Panthserv's 2014 Christmas Special

Panthserv's 2014 Christmas Special

NOTE 1: For Christmas this year, I got a Nintendo Wii U, New Super Mario Bros U, New Super Luigi U, Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed, Super Smash Brothers for Wii U, Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, and Sonic Boom: The Rise of Lyric. I also got five Amiibos: Mario, Samus, Yoshi, Pikachu, and Donkey Kong for use with the Wii U as well as an offical player guide for SSB4 on the Wii U and 3DS. For gift cards, hoo boy. I got a Newbury Comics gift card, two Gamestop gift cards, two Itunes giftcards, a Ninety Nine gift card, two eShop cards, two Trader Joe's cards, and a Target Gift Card. Finally, I got Space Invaders Jenga, Scrabble Electronic Scoring, Chess 4, and various other things including clothing. As I use my gift cards, I'll tell you what I spent them on.

NOTE 2: On 12/22/2014, I did a time attack of the Arcade Mode of "Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion XL" for the sixth time, this time playing as Dexter, getting a final time of 13 minutes and 55 seconds. I am very rusty, but I still played on Medium. I had 9 deaths, and two or three of them were caused by Team Supers. My first death was on Stage 2 (VS Bubbles) because my Up B got registered by the game as a Side B. I felt upset because it was my first time losing to her in this game (either controlled by a player or AI). Dexter's ending involves him returning to his lab with the formula to interdimensional travel, and he feels quite proud of himself. Way better than some of the other endings I've seen. I don't know if this will be the final run of PTE or not, but I can tell you I loved playing as Blossom and Buttercup in it. It is so much fun to kick butt as a young five-year old who's in kindergarden.

For the 2014 Christmas Special, we're going to be playing a Doom II PWAD known as XMas Nightmare. It's 11 maps long, so let's get this game started. This will be played on GZDoom with Samsara (ZDoom version), and I'm going to be picking Ranger (from Quake) this time around. It's being played on "Hardcore" difficulty, which is "Ultra-Violence". Remember, on last year's Christmas special I played as Duke Nukem on "Xmas 2000".

MAP01: The Nightmare Begins. We find ourselves in a room with some health potions (represented as blue presents). There's a switch we can flip in the beginning and it will say, "X-Mas Nightmare for Doom II. Original Mod Developers: Bytebrothers Software (1994). Music: Midisoft Corporation, Deckernet, Et Al. Doom II version by: Judgespear (1995-2007). Then an imp comes in dressed up with a santa hat so we kill it, followed by a zombieman. Then a second imp comes in so we get to kill it. The door it opened had a green armor and two armor bonuses. Then we find two Boos (which replace Lost Souls) so we kill them too. Keep in mind our starting weapon is a shotgun, but it's only useful on the imps and hitscanners. The second switch reveals they are information kiosks. Then we go outside, kill some more imps, and find a laser cannon (which is Ranger's unique item). In Samsara, all characters have their own unique item. Doomguy has the Berserker Pack, Chexter has the Supercharge Breakfast, Corvus has the Arcane Egg, B.J. has Extra Life, Hexen has the Mystic Scroll, Duke has the Jetpack, and Marathon has the Alien Weapons. Since Samsara's pistol weapons don't use ammo for balance reasons, I don't have to worry about ammo right now. Then we go inside and find a Double-Barreled Shotgun (replacing the shotgun for Ranger). Then we find a Santa imposter (replacing the Shotgunner), and a reindeer (replacing the demon) as well as some imps. We also see a half-a-snowman (replacing the Cacodemon). Eventually we find a blue keycard and pick it up. Then we go inside and open the blue keycard door. We flip a switch inside, opening up some lost souls and imps. At this point I only have 15 shells left. However they do give me a big box of shotgun shells, which I thank the game for by turning on double ammo this one time. I only do this if I really need ammo. So now we're in a part of the house we've never been in before. We can shoot the enemies through the window so we do that with our single shotgun. There's even a hell knight out there that gets a critical (high damage roll) to take us out. D'OH! Luckily we saved after picking up the shotgun shells so we don't lose much progress. It turns out this is some other guy's house. So we find the red keycard after killing some more enemies and open up the red keycard door. So now we go outside and fight two Hell Knights. Really, two Hell Knights this early? With the yellow skull key we can now exit the map. But first we need to get the two secrets: a Blue Armor and a Rocket Launcher. I think they both involve finding a secret teleporter. Now that we have them, we can exit. When we do, we get a results screen. It took me about 14 minutes to beat the first map. Then we get this text screen that says this...

