A huge part of why I liked Afterglow so much is how well it stood out as its own thing and separated itself from all the vanilla Doom gimmicks that you might normally use in a common map pack. I could send GZDoom packaged with Doom 2 & Afterglow to a normie that's never played Doom and expect them to have a great time. Hard Reset isn't doing that, and I'm not sure why.
The intro mission drops you into a large room flooded with enemies you won't have enough ammo to kill, and too threatening to melee. You're obviously supposed to escape, but the way out is behind one of their entry points, so suddenly I'm circle-strafing the room to herd them all into one ball like it's just another Doom wad. Takes me right out of it.
Next you fight a bunch of gun-toting enemies in wide open areas where there's little more to do than hug a wall and pop shots around a corner. Where's my multiple angles of approach? Where's my shotgun rush potential? And this seems to be recurring issue, the next place you fight human enemies it's again in a wide-open area with little to no cover. Combat is now "put crosshair on distant enemy, fire", I'm chaingun sniping like it's just another Doom wad.
A good contrast is the motorcycle parts shop in the first half of Afterglow: After taking out the guards outside, the main hall opens to one door on the right, one on the left, and the balcony above has enemies on it. Could be a good fight, there's cover, you could conceivably rush either left or right and aggressively capture those rooms, but that's a lot of angles to take shots from. Instead, you could sneak in through the service garage crawlspace and fight your way from the inside out. Hard Reset is the complete opposite of this. No visceral close-quarters battle, no flanking options, just a big fat vanilla Doom combat arena. Hell, sometimes you don't even get 'big', it's a cramped space and surprise you're surrounded by enemies now.
The level design in general leaves me scratching my head, it doesn't flow organically like it used to. I keep asking myself where I'm supposed to go, rather than just "I haven't been that way, I'll go that way." I keep finding broken crouch-jumps where the ceiling is too low or that just overall lack polish and are super gimmicky. One in particular leads to a dead-end secret room and I legitimately thought I escaped the play area because I could not get back out.
The """stealth""" mechanic was already overstaying its welcome after the Wendigo section, but it comes up again with a vengeance in the very next level. Stealth/surprise attacks were fun in Afterglow because it was occasional, but now oh look, a tower full of enemies that are conveniently facing the other way, because that's how you do stealth in vanilla Doom! It's so artificial, so immersion-breaking. To make it worse, despite everyone saying not to go full violence and to sneak, the level forces head-on, kill-everyone a short while later. It doesn't even matter.
The wendigo map in particular feels out of place in the early game. They're tanky and hit like a truck, ammo counts are low and it's
justified that you'd want to avoid combat as much as possible, but it's gimmick-heavy and it doesn't feel like a smooth ramp up into the early game, same with the mutant gauntlets following it. Dang, I guess Apocalypse really does make you make every shot count... until you wipe out an army of bandits and now you're drowning in spare ammo in the very next section.
Hard Reset feels like it expects me to have familiarity with the quirks of vanilla Doom, and that's a negative in my opinion.
Afterglow had this fun surprise attack moment; they aren't aggroed? Friendlies?
No, they're just unaware. Strike fast, shock and awe, guy at the top pisses his pants - it felt good and flowed smoothly, especially since it comes at a moment of narrative revenge.
I hope Hard Reset gets better. Hell, I've played worse wads, and I wouldn't care so much if Afterglow wasn't so good.
Edit: it doesn't, I hate it. Monster closet, circle-strafe arena, fake stealth. Monster closet, circle-strafe arena, fake stealth.
