Review by Colin Phipps

"The Helios Project - Stage Alpha" is a single level for Doom 2. The style is best described as uncluttered, with no excess of detail but still good design. The texturing is mostly brown brick and rusty metal, with good use of acid and features to make rooms interesting. There were some texture misalignments though.

There are fairly few monsters and goodies around the level; typically you fight at most a few heavy badies at a time, mostly super-shotgun work. There is plenty of opportunity to get them fighting each other; alas there's not much in the way of traps or secrets though. There are some good fights though, and a fun part where you have to run past a cyberdemon and several archvilles to snatch a keycard.

The level is quite non-linear; there is a good plot in the text file, and this matches the level design well. One small think I noticed, a lot of the doors in the level are low doors, and the big enemies that you are fighting can't get through them; apart from the keycard snatching I mentioned, most fights at this level give the player plenty of freedom to withdraw.

To conclude, it's a nice level, but if you want a frantic battle then this (mostly) isn't it.