Hey everyone! Not gonna lie, this week’s entries were pretty great and it was rather hard to choose between all of em. I’m liking this kind of activity, so keep it up! This week’s Map of the Week is ‘Compound’ by Fry.
The level starts you off at a small bar filled to the brim with skeletons, and you can tell just from the first stage alone that this isn’t gonna be an easy level. Fry makes the player go through the entire building by having a phylactery on the top floor tied to a bartender located at the bottom floor, forcing the player to use most of their ammo by the time they reach the top. Which is where backup comes in.
After making it out alive, the Reaper proceeds to the address found in the previous stage, arriving at a large and complex warehouse with a lot of different approaches to take, with the ludicrous amount of vents and stairwells providing many possible routes. You’ll contend with skeletons, a lot of demons, and even a few hellhounds. All of the enemies are absolutely lethal, and they don’t hesitate before pulling the trigger, so your best strategy would be to stay in the shadows and avoid direct combat as much as possible. After clearing the building along with even more backup, the player takes the elevator to the level’s final stage.
This ash factory is made up of uniform, blocky rooms and filled with trigger-happy skeletons. As with the last two sections, you kill everyone, burn all the ash (we’re here to put a stop to the factory, after all). After this you’ll have to fight your way back to the top of the facility to escape in the same elevator you came in by. What I liked the most about Compound was its difficulty. The stages are rather long and have enemies at almost every corner, so the level is certainly frustrating. However, this just makes it so much satisfying and rewarding when you finally do clear a stage, and, to be completely honest, this level gave me the most exciting “holy shit” moments that I’ve ever experienced in this game. Oh, and remember how I mentioned there being a lot of enemies in a small space?

Beautiful, isn't it? Play it now!