As far as Kona's maps go, Guncotton is a return
to form. It eschews the pyramid layouts of yore
with instead a more straightforward, twisty
map-crawler consisting of two maps. For the
most part, it's less of a looker this time,
but it's balanced out with strong, tough gameplay.
Brutal, just brutal combat in this one. A mostly
id-base-inspired theme with the base enemies
to match, along with some custom monsters that
pack some serious firepower, ranging from quick-fire
shotguns to nailguns to grenade and rocket launchers.
Tough opposition indeed - 97 enemies total on
Hard, with 43 on the first map and 57 on the
second. That might not sound like a lot, but
these maps are compacted and very much crawlers,
so you'll end up meeting an enemy at least every
5 seconds. As to be expected, most spawn in
after certain triggers, and will require fast
reflexes.
Overall, it's just a grand ole regular beating
that wants you to play it aggressively, since
there's almost never time to catch your breath.
Lots of brief set-pieces in which wave combats
occur, not too long either. They're more of
brief "bursts," if you will, and the
unit has lots of these. Just when you think
a set-piece might be over, it isn't - more enemies
continue to pop out. This ends up turning gameplay
into a very intense, but very fun affair guaranteed
to keep you on edge until the end.
Not quite as engaging this time are the visuals,
which after previous Kona maps, is actually
kind of a let-down. Not that anything is done
bad - indeed, quite the opposite. Kona's trademark
attention to texturing is still noted here,
lots of nice rock texture blended in with base
textures to give everything a good natural feel.
And there's still plenty of detail, subtle and
not-so-subtle alike, lots of curves and angles
and other architectural touches (like the return
of the stair-stepped designs from Ultramarine).
It's just that everything is a bit grungy and
darkened out so the visuals don't call attention
to themselves nearly as much this time. Granted,
there are textures described as "Q2 Waste"
in this release, but it doesn't quite look like
a Kona map this time. To be fair, that's not
necessarily a bad thing, but it detracts from
Kona's trademark visual impact nonetheless.
Still, if you haven't played this yet, have
at it, it simply rocks.
