Freame 2
| Freame 2 | |
|---|---|
| Author | Evil Space Tomato |
| Port | ZDoom |
| IWAD | 
|
| Status | Released |
| Link | Freame 2 at Doomworld/idgames |
Description
Freame 2 is a single, but huge, map for Heretic. The story is that an evil sorcerer has poisoned the life well, and you have to dispatch him to heal the land. In order to do so, you have to assault his iron fortress, a massive trident-shaped castle standing in a sea of lava. In your assault, you will meet several new monsters. A couple have rather garish colors, a bright yellow magma variant of the wendigo from Hexen and a bright blue sabreclaw that phases in and out to surprise you. Others, such as the more powerful disciple variant are better looking. The most clever are the ghost clinks, which are more a puzzle than an enemy, and that you have to outrun rather than fight. (They are practically impossible to kill unless you cheat.)
The architecture is spectacular by its scope, as the fortress is really huge. However, it is quite plain-looking except for some areas where a greater attention has been given to details. The level offers a variety of environments, with more and more surreal elements as you progress towards the gate to the life well.
Although the level is huge and opposition is intense, it is rather easy. Artifacts and ammos are plentiful (more than 100 items to pick up) and you get a couple of new weapons. The first is an ice wand, which uses the same ammo as the elven wand. The second is extremely overpowered, but used as a plot item: you have to put it back before you are able to reach the final arena. Although its functionality has not been changed, the phoenix rod has been resprited to use the lightbringer/sunstaff sprites adapted from Hexen II.
A drawback of the level's sheer size is that backtracking takes a lot of time, and it is easy to get lost or wander aimlessly looking for what to do next. However, there are no complicated puzzles and with the automap and a methodical approach, progression is simple.
Scripting is used intelligently, without excess or gratuity. Other ZDoom features such as portals are also used cleverly. However, there are a few mapping errors here or there, the most notable being that door tracks are never unpegged. A potentially game-breaking error is that the blue key door can only be opened once from either side. Another little mistake is that statues are created in several places by using upscaled, desaturated dormant monsters. But they still have the COUNTKILL flag, so achieving 100% kills is not possible (they never "wake up" but simply remain statues).
