In Deus Vult, Huy Pham doesn’t really escape those issues I tend to have with slaughter maps, but he also doesn’t put all of his eggs in one basket. It’s also hard to ramp up the tension and the stakes when the player starts off by wiping out roomfuls of monsters with the rocket launcher.
Anything weaker than the super shotgun collects dust. They consistently throw dozens, if not hundreds, of enemies at you - battles that necessitate the use of Doom‘s high-end weapons almost exclusively. Slaughter maps, by their nature, tend to be the opposite of that. I like an even distribution of enemy types and a WAD that gives you reason to use the whole array of weapons at your disposal. I like more of a slow burn - a steady build to an epic climax.
Slaughter maps aren’t really my cup of tea.
