Doom Review: Time Tripper

Time Tripper by msx2plus

This is really great and everybody should give it a go.

I like the way it came with its own config and has its own options menu to ensure the experience is uniform for everybody. Big bugbear of mine with zdoom projets is not knowing what the intended way to play is. The music (which is really nice) and way the maps are presented with little introductions and all that stuff gives it a really strong identity. The checkpoint system is also really slick and is basically what I would want as a standard for really long maps.

I really like the new enemy ideas like the bouncy ball cacodemon, the acolyte that sprays out those slow moving projectiles in a circle and the Draugrs that shoot out three streams of projectiles in a cone. They work really well with doom’s movement and makes dodging a bit more involved than mindless circle strafing in certain places. What was really odd is how there’s a bunch of enemies that show up in the credits roll of the normal difficulties that don’t appear before that point at all - I don’t recall seeing the kiss my ass marine and the baron that shoots columns of flames, but maybe they’re in some sort of secret encounter? They do show up in another difficulty though and hopefully they’ll show up in any future circuits that get released.

In terms of how it played, hyper was very well tuned and the remixed ‘Another’ difficulty is surprisingly well balanced as well, with a few really brutal exceptions. The maps are relatively short and the checkpoints were pretty decently spaced out. I had a go with the one hit modes but they weren’t really for me. It makes some encounters really easy and others - like the big wave of shotgunners in map01 exceedingly dangerous mainly because of the risk of getting instagibbed from the other side of the room without warning. Having all the different weapons in a mode where a single point of damage kills any enemy is also a bit weird, but it’s a nice diversion for those who want it.

There’s only one thing that really dragged the experience down: the flesh wizards that turn invisible. They’re really fast, have like four different attack patterns, do a large amount of damage per bullet and have a nasty habit of uncloaking at point blank range behind you, usually with the burst of red bullets for an instant gib. You can only hurt the buggers in that fraction of a second when they’re visible and attacking, and each attack has a different length so it can sometimes take a while for them to pull out an attack you can physically react to and get decent damage in with. On top of that they have 400 hitpoints and the very nature of their attacks and rapid uncloaking means you’re never going to be in a good situation to retaliate with a high burst damage weapon - they love to drift just out of range to get the a decent SSG hit and rockets are just too slow. They really need a longer vulnerability window or half the health. The start of C1M3 on Another difficulty where it puts 7 of them in that beautiful stained glass roofed room with 4 draugrs is the hardest encounter in the mod by a huge, huge margin. That said, they’re infrequent enough to power through.

I’ve not seen much chatter about this set in the usual places. I got turned onto it by a friend who knew about it from twitter of all places. Is there a release thread for it on the zdoom or doomworld forums that I’ve managed to miss or something?