Review by Colin Phipps

MOON2000 is a moon base. OK, so no surprises there, but what is surprising is that you really do get to see the moon's surface, a real cracked and barren landscape stretching into the distance. It's never easy to give scenes like this is a Doom level, but Michael Krause has done it well.

Michael warns that he uses a P200, so "some areas may run slowly on a underpowered machine", but I had no trouble running with LxDoom on my trusty 486. His advice is sound though, because this level is massive. If you have played many of his other levels you'll have some idea what I mean. In case you haven't, remember the big acid hall of E2M4, and then imagine a level made out of 10 or twenty such gigantic areas.

The style of MOON2000 is definitely high-tec though. The level is entirely based on large detail, like computer consoles, seats and lifts which are sized for cyberdemons rather than marines. In fact this is a level where it would look less out of place to see a cyberdemon working at one of the giant computer consoles than a tiny human trooper.

As shown by so many Doom 1 levels from the early days, sometimes levels can be too big. But MOON2000 definitely doesn't make this mistake. The space is all used well, with a good return to the more open style of fighting that such large spaces encourage - more running around dodging than cowering in the entrance doorway at this level. The player is often forced to attack, strike forward, and take some risks to complete areas.

There is some confusion early on over some lifts; the author has adopted a particular silver computer panel as a lift texture, but forgot to tell anyone about it, so I was left searching for a way forward when I just had to hit a lift. Obviously I was playing too late at night (again ;-) because it was visible on the map as a lift (honest guv, the Boom automap colour scheme confused me :-P), but why not just use the normal lift texture? Oh well, I suppose it was OK once I knew. Maybe just a warning in the TXT file, please?

There is a good supply of ammo and health throughout the level, quite well judged I thought. There are plenty of secrets too, giving a variety of goodies. I thing I would have had a lot of difficulty finishing the level without some of these, but then again that's what UV is all about.

The level comes to a climax with an even more gigantic area, in which there are 2 cyberdemons, a spiderdemon, and lots of revenants and mancubi thrown in for good measure. Well, I just ran through then, hit a few switches and escaped, but I presume that the hundreds of cells and dozens of rockets I never used were intended to kill at least some of them. If anyone kills them all, it would be an interesting demo I think. Perhaps not very relevant to normal play though.