"YOU RECEIVE NEWS OF A CATASTROPHIC ALIEN INVASION TAKING PLACE ALL OVER THE WORLD. 'DAMN' YOU THINK TO YOURSELF, 'ON CHRISTMAS EVE OF ALL TIMES!' YOU CALL UP THE THREE MEMBERS OF YOUR STRIKE TEAM AND BRIEF THEM ON THE SITUATION. YOU RECEIVE AN INCOMING MESSAGE ON YOUR RADIO COMMUNICATOR. IT'S FROM SANTA! HE RELAYS THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE: 'ATTENTION DOOM STRIKE TEAM! HELLSPAWN HAVE OVERRUN MY WORKSHOP AND CONVERTED IT INTO A BASE OF OPERATIONS. THEY WILL USE MY CHRISTMAS MAGIC TO SPREAD THEIR TERROR WORLDWIDE!' YOU THEN RECEIVE DISTRESS SIGNALS ON YOUR COMMUNICATOR FROM YOUR TEAMMATES. THEY'RE UNDER ATTACK AS WELL. YOU STRIKE OUT TO SAVE THEIR HOMES FROM THE DEMONS. THE NIGHTMARE HAS BEGUN..."

MAP02: The Demon Estate. This map is not easy. We begin by killing four zombiemen, two shotgunners, and some imps. Then we get attacked by some more imps and demons as we make our way down the path. Then after killing some enemies we flip a swtch, get the blue keycard and - oh my god. They throw REVENANTS at us and even some MANCUBI. We can run past them though. Then we open the Blue Keycard door. Four Demons show up but we kill them with ease. Now we find ourselves in some kind of village with various buildings in it. There's also some hitscanners but nothing we can't take care of. Now you're going to find our why I chose Ranger. His shotgun is strong enough to kill a zombieman in one hit most of the time, and a shotgunner in two hits. Then we find some Snifits posing as Chaingunners. So we kill them and pick up the NAILGUN (replacing the Chaingun for Ranger). We go inside and find a Hell Knight as well as imps and hitscanners. They gave me a backpack, a big bullet pickup, and a big shell pickup. Crouching inside the fireplace gives us another Laser Gun. So we flip the switch in the house and go outside. Then we kill three Lost Souls and go in the teleporter - real fair, game. Thanks for surrounding me with enemies. We need to kill them all so we can get the red keycard. When we get it, we go to where the red keycard door is and open it. Inside is a Partial Invisibility item and some more enmies that we need to kill, one of them being a hell knight. We flip a switch, go to the newly revealed room, kill some more enemies, flip another switch, and go back to where we were to pick up the yellow keycard. Now we're gonna have to type "give artiteleport" into the console then type "use artiteleport" without the quotation marks, so we can return to the beginning of the level. So now we can exit - or can we? We're teleported somewhere else. Okay, NOW we can exit. That level took me 13 minutes and 58 seconds, putting me up at a time of 27 minutes and 44 seconds.

MAP03: Luxury Home of Evil. "Mjolnir! Find some grunts!" YES! They finally give me Ranger's Chainsaw replacement. We get to use it right away until we get to a room with a load of enemies in it. We switch to the double shotgun and kill them all with it - but at the cost of taking heavy damage. Then we find our first Baron of Hell and Arch-Vile. There's also a kiosk that says, "NOTICE: These doors are opened remotely." This is actually really hard. I wound up dying over 18 times before I finally killed both of them. My reward? The Super Nailgun (replacing the Plasma Rifle for Ranger) and a big box of Cell ammo. There's even a switch that lets you see the map. But why not give me a computer area map? So I go upstairs and kill some more imps, demons, and Wolfenstein SS officers. Oh and there's an arch-vile in there too - son of a... there's a secret though which I find after killing the hell knight and other monsters. It costs me five health, but I find one of each big ammo pack, a backpack, and a light amplification device. They even give us a Grenade Launcher (replacing the Super Shotgun for Ranger)! Then I see a pain elemental and a lost soul. Then a camera shows us the yellow keycard's guarded by two Barons of Hell. That is the last key we will be getting as the yellow keycard door is near the exit. Apparently we opened one of the doors so we can go through it. A lot of lost souls and some demons. Okay. Thanks for giving me another backpack! Now I have three backpacks! "Oh hey let's sing the Backpack Song!" NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO- *static for three seconds* We're back. We're back. Anyway, the second door opened so we can pick up the blue keycard. So anyway there's some more lost souls on our way back. Oh and a Mancubus too. We open the blue keycard door, kill the lost soul, and flip the off switch. Then we run to the backyard past all the monsters, pick up the red keycard, and open up the red keycard door. Then I see a Cyberdemon and two Barons of Hell. Why a Cyberdemon? WHY? Keep in mind that Cyberdemon is one of the game's two bosses - now there's a Spider Mastermind? What the hell? Anyway, the Spider Mastermind ends up killing the Cyberdemon so we can get the yellow keycard and run for it. Well at the end there's a Hell Knight that you must kill so we can exit the map. Then we get another text screen.

