Combat Shock 2

I disagree, I think it's very funny.

Anyways, here's my review of it from my Dean of Doom thread a while ago:

Oh boy, Combat Shock 2... Considering how unfun the first one was, I was really not expecting much. But wow, this blew me away! This wad steps on the gas and does not let up. The first map reminds me of the first map from Scythe 2's 5th episode both in visuals and vibe. And then the 2nd map. Wow, just wow. I feel like that map made me start loving slaughter maps, everything about it is just perfect. Then of course there was the 5th map: Boiling Point. This one was even more of a wow moment for me, at that point I knew I was playing something really special. The visual aesthetic of this wad is gorgeous, the combat design is totally bonkers and the fights rarely feel tedious like in the original. Everything just clicks. I wasn't excited before, but this kind of action makes me excited for Sunlust.

  

Grade: A-

Shocking.

Danny Bubinga, better known by his nickname "daddybubinga," is the Doomworld community's top Pain Elemental dealer. If you need your fix, meet him at the corner and he's got you 12 of them for one rack, or for $900 if you've referred a customer recently. While only real fiends will blow through that fix in one encounter, there are some real fiends among you lot, I know, so you should be happy to know that Daniel Badabubinga has left his stash available, where the flying meatballs appear in great number and are yours for the taking -- so long as you have a copy of Ultimate Doom Builder and know how to use the copy/paste shortcuts to yank them right out of Combat Shock 2. 

Combat Shock 2 is a lot as if Vanguard (the harder parts) and Sunder (the old Sunder levels from back when Insane_Gazebo was a wee beach umbrella) had a baby. Sandwiched between a "microslaughter" intro and a not-slaughter-at-all bonus map, Combat Shock 2's middle five levels are large-scale, fairly open macroslaughter, but generally lighter and faster paced than what Sunder was doing a few years before it.

dannebubinga's design feels like it constantly caters more towards the type of player who wants to run around a lot and get plenty of mayhem going. This looseness crystalizes as an "attitude" that avoids pure punishment -- for example Combat Shock 2's platforming generally has escape lifts, even when the Sunder maps it is emulating does not. But it doesn't feel so much as Danne wanted to make something easy as it does he wanted to make something fun and forgiving for a "skilled player" using a looser, wilder playstyle. This means that while some parts are necessarily more accessible to a casual player, you'll then have spikes of difficulty that correspond with the parts that didn't really need much softening up to cater to that skilled player, like map02's tricky minimalist finale setpiece with a cyber and two pesky ledge sniper archviles and limited cover to dodge all three; or like the opening region of map06 that gives you surprisingly few spheres relative to similar combat in other parts of the wad. So rather than being an "intro-to-slaughter" wad, Combat Shock 2 kinda feels like a difficult slaughterwad but with many more easier pacer sections than usual, and I do think even regular players will find it accommodating so long as they are willing to play maps this size at all.

Of slaughter authors whose activity peaked in the early 2010s, I'd say dannebubinga has some of the most satisfying monster placement tendencies (maybe only Darkwave is even better). He just has a good feel for what enemy combinations or groups will lead to pure fun -- which he generally prioritizes over creating encounters that feel clever. (Even if, as many of his encounters show, like the aforementioned map02 finale, he's certainly capable of creating encounters that are quite clever.) You'll see a lot of imps, funny hordes of hitscanners that self-destruct or let you splatter them, well proportioned use of all the mid-tier enemies (beefy enough so that you can get feeling accomplished in taking them out, but not grindy), and yes...a good number of pain elementals once you get into map03. danne also mixes in more spider masterminds than most authors do, largely for the spectacle of them, rather than real fights. The open "run 'n' gun" nature of most of these maps paired with the satisfying enemy composition gives Combat Shock 2  a distinct character to it; it feels like difficult slaughter with more of a make-your-own-fun playground feel. The opening few minutes of map04 is something I keep returning to because of all those gibbable imps, all the mancubi hordes and their crossfire, all the potential wayward cyberdemon rockets, and the cacoswarm. It's really fun.

While the design and atmosphere is not quite at Sunder levels, I mean little else from that period is, and Combat Shock 2's is still pretty good. It's hard not to love the atmosphere, immersion, and overall grandeur of map05 -- which really feels like a journey, a characteristic also shared with map06. As more strong craft-oriented slaughter authors come into the scene, parts of this will look less remarkable than they did back in 2016 when I was first looking through it, but I think plenty has also aged well.

