RUST (Second Playthrough)
By Arsinikk - 18 Maps
Format: Vanilla
[Download]
Started: April 17th 2025
Finished: May 12th 2025
Status: Shelved
(Re-reviewed with the release of Episode 2: Jaws of the Earth)
Before getting to E2 I did a second run of E1 because past me played this continuous instead of pistol start and I wanted to fix that. E1 is still fairly solid, and going back with hindsight and several months more doom experience made things a bit less frustrating, though i think I broke E1M8's gimmick somehow (probably the fault of GZdoom though. Finding the secret map and its associated custom weapon was pretty neat as well since I totally missed it the first time around. And then there's E2, aka the reason this is marked as shelved now. I am, immensely curious as to what the hell happened with E2's development because this is one of the STEEPEST drops in quality I've seen in anything ever. Overall the maps are a lot more jank and kinda bad than in E1, but rust is intentionally trying to replicate old vanilla 90s wads in terms of level design style so I suppose it's to be expected. The real breaking point comes with E2's custom enemies, because MAN are some of these absolutely obnoxious. The toximps are fine, just imps but with more hp and stronger fireballs, and the vile is a neat retake on the archvile, swapping out the hitscan flame for a close range continuous stream of fire, but these green lost souls and the medusas? Just. No. The green lost souls turn themselves into hyper-strong revenant missiles upon spotting you instead of the usual charge attack, which is pretty frustrating as they become unkillable after this point, are INSANELY powerful and maps sometimes lack decent cover to get rid of them, but the medusas are even worse. They do no damage, but have a hitscan attack that FREEZES YOU IN PLACE, which they can seemingly loop indefinitely with no cooldown, causing all the other enemies to take cheap shots at you while you try and maybe kill the medusa to free yourself, which takes a while due to their surprisingly high HP. The medusa room in E2M3 was as far as I got before I threw this wad in the trash until E3 comes out. I warped to a few other maps to check them out and my issues with this wad didn't seem to get any better later on. It also doesn't help that E2's music is just, bad?? for some reason. Both episodes have midi-fied versions of various nine inch nails and nirvana songs, and while E1's sound pretty ok, a lot of E2's are really grating and annoying to listen to. Maybe I'm just bad at doom, missing something obvious, or just less tolerant of weird jank after having played a bunch of top tier wads between my first rust playthrough and now, but with how vastly different my opinions on E2 are compared to E1, I don't think so. Also the lore codex locked behind a weird ass puzzle is back again, the puzzle is neat i guess but just lemme read your lore please.
Rating - ⭐⭐½
Favorite/Least Favorite Map skipped because the WAD wasn't completed.