Legacy of Rust | ID1.WAD
id Software, Nightdive Studios, MachineGames
Legacy of Rust positions itself sometime after Doom II, exactly when is unclear, as is who the protagonist is supposed to be -- Doomguy? Or someone else? (For my own amusement I used the female skin for skelegant's excellent One Hell of a Marine MBF21 mod.) The UAC has committed one of its most boneheaded moves yet: it has literally colonized Hell itself, and things have naturally gone terribly awry. They had intentionally built in a remote corner of this evil dimension, far away from all the ghosts and goblins that roam the wastes, but it never occurred to the UAC to wonder why Hell's denizens avoided the place called Vassago's Rest, renamed New Eden by the UAC in a fit of incredible hubris. And then the vassagos showed up. Your job -- whoever you may be -- is to break into the abandoned facility, fight your way to the nuclear missile stockpile, and set them to self-destruct, presumably to keep Hell's denizens from getting hold of whatever technology the UAC's built down there.
Legacy of Rust is split into two episodes of eight maps each, with one secret level per episode. The vast majority of the episode was built by Villarreal and Xaser, both of them in their capacity as employees of Nightdive. For a couple of maps, we also get the mapping talents of Ethan "Gooberman" Watson, a Nightdive contractor whose work on the Rum n' Raisin source port -- itself a fork of Chocolate -- was instrumental in the development of Doom + Doom II, the awkwardly-named source port that powers the remaster. (DDII, for its part, does something no official port has yet done: include support for popular mapping standards Boom, MBF, and MBF21, while introducing the new ID24 standard off the back of MBF21. While the exact implementation of this wasn't received with universal praise, I think ultimately all that drama turned out to be a nothingburger as ID24 has been pretty much ignored by everyone and the terrifying prospect of a corporate takeover of the community never materialized. The haphazard launch of the mod uploading tool was definitely the much bigger controversy and not without good reason.) And finally, we get one map each by Thomas Carter and Kevin Dunlop, who are both senior environment artists at MachineGames and id Software, respectively. Their maps in particular are marked by two things: a new, cohesive texture scheme that really pops, and being linear to a fault. Ah well.
New episodes for old games is nothing new; Duke Nukem 3D infamously got the band back together for the 20th anniversary, and even Doom II got a new episode in Nerve Software's No Rest for the Living a long while back. But Legacy of Rust is more than that, it's a celebration of Doom's history. A large part of the wad's appeal is its resurrection of long-forgotten assets that were cut from the final game, ranging from textures in the style of the Doom development alphas to whole new enemies and even weapons using forgotten art. First, the weapons: most of your gear is the same, but the energy weapons have been replaced with a flamethrower with limited range but its flames do AOE damage over time, and the Calamity Blade, a goofy-looking weapon of mass destruction (its sprites frankensteined out of the same toy gun that formed the BFG 9000) that fires a wave of flames that do tremendous damage and can mow down hordes of low-level enemies in a single shot. I suspect these weapons were Xaser's idea, given his affection for weapon mods. The enemy roster is much the same but there are some new additions, the first being the ghoul, a flying horned skull based on an old version of the lost soul, that shoots fireballs at you but withers under shotgun fire. Next you get the shocktrooper, an undead marine with a plasma rifle, because fighting these guys in Scythe 2 wasn't enough. The mindweaver is an arachnotron with its mommy's chaingun, making it a threat that is simultaneously weak and dangerous. The tyrant is a hornless, weaker version of the cyberdemon, appearing only in the final map. Banshees are my favorite new addition, as they introduce an entirely new aspect to the gameplay: screaming red flaming faces that charge you and explode. And lastly there's the vassago, a big, ugly bastard that looks like a skeletal, flaming take on the hell nobles and behaves much the same, except his fireballs leave flames with their own AOE damage!
This isn't to say that I don't like Legacy of Rust. I do -- at least, on paper. In practice, it took me way too long to finish it, with a couple of long breaks, because I find the set to be something of a chore. It's not that I don't love hard wads -- in fact, during the last long break, I went through some pretty tough wads like Preacher and MAYhem 2019. There's just something about Legacy of Rust that leaves me cold. Thematically it's all over the place; even leaving aside the beautiful texturing jobs on "Spirit Drains" and "Soul Silo" clashing with the rest of the wad's use of vanilla-style assets, the whole hellbase thing is inconsistent and composed of a variety of different ideas and design tropes that don't always gel together. I would rather they had done something more thematically consistent -- there was always room in the alpha stuff for Doomcute offices and stuff, or at the very least why not have just gone all-in on the modernist texture aesthetics? The new monsters as a rule don't typically add very much to the experience except for the banshees, and the new weapons are generally underwhelming when I really needed them to count.
Episode 1: The Vulcan Abyss
MAP01: Scar Base
Samuel "Kaiser" Villarreal
A quick n' clean little
techbase intro, mostly silver in color and split in two sections divided by a
tunnel. It's a cool level with office chairs and workstations, making good use
of the old alpha assets. The best part is the Stargate-esque portal that leads
to the UAC's outpost in Hell -- turn it on and a bunch of the new beta lost
souls (known here as "ghouls") come out to hassle you.
