MAP12: Speed (The Plutonia Experiment)

MAP12: Speed is the twelfth map of The Plutonia Experiment. It uses the music track "Facing The Spider" from Doom.

Strategy
Leaving the starting point will cause 6 Imps to raise out of the ground.

Walkthrough
After brutally murdering all the imps, drop down into the doorway and take out everything on the other side. The blood is not damaging, so go in and kill everyone, including the gunners on the northern platforms (usually several cacodemons and a pain elemental show up here, too, so beware). This done, head left (east) and take out everything in this room too (best to kill the arch-vile before jumping down, and watch out for more gunners high up). Find the stairs in the north and snag the yellow skull key, then continue up the stairs along the corridor and into the bloodstream back into the main room, and jump across to the teleporter.

From this point, you can go either left or right. You can explore the corridor to the left, but do NOT jump down to the platform at the end (that will reveal a cyberdemon at close range). Instead, it's best to take out the baron from this ledge, then jump down to the right (south) corridor, then take the teleporter for the secret.

After getting the soulsphere, jump back down to the initial room and this time go west and take out as many monsters as you can from the tunnel, before jumping down and slaughtering the Pain Elemental. Find the elevator guarded by a sargent but BEWARE, when you step on the elevator the cyberdemon will be revealed so take it quickly. (Make sure the mancubus and all the other enemies on this platform are dead, too.) The best place to take on the cyberdemon is from behind the small wall near the bastard's platform. Just use it for cover and strafe out to nail him. Otherwise, take him out from down in the blood.

Once he's toast, jump across and nab his red key. Jump down into the blood and take the elevator again, head north to the gargoyle-faced switch, press it, and take the teleporter. From here you'll be in the room overlooking the initial blood room, head west from here up the stairs and drop down onto the platform with the items and take the teleporter to the yellow door. Press the switch (don't forget the armor behind it) and re-take the teleporter to destroy the revenants. This done, go up the stairs to the west and follow it to grab the blue key at the end but BEWARE, once you go back you will be teleported into a trap with two constantly-teleporting arch-viles. The best tactic here would be to take cover behind one of the 'boxes' they are in, then focus on one of the other 'boxes' and fire when one stops to try and attack you. With them dead, flip each switch inside each 'box', then jump down into the blood and re-take the elevator.

Head south through the open door where the revenants came from, watch out for the chaingunner trap through the window, then head east through the long corridor for the final area. Try to take out as many of the chaingunners as you can, as soon as you can (use rockets or the chaingun to snipe them off one at a time while using cover). Note that some chaingunners may be out of range, don't stay out in the open. Open the blue door in the north of this room to raise the first platforms, take out the enemies here, and press the switch in the room they came from to raise the next platform. Then open the red door, beware the arch-vile (though he's easy to kill, just back up across the bridge and he'll follow you in a straight line, pump rockets at him), grab the BFG and hit the switch (to raise the pillar with the final switch).

Take the teleporter in the north, quickly kill all the chaingunners around you (use the cover!!), then hit the switch at the top to raise the final platform, re-take the teleporter (note: you can't get the gunner's ammo), cross the final bridge to the east and jump on the exit. Represent.

Secrets

 * 1) From the first blood-floored area, head left and fall into the large bloody pit. After getting the yellow skull key, continue up the stairs to the river of blood where you can run across to the teleporter floating in the large blood pool. This takes you to a platform high above this area. From this ledge, you will be able to drop down onto a lower one just south of the one you stand on. The teleporter close by takes you to an otherwise unreachable ledge leading to a soul sphere.
 * 2) Drop down from secret #1 and head through the opening to the right, falling into another large blood pit area. Continue into the alcove to the left and ride the lift up to the ledge. Straight ahead of here is a gargoyle-faced switch. Press it, then continue up the nearby stairwell. At the top is a teleporter to a secret area.

Bugs

 * 1) This level can not be played in deathmatch, because there are no deathmatch starts. This bug is not present in an alternate version of PLUTONIA.WAD found on a specific version of the id Anthology.
 * 2) On older Macintosh computers (e.g. the Performa cira 1995), this map cannot be accessed at all due to the machine itself freezing as it attempts to load it.  The only way the player can progress through the game is to use the idmap cheat and warp to MAP13.
 * 3) The first teleporter you encounter can show an example of a bug in the teleportation behavior of Final Doom where the altitude of a teleporting thing is not checked (i.e. you briefly are 'inside' the building you warp to, at the same height as the teleporter, before you land on the destination pad).

Routes and tricks
It is possible to finish the map with a rocket jump combined with an Arch-vile jump. The speciality of this trick is that you will die during the performance, but you can land exactly on the exit what is enough for the accomplishment of the map.

Records
The Compet-N records for the map are: