Saturday, July 25, 2009

Review 7 - The Ghouls Forest 3

When I see someone reaching into glowing embers and managing to restart a bonfire, it just amazes me. Just in case you people have very uncreative minds that was a metaphor for someone recreating something amazing and new out of an "old". With the arrival of the first and second installments of the Ghouls Forest trilogy, it was clear that Cutman Mike had done exactly that. Whilst I particularly enjoy the first two Ghouls Forest wads it is really the Ghouls Forest 3 that is the diamond in the rough.

The Ghouls Forest 1 put the DOOM player against a never-seen-before foe. Good old Choke. In the Ghouls Forest 2, the players knew what to expect but knowledge on what was coming didn’t necessarily help them to survive.

The Ghouls Forest 3 puts the player against not 1, not 2, but 4 different Ghouls! The other detail is that each Ghoul is unique. It has different sounds, attack patterns, they look different… I won’t write much about them seeing as I don’t want to spoil much; but just to let you know that if you thought the first 2 Ghouls Forest wads were scary, just wait until you fight the Yurei or the Jittersk….hold on; I’m trying very hard to contain my excitement here!!

Oh, yeah…apart from the difficulty that you face when trying to battle different types of Ghouls, dear Cutman Mike thought he would be a little more generous to the player by giving them a weapon they’re certainly not used to using if they played a lot of DOOM: a bow and arrows. Yes, that’s right. The character of this wad is not the regular DOOM guy but another person called the “Hunter”, who is (as you may have guessed) a professional Ghoul hunter.


Well, in the interests of not spoiling too much here I’m gonna go straight to the



Grades


  • Whilst each of the other Ghouls Forest wads presented us with new content; the Ghouls Forest 3 tops that off with simply fabulous Ghouls. Note the plural here! It's not only one Ghoul!! The new form of weapons is absolutely stunning too! 10
  • Another glorious detail added here was the change in difficulty. Now, there are choices of how hard you want the game to be. This affects two details in the game: the number of arrows you have as ammo (although you can collect used arrows {if you find them, of course}) and the darkness of the forest. For example, in the easist difficulty, you have unlimited arrows and everything in the forest is pretty much visible. In the hardest, you're limited to only a few arrows and you can't see more than 2 metres in front of you! The change in difficulty allows easier or harder gameplay; therefore expanding the possibility of gameplay. 10
  • The variety of gameplay is one of the most attractive features of the wad. When you've learned the attack patterns of one Ghoul and finally manage to slay it, you're forced to stay alert whilst waiting for the next Ghoul, as you have no idea at all of how to defeat it! 10
  • The downsite of the whole Ghouls Forest series is the multiplayer experience, in my opinion. As stated in both other reviews of the Ghouls Forest series, it's practically limited to survival and co-op.8
  • The architechture in this forest is very, very similar to that of the second Ghouls Forest. To be honest, other than the changes in darkness, there is not much to be said here. 8

10+10+10+8+8 = 46

46 / 5 = 9.2


The Ghouls Forest 3 gets a 9.2 out of 10!!

It's a brilliant wad! As Cutman Mike said, it's not for the faint of heart so don't play it if you have any problems about seeing blood, guts, or getting scared in general! If you can handle it, though, it's a wad that cannot be missed for anything!

1 comment: