Modern day 1984

They didn’t even bother putting safety railings even though the drop is at least 8 metres.

I always get suspicious when a wad replaces some other map than the first one. At first glance, E1M5 doesn’t seem to have any significance at all. Why not E1M6 for that matter? I shrugged off this minor setback and began playing.

The first sight of the map is devastating. An enormous industrial hall, the like of which modern world is hopefully yet to see. The meaning of this map suddenly came clear to me as if some friendly cancer had just killed all the stupid brain cells in my head, making room for the rest to do their work undisturbed.

Now, as a man who enjoys politics, Viscous 2 was a refreshing wind in the world of doom maps for me. The dystopian setting of the map shows where the mindless consumerism will eventually lead. There is no glimmer of hope in this bleak manufacturing plant. It’s a world where order is being maintained by vicious gangs, the poor lower class of factory workers with no future prospects, while the rich presumably live comfortably in their mansions, making crude jokes about it. Also the choice of map replacement becomes clear. In future, research has no place in society and Phobos Lab has been replaced with a lifeless and cold factory. Truly, Viscous 2 is very depressing to play.

The player’s role in this whole mess is a member of one of these gangs who has completely lost it. The pressure was too much, and in his eyes the only option is to kill or be killed, which, after the first gunshot, becomes actual reality. There is no mercy in this rotten symbol of modern industrialism.

The deep thought behind this map apparently took away the emphasis from map design. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that this map alone is the sole reason autorun was invented. Everything is huge in this map, and most of the time the player will just spend running across the map finding where to go next. Needless to say that all passages are on the opposite sides of the (astoundingly enormous) main hall the player needs to cross numerous times.

I guess they outsourced the reactor core to Hell inc. for ethical reasons.

True enough, I got lost at one point, and at that time the factory complex truly revealed its true self. I wandered all over the building, trying to find a helpful sign post or the guiding hand of god telling me where to go next, but alas, even the nazi concentration camps could be considered a holiday resort compared to this hell. This all culminated in a room where there were dozens of buttons littered all over, each revealing a part of an unfolding puzzle, leaving you confused, dizzy, angry, dehydrated and ultimately unsatisfied.

Visually, as you can already guess, this map is bleak. Even the blank snowy cover of Antarctica brings more hope to one’s soul than the endless grey texture of this map. The only reason the textures are aligned at times is because the walls are so humongous that the texture gets to tile dozens if not hundreds of times before encountering a corner.

At one point the player opens an ordinary door only to find a hellish world behind it. The remarkable thing is that it doesn’t feel any worse than the place you just came from. Truly this signifies remarkable skill from the author, showing how infernal the conditions in the sources of our entertainment in future are. Welcome to Viscous 2. Welcome to hell.

-Fatal