Insomnia

Here is one weird and very good unit. The first map is a start map, not your conventional start, that puts you in what I interpret to be a 'dream-void' where you enter the realm of dreamland. It's mostly organic, but the skill select itself is in a gray Quake2 base theme. The architecture for the organic section wasn't nearly as well-tuned as that in the base part, but overall the map was certainly interesting.

Now onto the other levels. The first one, 'Core Decomposed' is a sort of Quake2-themed level with a bunch of other stuff thrown in that I don't recognize. The scale of some things is amazing, as well as the layout, and there are several really good monster fights here - I particularly liked the huge ambush right after the secret Quad (I wonder how it would have went if I didn't have it!). Another cool spot was the fleshy area near the first Vore. The flow was quite well done, sometimes 'Hey, I'm back here!' which was interesting and really showed off the interconnectivity, but other times I felt rather stumped in this map, running around not knowing where to go. This level displays a technical quality that has rarely been matched - the only example of a level this technically good I can think of right now is The Final Threat - and this attention to detail and polished feel continues throughout the unit. Now, though it's technically amazing, I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of the theme. I never really liked Quake2 or any of its themes. But that's just me.

The secong level 'Subjug' carries the theme of the first one along and pushes it to the max: There are some huge, amazingly complex areas that just made me think 'Holy ****!' The layouts are just incredible, the architecture is again very sound and detailed, and the scale of things is bloody amazing. This map of the three had the best combat, fighting huge amounts of monsters in wide open areas, it was quite a challenge. My favourite combat was the end of this level and the entrance to the last level - you get a real horde of nasties coming your way, it's quite an entrance for the last level.

The final level gets rid of the (in my opinion, boring) Quake2 theme and does something of a Doom ressurection. Strange techno-details, waterfalls of blood, skulls, and massive areas characterize this level. The map is built up of white stone, red and purple trim, skull carvings, pools of blood, and turqoise-walled areas. I really hated the turqoise, it looked really cartoony and cheesy compared to the rest of the map. Besides that though, this is an awesome looking map with enourmous, complex areas, an original and damn cool theme, and the same technical quality that made jaws drop in the first two. Particularly the large area with a canal of blood through it reminded me of Doom, especially all the fiends - reminded me of fighting Demons in large outdoor areas in Doom. The gameplay was even harder than the previous two maps, not due to any more monsters (there couldn't BE any more monsters!), but due to less supplies. Near the end of this map was particularly bad for sparse items, right before the silver key door I had 100 nails, 12 health, and nothing else. I managed to take out the whole pack of Hell Knights and Fiends using only 22 nails, by some really risky infighting-encouraging. Another fun thing to do was getting the Vore's spikes to hit the fiends, thus causing them to kill each other, conserving ammo. You will need to be conservative with supplies in this map. Though a few times I had to backtrack a huge ways (not sure how this could be fixed - perhaps elevators which become operation once you get into certain areas), this is easily the best map in my opinion.

All in all, we have an exceptionally-well made level pack here. It wasn't what I consider 'Quakey', but it was original and very amazing. The story didn't make much sense with regards to the levels, but I don't think that was its purpose. The gameplay was awesome and the execution of the themes was revolutionary. Nice job CZG.

The thing that impressed me most about these levels was the size. I remember not long ago CZG released a number of his maps and bits of maps that he had dropped into the bin. After going through them all, I thought to myself 'these are too big to make into Q1SP', compiling would take a century and r_speeds would be huge. But after playing Insomnia, CZG has stuck to his gigantic mapping style and pulled it off. Not often do we see a Q1SP map (or 3 at once) of this size. The only thing that keeps Insomnia from perfection is that to get such a huge level, details were sacrificed. Architecture and fancy designs have been simplified quite alot. Otherwise, Insomnia is one of the best releases to date.