"THIS SMALL CONTINGENT OF DEMON FORCES HAS BEEN SENT OUT TO DESTROY YOU AND YOUR STRIKE TEAM IN YOUR OWN HOMES ON THE MOST UNLIKELY OF TIMES, CHRISTMAS! HOWEVER, YOU WERE ABLE TO STOP THE ONSLAUGHT OF DEMONS UPON YOUR HOMES. DECEMBER 25: CHRISTMAS MORNING. YOU AND YOUR STRIKE TEAM RECEIVE ANOTHER MESSAGE FROM SANTA. 'I HAVE TRACED A MASSIVE CONCENTRATION OF DEMONS IN A COMMERCIAL DISTRICT NOT FAR FROM YOU. THEY APPEAR TO BE USING THIS BLOCK OF YOUR CITY TO ESTABLISH A NEW BASE OF OPERATIONS.' WITH YOUR TEAM AT THE READY, YOU HEAD INTO THE INFESTED COMMERCIAL DISTRICT TO INITIATE THE NEXT PHASE OF YOUR ATTACK."

MAP04: The Commercial District. Our first opponents are six imps which we easily kill. Then we see it. The Thunderbolt and Quad Damage! I had to noclip up to get it, and then noclip back down, but it was worth it. From this point on, I can activate the Quad Damage whenever I need it. So I need to be FAST so I can kill as many enemies as I can while the QUAD DAMAGE is still active. There's a kiosk that says, "Right Movie Theaters, Left Retail Outlets, Straight Security Office." Then we flip a switch inside a building and pick up the rocket launcher. So now we must go inside the movie theater as everywhere else requires keycards, killing enemies on our way. We crouch inside the teller's desk and flip a switch, then crouch out. So we go inside the theater that has a scrolling picture of 300 in it as well as a lot of Imps and Revenants. You know what this means? QUAD DAMAGE! We quickly kill the imps and revenants, flip two switches, then kill an Arch-vile. "Warning! Very Dangerous Area!!!" Oh ****. I'm wishing I saved my Quad Damage. As this is a single player game I can wait around to recharge the quad damage. I see a bunch of enemies so I pull out the QUAD DAMAGE. I think around this time I find the Blue Keycard. So we open the blue keycard door, kill some enemies, and flip a switch to lower the blue keycard gates. Then we find a switch and flip it. "Warning! Very dangerous area!" Again? QUAD DAMAGE! Mancubi, Pain Elementals, and a Hell Knight. Okay, easy killings with the Super Nailgun and quad damage. Then we open the red keycard door, kill a Baron of Hell, and ride a lift down to HELL. That's what it looks like. This room has a lot of enemies in it. We need to flip a switch to lower a lift on it and kill more enemies. The pain elementals made this room far harder than it needed to be. After killing a Baron of Hell, we get a yellow keycard and we can exit after killing the last few enemies. It took 18 minutes and 32 seconds, putting us at 57 minutes and 56 seconds. By the way, I beat the par time by 8 seconds. That's something I didn't expect.

