MAP16: Suburbs (Doom II)

MAP16: Suburbs (MAP44 in PSX/Saturn, MAP17 in GBA) is the sixteenth map of Doom II. It was designed by Sandy Petersen and uses the music track "The Demon's Dead". In the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn versions of Doom, this level grants the player access to the hidden level MAP58: The Mansion.



Walkthrough
From the start, walk straight ahead and go through the door just around the corner. The outdoor area you'll arrive in (A) consists of two small buildings inside a tall, circular, black barrier wall, as well as several buildings outside the wall. There are two exits in the black wall (B); go through either and make your way to the nukage pond in the southwest corner of the map. In the pool is a wooden structure with some stairs leading up to the blue skull key (C). Upon picking the key up, a large number of monsters will teleport in, so be prepared for a big battle.

At the north end of the map is a grey brick building; walk up the stairs in the corner and go through the lion-faced door around the corner at the top. Inside is a glowing blue/red wall as well as a blue key door. Open the blue door and pick up the red skull key inside (D). Next to the red key is a satyr face switch. Flip it; it lowers the glowing blue/red wall in the previous room, revealing a hidden teleporter. Run to it quickly, as it only lowers for a short time period. You'll be taken to an otherwise unreachable platform with some likely useful plasma guns (E).

Once you're ready to exit the level, make your way to the structure made of several black and gray "cubes" in the northeast (F). The two platforms with the more rectangular-shaped patterns on them lower like lifts, allowing you to access the highest ledge. Once you reach the top, turn around and lower the second lift platform again (while still on the top ledge). This causes the wall of the ledge you're on to lower as well, revealing the exit teleporter blocked by a red skull column (G); open it using your key and exit.

Trivia and other points of interest

 * 1) The southwest corner of the complete map contains an inaccessible (other than by using the no clip cheat code) area connected to the nukage pool by a small tunnel. This room contains the swarm of Imps, Cacodemons, and Mancubi which teleport in when obtaining the blue key.
 * 2) If played on a high difficulty setting, this level features one of the highest concentrations of enemies of any officially released Doom level (so much so that, as noted below, the level has been known to cause some systems to crash).
 * 3) If you grab the attention of the dozens of Imps first, and then go to the south west corner and grab the boxes of rockets (thus unleashing the flood to monsters to be teleported there), you can maneauver all of the enemies in such a way where an incredible amount of monsters will kill each other without you having to waste a single bullet. Not only is it incredibly fun, but essential on Ultra-Violence as you would have to expend an insane amount of ammo taking out the onrushing horde.

Official

 * 1) Enter the southern building in the central area in the level (H). Inside is a blue-carpeted room with a small pedestal-like structure in its center. Use this pedestal as you would a lift, and ride up. There is a small fiery hole in the eastern wall of this room. Shoot inside this hole to cause one of the bookshelves to rise, revealing a megasphere (I). You will need to fall into the pit for the secret to count, as it is possible to retrieve the megasphere without triggering the secret.
 * 2) Use the torch in the southwestern corner of the room to raise the wall in front of the pair of eyes. It leaves a small, low wall which you can use as a lift to get level with the eyes, allowing you to shoot the eyes. Once you hear the sound of a door opening, turn right to enter a newly opened alcove (K). Alternatively, you can ride the same pedestal as for secret #1 and use the super shotgun, thanks to its wide spread it may impact the eyes after a few tries.
 * 3) Enter the red brick building in the east of the map through the door on its eastern wall (L). The corpse-wall behind the door is an illusion that can be walked straight through.
 * 4) Inside secret #3, lower the right grey stone wall (M) and ride it up. Once at the top, run onto the adjacent raised platform, into a pool of blood. Flip the switch to reveal a BFG 9000 (N).

Non-official

 * 1) To get to the raised platform with the plasma guns on it, go inside the northernmost building. Behind the blue door is a red skull key sitting in a window. Stand in the window sill and press the satyr-faced switch to lower the big blue/red fire wall in the previous room, which reveals a teleporter. Step through to get the plasma guns.

Bugs

 * 1) The high number of monsters in this level, combined with the high occurrence of monster infighting that results, frequently causes the Sony PlayStation port of the game to crash on high skill settings during the level (a workaround being to avoid having the player looking in the direction of any large grouping of monsters). Also, in the Doom II port found in the Xbox version of Doom 3/Resurrection of Evil, if too many monsters are on the map and a game is saved and later restarted, it runs the risk of freezing upon loading the save, resulting in needing to reboot the Xbox system and starting the game anew.

Routes and tricks
The map can be completed without the keys. It's possible to reach the exit portal without opening the red column. On the PS1 version, most of the level can be bypassed by triggering the portal to the secret level.

Records
The Compet-N records for the map are:

Video
es:MAP16: Suburbs (Doom II)