As for weaknesses, the assumption that the player would always be aggressive sometimes leads to periods of cleanup if you're not wired that way, such as in the second big area of map04. But that doesn't dominate the experience as a whole, and those scattered relaxing cooldowns might even feel like another form of pacing. Progression between levels could also be smoother, since you kinda abruptly go from jungle in the first three to metal furnace in the next two to hell in the last, with not much in the way of an implied narrative connecting them. I mean it's not a deal-breaker. Just download it and shoot stuff.

Originally I wasn’t wowed by it when I went to Boiling Point, due to it being rather easy. However, I decided to play it today because I was a long time ago told one of my own maps is like MAP03 and I subconsciously took influence from Danne. After playing it, I think there hasn’t been a wad that truly speaks to me in such a way like this. Every single map is aligned to exactly what I like in Doom, especially large scale early 2010s type slaughter, which despite being on the easy side of things, still makes me happy and fires those neurons. I wish Danne mapped more after Sunlust due to how fucking good his maps in that and this are, but honestly this is enough quality made by one man.

Slaughter for the soul. Play aggressively for best results.

Fun and pretty looking set of slaughtermaps, though easy by today's standards. The cleanup after some fights can get tideous, but it's not a dealbreaker.

More slaughter fun!

And there goes Combat Shock 2, played through GlBoom+ 2.5.1.5 on HMP.

CS2 is a slaughter wad which features a total of 7 maps, with the final level acting as a sort of bonus that's completely different from everything seen until that point. It features a new status bar, a few new textures, recolored enemies, intermission screens, but no new weapons, enemies, ENDOOM screen, or sounds.

It doesn't deviate from the standard slaughter formula, meaning that the typical encounters with the enemies are difficult and their numbers are mostly large, the total number of enemies ranging between hundreds and a few thousands, with MAP05 featuring the most, a little over 3000 more exactly, at least on HMP. The early levels take plenty of inspiration from the first levels of Plutonia given their natural looking design with lots of green and overall tone and atmosphere, while the later maps get more hellish.

The difficulty curve is typical as well, starting easy and things get gradually rougher as you progress, while the later maps, notably MAP05 and MAP06 being the most difficult with plenty of tricky sections (platforming with crushers in your way for instance) and occasionally tough traps which can kill you in mere moments. Those parts rely quite a bit of trial and error until the optimal solution is reached so that you're not left with either low health and especially ammo. In fact, ammo is a very valuable and easy to exhaust resource in those 2 levels, therefore relying on infighting is recommended whenever possible, I have made the mistake of consuming the resources when I should've been more careful, making everything much more painful than it should've been.

All maps are challenging and really fun, my favorite being none other than MAP03. The atmosphere, the encounters, and the music just mix perfectly for me, the soundtrack of this level is one of the best I've heard in a megawad. 

I have mentioned the "bonus" level. MAP07 acts as a bonus for triumphing the trials of CS2 according to the intermission screen. It is neither a slaughter level nor is it long or difficult, but it's something you'd see in a wad such as Valiant or Lunatic, and it comes with 100+ enemies. I have to say that despite not mixing with the other levels (which was not the purpose anyway) it's surprisingly fitting for a conclusion to the wad from my POV, after all the intense fights it's nice to have one final, fun, but easy level.

Considering that the wad is short there's not much else to add, and there's nothing that stands out as particularly bad, which is why I don't recall terrible areas or anything. Although it's short, given the nature of the levels spending a few hours on it in total is probably something to be expected. I kinda wish it was longer, but this ultimately works in its favor given that its length makes it perfect for those moments when you want to play a specific kind of levels but aren't willing to invest as much time as a 32+ megawad would require.

It's been quite a while since I had so much fun, thus CS2 ranks quite high on my list of best megawads that I have played. Totally recommended, it's well worth the time.

The following review is comparing Combat Shock 2 to today's slaughter wads.

A pretty good wad overall. There are some design decisions made in the larger maps that make sense from an open-endedness design perspective.. but honestly I decided that it really detracts from the experience.

The following descriptions are from my play through on UV, using pistol starts, and no saves.

Map01: One of the best maps in the wad. There is very little downtime on this map and there is almost no tediousness cleaning up any of the fights. There are some filler moments but that is to be expected on Map01 I guess.

I wont talk too much about Map01 because there isn't much that I really dislike about it. It is Map01 difficulty.. but still threatening (albeit not lethal) and has a great start and a great final fight.

