MAP18: Neurosphere (The Plutonia Experiment)

MAP18: Neurosphere is the eighteenth map of The Plutonia Experiment. It uses the music track "Demons On The Prey" from Doom. In its visual theme and architecture, this level is similar to MAP14: The Inmost Dens from Doom II.

Walkthrough
Rush forward immediately and jump the gap to get inside the building in front of you. (If you fall in the blood, this ledge lowers like a lift.) Quickly take out the chaingunners in the windows to the west before they fuck you up, then take out the rest of the foes while in this room, including the chaingunners outside on the northeast and northwest platforms, and one more southeast at the exit. Then you can clear out the enemies in the starting area, or ignore them and come back to them if you are low on ammo. (To get back there, it's best to straferun across the gap.)

Go up the stairs and murder everyone in this corridor. When you get to the outside corridor heading south (near the secret), you will see a shotgunner on a platform to the west. After you take him out, beware the revenant in a cage behind him. It's recommended you take him out from here.

Go south, past the stairs, and then east, taking out all the bad guys including the arch-vile and the revenant. Go back to the staircase and go up. When you step on the archway in the south there will be a chaingunner ambush, quickly take cover and take them out (the chaingun works best here, as the plasma shots sometimes don't go through some windows).

This done, jump through the archway to the platform due south and clear out this area. Go up the stairs, grab the red key, then go back open the red door and hit that switch.

This will lower the red skull bars in the north. Head back to the north-west of this building, destroy the mancubus, then jump across to the platform. Head north then west, jump this gap and get inside the door quickly, killing the arachnotron as you go. Press the button to lower the bars, kill the chaingunners. Go up the stairs and charge to the doorway in the east and pump a BFG blast into the room. You should be able to take out most if not all the creatures inside, and hopefully the arch-vile, but if you don't, there are 2 energy cells to the south of this room, enough for another BFG shot, if you need it.

Once this is done, grab the blue key, kill all the imps in the cage due east, and any other stragglers, then head north to the blue door which will teleport you to the east side of the map. Head south down the long corridor, kill the chaingunner on the platform, follow the corridor around, jump across to his platform, hit the switch, jump down in the blood to the teleporter, then head west through the door and to the exit teleporter.

Secrets

 * 1) In the central building is a circular blood pool in front of a baron-faced wall. Follow the stairway to the left up, and continue along the path and down another set of stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, do a u-turn left, and you will be at a doorway leading outside. You should see a gray brick "railing" surrounding the lower pathway outside. Run onto the top of the railing from the doorway you are standing in and turn around. There is an alcove in the wall just left of the doorway you came from; run into it from the railing to get the megasphere (and, on hard skill only, the BFG9000) inside.

Bugs

 * 1) You will get a Visplane overflow in Vanilla Final Doom v1.9 if you stand on the easternmost platform of Sector 87 (the 4 lifts with the chaingunners in the south of the map) and look northwest. This platform can only be reached with noclip or the arch-vile jump however.

Records
The Compet-N records for the map are: