HOLLOW MINDS
By Kristian Aro
My good friend Kristian brings you Hollow Minds, which is a huge level for Doom2 replacing the opening map. Kristian who has worked with various Doom projects with me in the past such as 2002ado, Death Tormention 2 and a few more. The architecture is very good throughout with different themes varying throughout, and there are excellent lighting effects throughout. The earlier stages of the map takes place in some sort of a base area before you descend into a hellish enviroment. The beginning is poorly done... You start in a bland looking courtyard, with a few imps and many former soldiers surrounding you and you must shoot imediatley or you will be dead, this area only accounts for 2-3% of the overall map layout. If you manage to beat that area, the level gets much better. The gameplay dosent get any easier and there are some very tricky fights, and there are lots of teleporting monsters at certian parts of the level, especially with the arch-viles. I just love it when you can hear an arch-vile purring away, ready to teleport in to terrorise you when you trigger his release at some certian point. Health is well balanced but ammo can be hard to come by at times, so its best to try and get some of the enemies fighting each other as you must face every enemy of Doom2 in this map (except for the Nazi). That also includes a Cyberdemon and towards the end you must fight the Spider Mastermind to beat the level, but you can also run past her and exit if you have enough health. There is new music included written by Kristian himself. Kristian who is an excellent trance artist in Finland who has written some stunning shit (Nebula Meltdown) that god can only believe and the midi file included with this wad file is not bad for a beginner, since it was his first midi file. Overall, Hollow Minds is a superb level and also contains 15 secrets. the Episode 4 sky fits in well with the theme. If you are looking for some serious challenge, I reccomend you play this now!
Gameplay 8/10, Challenge 10/10, Architecture 10/10, Item Placement 9/10
RATING 9.3 / 10
Download - Hollow Minds