MAP02:
Sanguine Wastes
Xaser Acheron
The opening level was just a taste;
this is a heaping spoonful of hellish action. From the swarms of imps and
other nasties coming out of nests in the rock, to the massive fight for the
rocket launcher in the blood lake at the foot of the dam(n), to the messy
run-and-gunning in the main building as you try to line pipes up for a pathway
to the roof exit, to the explosive introduction to banshees, it's an
impressive map with lots of fun secrets to find.
MAP15: Ash Mill
Xaser Acheron
A short, but spooky little map that has you exploring an
abandoned mill. What this mill actually makes is unclear, but it's certainly
not paper. It's seemingly unoccupied until you get the red key, at which point
a squad of shocktroopers carrying plasma rifles come to kill you. That first
encounter is delicious, the way it's set up so you don't immediately recognize
him as a threat until you enter the room he's in.
MAP03: Spirit
Drains
Thomas Carter
There's a lot of different kinds of maps.
There's the relatively short rides that the stock Doom 1 maps provide; there's
the nasty little puzzle boxes like we get from Plutonia or SIGIL. There's the
big, beautiful maps full of slaughter. And then there's maps like this -- a
lengthy, winding journey that twists in on itself like a nest of snakes. It's
appropriate that a MachineGames dev be behind this level, given its starkly
Quake (both 1 and II)-ish industrial vibes, enhanced greatly by a new texture set. Carter
mostly throws hordes of trash mobs at you, with plenty of revenants for spice.
He also likes to make use of arch-viles at key moments. But it's the final
fight that is the level's centerpiece, in which Carter introduces us to the
vassago, a hulking cousin to the hell nobles who throws fireballs with
lingering flames. Firing off a shot triggers a large invasion of bad guys
including a couple of archies, and it's arguably safer to grab the blue key
when you have an opening and get out.
MAP04: Descending Inferno
Samuel Villareal
A nice little techbase in a volcanic region of Hell, you'll
have plenty of indoor/outdoor action. Mind you don't get hot feet as you work
your way around the lava rivers. Vassagos show up, so do shocktroopers, and so
do mindweavers, nasty little mini-masterminds who take about as much damage as
the baby arachnotrons but dish out a big momma's worth of pain with their
personal chaingun. The map weaves in on itself in interesting ways, mostly on
the western side.
MAP05: Creeping Hate
Samuel Villarreal
Complete
with a parody of "The Only Thing They Fear Is You," the Kaiser drops a hell
factory on us with moving conveyor belts and control boards and lots of lava
to fall into. It's mostly pretty straightforward, though Sam likes to unleash
big ambushes. I like how the stuff at the end of the lava hallway is
tantalizing but you can't actually get there until you get the blue key, which
is a whole 'nother quest.
MAP06: The Coiled City
Xaser Acheron
This is one of the big setpiece levels of Legacy of Rust. Xaser,
God bless 'im, gives us a weird, winding nightmare suspended over a lava sea.
Vassagos and shock troopers are the primary threat here, with broad lines of
fire making pretty much most of the map unsafe to linger at. Ghouls and
banshees get strategic releases here and there to drive you to distraction,
and the opening salvo -- a mindweaver ambush -- sets the tone for the rest of
the map after a lengthy, monsterless intro. The big gimmick (besides the dark
tunnels that defy rational physics and aren't on the map) is that other than a
cleverly-hidden stash of rockets, the only ammunition in this map is fuel,
forcing you to rely on your incinerator (and a Calamity Blade, if you're
clever enough to find it!) Almost all the enemies are the Legacy of Rust
exclusives, too -- there might be the odd arch-vile and imp but that's about
it. Not everyone likes this map, but I think it's great -- it feels like
something from the latter half of Plutonia 2, but slightly different.
MAP07:
Forfeited Salvation
Samuel Villarreal
The Kaiser gives us a
relatively straightforward death box, devoid of any signs of being a former
base. A cyberdemon hangs out in the middle with a few shocktroopers providing
overwatch. On either side are different wings of the map you'll need to clear
out. Your job is to find your way to various switches that raise and lower
walkways so you can access the red key the cyberdemon is guarding, and from
there clear out the bullshit in the wings. It doesn't quite feel quite as
Kaiser-ish as some -- he tends to make more interconnected mazes. But it does feel almost Doom 64-ish... at least until it drops you into a pit with
some vassagos, who tear you apart with abandon. Feels familiar...
Counterfeit Eden
MAP08: Second Coming
Ethan "GooberMan" Watson & Xaser Acheron
From Xaser and Ethan "GooberMan" Watson (who also
played a big role in the development of the KEX Doom port) comes this rough
little opener. While there are a few remnants of the area's techbase past,
it's hard to see past the hellish corruption, with walkways collapsed and
courtyards full of lava or blood. You'll be short on firepower for most of the
map, with tougher enemies like vassagos making themselves known pretty early
on, and at one point a cyberdemon warps in to stand watch over the western
courtyard, making things even more dangerous. But if you're secret-savvy you
can get your hands on a berserk pack to help.