Map02: This map is quite slow in comparison to Map01 and introduces some of my complaints about the design decisions made in some of these maps. It seems a lot of maps follow a design decision which gives the player complete control over how the player wants to play the map. Unfortunately if the player is playing blind then the player will most certainly not be running around trying to aggro everything with reckless abandon.. but instead trying to survive. This means incredibly slow gameplay.

My first experience with this map was quite a stale one. I had plenty of room to move around at all times.. and was able to take every fight one at a time (none of the fights are really threatening on their own save one which I will get to). This one fight involving tons of pinkys, a cyb, mastermind, and hks can be cheesed completely but simply running out of the area. It is quite obvious that you can leave the area immediately so I can't really say it is cheese.. just a design decision to allow to quicker play if the player wants. I think this is fine if you want to open the map up for speedrunning or something.. but it is something that really made a poor experience for me when I didn't go into the map with a mindset of aggressive play.

The final fight is really great. Making 3 monsters threatening is kinda hard and Danne pulls it off well with 2 viles and a cyb.

Map03: Incredible map. I really enjoyed how my experience was made harder or easier depending on the decisions I made at the start of the map. Sure you can get rockets early.. but that rocket fight is quite hard because of specters, and viles in a close quarters fight. I found that I could actually get plasma first.. and then return to the rocket area with plasma. This made the area easier and gives the player something to think about when playing the map. Great stuff.

There are these groups of lost souls that appear when you raise the platforms leading to the final 2 arenas.. all they did was make it a bit more annoying to kill the hks (I just took an extra 30 seconds to kill the lost souls prior to dealing with the hks).

Final two fights are fun. Especially the final area.. pinkys + cybs is always a fun combo.

Map04: This map is half good.. half incredibly tedious cleanup.

The first half is fun.. you get an awesome fight with imps/mancs/cacos/cybs in a medium size area. Very easy to get blindsided by fireballs/rockets here. The following bfg fight is also really great. You need to sort of figure out how long you can be aggressive vs the viles while still finding room to escape so you dont get cornered. The mastermind usage during this fight is insanely good too. Probably one of the best wandering masterminds I have seen in a map.

Unfortunately the map slows to a crawl after getting to the next large area. While it is INCREDIBLY easy to eat errant cyb rockets at the initial reveal of this room.. it is complete circle strafe for your foreseeable future. I assume this area would be fun to speedrun.. but again casually this room is kinda meh in my book. The vile horde at the end is also quite stale since there just arent that many and the viles just sort of funnel towards your bfg. ezpz.

Map05: Another map which falls victim to the open ended gameplay trope. There are many fights here which would be fun if you were going to play the map fast.. but playing slow it is an hour long map consisting of a long grind with almost no threat.

The start is full of areas with very low threat and a very high monster count.. I don't really have much to say about them individually except that they didn't kill me. Eventually after grinding through many nonthreatening fights you get to the bfg area. This area looks great and has some great platforming to get the bfg. Unfortunately the bars which prevent you from leaving open immedately. I don't really understand this design decision unless you are just trying to allow people multiple ways of playing.. if you want you could just jerk off and spam rockets until you win. Hardly any threat in this area and almost no reason to use that big fucking gun you just grabbed.

The final fight is also a slog playing casually. The meat of the room is triggered by a switch.. but if you dont want to hit the switch then you can just circle strafe for days while the center of the room kills and mancs on the outside of the room kill each other so then when you hit the switch.. you have almost no threat from the group of monsters which are spawned from the switch press.

Quite an easy/grindy map. It overstayed its welcome. But it looks phenominal.

Map06: My favorite map in the set. Almost everything in this map is good. There are a couple incredibly trivial fights later on if you know how to use bfg well.. but luckily these fights don't last long. The finale is kinda meh casually.. but it still isn't free so I ended up liking it. Great map.

Map07: Bonus incidental combat map. I enjoyed the larger area around the yk door.. but everything else is whatev. Not really a fan of this map.

Overall: A solid slaughter wad made in the vein of Sunder. C-shock 2 is definitely easier than Sunder and in some maps outmatches Sunder in gameplay and quality (Maps 01, 03, 06). C-shock 2 is also completely void of incredibly offensive maps such as The Cage. As far as slaughter wads go c-shock 2 is a must play and is a huge improvement over the original c-shock. 4 stars.

Also.. it is really fun seeing wads made from 1/2 of the Sunlust/Italo team. While I think Danne improved a lot as a mapper his early maps still pack quite a punch.