MAP05: The Carn-Evil Park. 15 seconds in and already we've encountered a baron of hell. So we find ourselves in a room that looks very similar to the first level of Doom 1. Since all of you are familiar with this level, I don't need to go into details here. Besides, all the enemies here are easy - except for the sudden Baron of Hell at the end! YIKES, didn't expect that. Anyway, your reward is a blue keycard, so let's open the blue keycard door. Now why are we in E3M1 from Doom 1? It is harder, there are now revenants instead of just cacodemons. The hallway towards the end has an ARCH-VILE! Time for the QUAD DAMAGE! Your reward for clearing this part of the map is a red keycard. From here we can just take a teleporter to near the exit area. My time here was 5 minutes and 58 seconds.

MAP06: The Shopping Mall. NO! This is basically The Crusher from Doom II. Everything is in exactly the same place as it is in the original Doom II. From the enemy placement to the crusher to the item layout. Exact remake. Time to do a speedrun... okay we're back. There was no mall anywhere, the title of this map was a ****ing lie.

"YOU'VE FOUGHT YOUR WAY INTO THE CENTER OF THE DEMON BASE. YOU HAVE LOCATED WHAT APPEARS TO BE A DETONATION DEVICE. IT IS HEAVILY GUARDED. YOU WERE DETECTED BY THE GUARDS AND PLACED IN A HOLDING CELL. YOU MUST BREAK FREE AND ACTIVATE THAT DETONATION DEVICE IN ORDER TO ELIMINATE THE DEMONS' EFFORTS TO SET UP A BASE HERE."

MAP07: Dead Snowy Simple. This map is basically a Winter version of the most popular Deathmatch map in vanilla Doom II, outside of DWANGO5. You must kill 7 fatsos followed by 8 or so Arachnotrons. When you do this, you can exit and you'll get this text message.

"THE DETONATION DEVICE ELIMINATES ALL DEMONS WITHIN A TEN-MILE RADIUS. YOUR STRIKE TEAM HAS SUCCEEDED IN REPELLING THEIR ATTEMPTS TO BUILD A BASE AT THIS LOCATION. YOU FIND YOURSELF IN AN EVACUATION TOWN. ALL HUMAN PRESENCE HAS BEN REMOVED. SUDDENLY YOU HEAR EVER-INCREASING SOUNDS OF EVIL OVERWHELMING THE ONCE SILENT TOWN. SANTA RELIES THIS MESSAGE. 'I DETECTED A PORTAL THAT LEADS TO THE NORTH POLE NEARBY. FIND IT AND YOU CAN PUSH RIGHT INTO THE MAIN CLUSTER OF DEMONS THERE.'"

MAP08: Silent Night, Deadly Night. Finally an original level! The music here is AWESOME! The beginning is quite tough though because you are already under attack. I don't need the quad, though. SO when things settle go I go in a room with red floor on it. Then we see a yellow keycard. We can actually get it by jumping on a tree and then jumping to the platform it's on. We do see a yellow keycard door though (at least three of them). But we go around them and kill an Anarchnotron followed by some imps and a hell knight. There's another sequence break with the red keycard. Jumping on the fountain's edge followed by a strafe run upon its ledge will let us pick up the red keycard early. The first yellow keycard door has nothing in it except some weapons we already have and a switch that we flip, and the second yellow keycard door leads us to the red keycard. Or where it would be if I hadn't done sequence breaking! Ranger's got a Christmas to save, he doesn't have much time! We open the red keycard doors and we get to flip a switch in both rooms. We end up having to Rocket Jump up a ledge to the other half of the map. Now that we're here, we need to move on and keep killing enemies in search of the blue keycard. Some notable enemy placement includes an arch-vile placed on a high ledge and a Baron of Hell guarding nothing? We are having no luck finding this blue keycard. I seriously explored the whole map and I didn't find that god damn key card. You know what this means? Time to type "give bluecard". SO the door here won't open? Noclip through it, turn noclip off, exit this hell level. It took me 18 whole minutes to beat this map.

MAP09: The North Pole. This map is unchanged from the original Doom II. If you want a walkthrough of this level, go look up a playthrough of this map on Youtube. One speedrun of MAP09 later (during which I pass 1000 kills)...