MAP09: Falsehood
Samuel Villarreal
A somewhat industrialized hell ruin amidst a rocky canyon. The
action is generally about medium pressure, with no terribly large squads of
baddies to ruin your day. Kaiser doesn't always rely on punishing the player
for progress either -- keys are rewards, not traps. Your main threat is
probably going to be the clouds of ghouls and their pain elemental chaperones
filling the skies, but Kaiser also makes careful use of vassagos to turn up
the heat in certain encounters. Like a lot of Legacy of Rust maps it's a bit
of a journey, but it's a fun one that eventually has you returning back where
you started. Love the exit fakeout.
MAP10: Dis Union
Ethan Watson
The GooberMan crafts a nasty little monster nest out of what by
now should be a familiar aesthetic, that of a corrupted hellbase. Most
encounters aren't too rough provided you're prepared, but the lobby rush early
on -- made worse when the doors re-open letting in the skelly bois -- throws a
lot of meat at you in close quarters. There's also the revenant/chaingunner
fight, even more telegraphed than the lobby battle, but by this point you
probably won't have a lot of armor and it can get dicey in a hurry. The
toughest fight by far, however, is the red key room, where you must fight a
horde of fliers in a large room as the floor gradually sinks.
MAP16:
Panopticon
Xaser Acheron
Oh god, a puzzle map. A panopticon in the
original sense was a design for an ideal prison by 18th-century Utilitarianist
philosopher Jeremy Bentham in which a central guard tower could keep an eye on
prison cells arranged in a circle around it, thereby removing any expectation
of privacy on the part of the prisoner's. This map works on a similar
principle: 20 monsters and you'll feel most of them, because that cyberdemon
lording over the whole level from the central platform will ruin your day
again and again. Basically you have to dodge its rockets while working your
way through a gauntlet of bullshit, including a damaging blood maze, damaging
stairs, and a switch puzzle where you have to run to a switch in between
rocket volleys then run back to cover. On the plus side, you finally get the
backpack and Calamity Blade for your efforts.
MAP11: Echoes of
Pain
Samuel Villarreal
Real strong The Darkening Episode 1 vibes from
this map... it's a mostly brownbase affair with a touch of Satanic decoration
for spice. In spite of being a late-game Kaiser map it's pretty easy, with the
most exciting encounter being a cacodemon swarm in the north once you've
grabbed the blue key. I liked the weird grey cell block thingie in the
southeast with the chaingunners, fun encounter there.
MAP12: The
Rack
Samuel Villarreal
The Kaiser looked upon the tortured expanses
of "Counterfeit Eden," and proclaimed thus: "This needs more Episode 4 in it."
And so he created "The Rack," and when he was finished, he looked upon his
work, and saw that it was good. Don't let the 300+ monster count fool you,
this is actually a fairly sedate adventure for the most part. The core of the
map is a large four-sectioned open space bisected by walkways; each quadrant
has its own features, and the trick of the map is finding your way to the
spaces beyond. Thematically it's all over Doom's infamous fourth episode --
you got your blood pools, you got your green marble, you got your wood and
metal, you got eldritch temples and forgotten promenades. Expect to see lots
of banshees here, Kaiser unleashing them on cue to throw a little spice into
the proceedings.
MAP13: Soul Silo
Kevin Dunlop
Nice
texture scheme, very Doom 3. Kevin Dunlop brings us a brutal penultimate map that has us
traveling through a linearly-designed underground nukage plant; each new room
brings a dangerous crush of enemies, with just enough flamer ammo to chew
through it and occasionally the need to figure out a safe zone to do most of
the shooting from. Very Ribbiks-esque, if you ask me. A brief trip into a
Satanic marble garden will let you really test out the power of the Calamity
Blade as it mows down hundreds of imps. I really like the visuals in most of
this map, especially the elevator to the final chamber.
MAP14:
Brink
Xaser Acheron
Come on Xaser, what the fuck is this? The opening is suitably atmospheric as you approach the subverted nuclear launch facility. The first couple of encounters aren't too bad -- Xaser throws a cybie and a few of his little brothers, the tyrants, at you. Get them fighting and they'll be too busy to notice you throwing switches. The maze fight -- with vassagos wandering around -- is made only slightly spicy by the addition of archies when you grab one of the keys. But then you get upstairs and all bets are off. On higher difficulties this is borderline impossible -- Xaser throws an enormous horde of vassagos at you (manageable) and arch-viles (fuck off.) You're supposed to use the Calamity Blade to deal with it, but it's just not good enough to mow through these dumb bastards before they roast you to a crisp. Get through all that and you'll face a horde of tyrants in relatively tight quarters. I really like this map on paper but in execution this is just trolling.
-June<3
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