptionable, but small and blocky, and lacking in atmosphere. It's a pleasant enough way to spend five minutes, but that's all.

I enjoyed the trick start to Beiges depict materiality (sm218_yoder), and the way that after the initial invisibility-ring run you can use infighting to thin the ranks. After than, things are a little more vanilla, but never less then enjoyable and often fairly lovely to look at. One of the best maps in the pack for my money.

The Pit of Despair (sm218_zigi) is another map with very strong e4m2 vibes, and which again uses that toolbox to make something enjoyably new. I liked how in the final combat under the pool, you have your choice of doing it as a giant chaotic free-for-all or as a sequence of snipes.