"YOU AND YOUR TEAM HAVE SUCCESSFULLY BROKEN THROUGH THE DEMON'S OUTER PERIMETER DEFENSES IN THEIR MAIN NORTH POLE BASE. NOW YOU COME UPON THE MAIN HEADQUARTERS OF THE ENTIRE DEMON OPERATION: SANTA'S WORKSHOP! A CYBERDEMON COMMANDER'S IN CHARGE OF THE ENTIRE AREA AS HE OVERLOOKS THE POWER PLANTS TO OVERSEE PRODUCTION AND INTEGRATION OF DEMON AND CHRISTMAS TECHNOLOGY INTO A POWERFUL FORCE TO WIPE OUT HUMANKIND. YOUR ONLY CHANCE IS A STEALTHY INSERTION BEHIND THE CYBERDEMON COMMANDER'S OUTPOST TOWER. IT'S TIME TO TEAR DOWN THE DEMON STRANGEHOLD ON SANTA'S WORKSHOP PIECE-BY-PIECE."

MAP10: Santa's Workshop. We are under attack from the beginning. It turns out the Cyberdemon is unkillable by normal means... right now. We kill some monsters, go through a hallway, and flip a switch while dodging rocket fire. Then we go into the second power planet and flip a switch inside. I now have to use QUAD DAMAGE as this part is very hard. After killing them and enter a teleporter, we can flip a switch to gain access to the Reindeer Stable. Anyway, we go through some monster killings before we end up in a brown room. There's a switch in here which grants us access to Power Plant 2. Then we must noclip out because the door won't open!  Then some dumb*** map designer puts a Spider Mastermind out of NOWHERE. Then I have to Rocket Jump to the Red Keycard. Quake invented Rocket Jumping, after all. Anyway we go inside the Power Plant 2 and find a Blue Keycard. We have to strafe jump across the river to get to the blue keycard door. When we do, we open it. Let me tell you - this part is NOT easy. It's hard. So many pain elementals, hitscanners and lost souls make this area PURE HELL. We need to noclip past the iron bars to flip a switch. Then we go up a lift, activate QUAD DAMAGE, then kill some more enemies and flip a switch. Also the music here is good. But there are a lot of enemies. So many ememies that it borders on Hell Revealed quality. Soon we find ourselves in hell. There's a switch on some boxes we need to flip. Now we're in some kind of lava cavern. This is starting to make less and less sense. Anyway, two hell knights and two barons show up but they get crushed. We soon find ourselves in an area with a lot of hitscanners. Thanks to QUAD DAMAGE, this section is very easy. Eventually we fall down a lift and have to fight Cacodemons and Mancubi. Then we go up a bloody waterfall and kill some more enemies. So I guess we have to go outside now. Then I went back to the Cyberdemon and killed him with my QUAD DAMAGE. But that doesn't do anything. Okay. Do you want to know where the yellow keycard we need was? You're not going to believe this. IN A SECRET AREA. Your final opponents in this map are some mancubus and Barons of Hell. Then you teleport ON TOP OF THE CYBERDEMON. Too bad I already killed him earlier. Then we can finally end the map.

"YOU AND YOUR TEAM SAVOR SWEET VICTORY AT LAST! WITH THE SILENT ASSASSINATION OF THE CYBERDEMON COMMANDER, THE ENTIRE OPERATION AT SANTA'S WORKSHOP FELL INTO DISARRAY. MANY DEMONS FLED BACK TO WHERE THEY CAME. CHRISTMAS HAS BEEN SAVED. SANTA REVEALS SOME BAD NWS. HE OVERHEARD THE DEMONS SAY THEY WILL LAUNCH ANOTHER ATTACK IN ONE WEEK, RECOVERING THEIR LOSSES BY THEN. ONE WEEK FROM NOW MEANS NEW YEARS DAY! THE DEMONS ENSURE THAT THE EARTH WILL NEVER SEE THE NEW YEAR. YOU AND YOUR TEAM REST UP AND LAUNCH A COUNTER-OFFENSIVE INTO THE STYGIAN DEPTHS OF HELL ITSELF THE DAY BEFORE THEY STRIKE. TONIGHT YOU CELEBRATE NEW YEAR'S EVE!"

MAP11 is not changed at all from the original Doom II. This sucks! One speedrun later...

"YOU HAVE WON!"

The End

What do you mean I have won? I guess Ranger becomes the fifth person to save Christmas from evil here. Duke Nukem saved it in 2013 (in XMas 2000), The Powerpuff Girls (all three of them) saved it from Princess Morbucks in mid-2014 (Twas the Fight Before Christmas), and now Ranger saves it on Christmas Day. There won't be anything uploaded on the 27th of December. So I'll see you all next year, which will be full of numerous surprises!