Review by Colin Phipps

"Big City" is exactly what it says - a big city level for Doom 2. You start out by coming down the road and entering the city; the outside area is dominated by the large blockish buildings, and roads lead around between them. The layout isn't much like a real city, with the buildings scattered around at odd angles, big spaces between them; I guess for the high-up monsters to be playable this is necessary, but it just doesn't feel anything likeas good a city as say Downtown (Doom 2 MAP13).

The architecture is generally fairly simple; some of the buildings were interesting on the outside, others weren't, and some were rather plain cubes. Inside, there were nice features like furniture in some buildings; however the style was too haphazard I thought, with each building having a different style. The level of detail varies a lot.

Gameplay initially was better than the architecture, with careful use of ammo needed, and tricky moving around because of the monsters above shooting down at you. You findyour way into a few buildings and get some guns and ammo, then you can begin clearing out the stronger buildings. There aren't many traps; one good one is where a load of enemies teleport into the outdoor area, you have to think to get them fighting each other, and keep using the buildings as cover.

As things went on, a couple of cyberdemons get teleported into the outside area; these can either be avoided, or you get get them fighting the monsters shooting from the buildings. The annoying thing, though, is the number of fights where you teleport into a room with little cover and nasty badies. In a way these are like little puzzles, working out which way to dive so their initial shots hit each other. But when it came to half-a-dozen revenants in a room with nearly no cover, I gave up in disappointment.

Really I'm not sure about this level, it's not bad bad, but the inconsistent style and unusual fights just didn't suit me. If the design had been more consistent throughout I'd probably have liked this one, but as it is I just didn't feel like finishing it. Basically, for me this isn't a patch on Downtown, which is probably my favorite Doom 2 map.