Ground Zero

Ground Zero is Daz's latest SP level, and shows him diversifying themes: Classic metal in Death's Cold Touch, Dark Arabian in Arabian Nights, and now IKBase.

You begin in the outskirts of a military base, which is in the middle of being invaded by Quake's forces. At first, you'll only encounter hostile grunts, rottweilers, and enforcers, but as you progress throughout the base, you'll meet up with some deadlier foes. Ammo was never a concern for me, but sparse health kept me on edge throughout the map - particularly in several areas. Progression is linear, but makes good use of 3d areas - you will often revisit old areas from new angles, generally catwalks or walkways of some sort above the old areas. I found that the architecture was much more refined than in Daz's previous Arabian Nights, with quite a bit of attention to detail. Texturing was a bit odd in some places, with small textures covering large surfaces, making some walls or ceilings look quite repetitive. Overall, though, the map looks good, with several notable places, mainly the later outdoor areas, which look great.

The map can sometimes feel a bit empty, for instance if you go to the bottom floor of one of the later outdoor areas, there is nothing there (unless there is a secret that I missed). In other places, revisiting old areas with no new monsters feels empty. However, this is not nessecarily a bad thing, as the map is set during an invasion, not an occupation, and therefore you would not expect to find monsters jam packed into every corner of the map. The end of the map was particulary 'too quiet,' meaning any seasoned Quake player would be nervously anticipating a storm anytime during this lull. Luckily I was not forced to fight every single bad guy at the end, if I was I would have had to just run into the exit, because I only had one health.

There are several very well done places in this map which I want to recognize: The outdoor area with two slipgates. Looks great. Second is the dark hallway near the end, with grunts. It was a very tense battle, with muzzle flashes illuminating where the enemy was (I was playing in software mode). Finally the last section as I mentioned was 'far too quiet.' All in all, besides a few rough edges with texturing, there is little to complain about in this map.

Ground Zero is another completely different style to Daz's first two SP maps, although not uncommon throughout custom maps - ikbase. Daz has used alot of combinations here, with no two rooms looking the same. The build quality is good, with enough details. There were a few times where the texture combinations looked a bit strange against the dark lighting and night sky, but others sections such as at the start in the large street looked fantastic with many nice angles.

It was your typical Quake gameplay here, no problems with ammo or difficulty. There weren't many surprises or sneak attacks, just your usual kill everything that moves. The only let down with gameplay was at the end. It starts out with you going through a teleport, landing on a RL and having no choice but to either lose health as you sprint back away from the attack of monsters and more than likely taking some damage as you struggle to change weapons, or fire and lose about 75 health. But this could be considered the end battle, as after several more grunts which you can elimate with your new RL, there are two Shamblers which you don't need to fight. No big end battle here, but it was a bit of a unique twist.