When I read the title of this
map, the first thing that came to mind was definately
not the idealistic ivory tower that the name
would seem to imply. Rather, the title is something
of a satire, and the map takes place in an urban
hell-hole straight out of some dark and Facist
future.
Posters line the grimy brick
walls of this wretched arena, with mottos and
slogans galore, one being 'Ignorance is Strength'
(sound familiar?). There are also speakers,
which would have been made much cooler had there
been custom .wavs included of various propaganda
phrases. The structures are built of ugly stone
or dirty brick and metal. The checkerboarded
floors look cracked and dirty, which is an especially
cool touch and works on a figurative level as
well. It would have been a nice touch for a
lot of things to be out of order; some broken/flashing
lights, or even better, having a 'broken' speaker
and a wav file where the phrase gets cut off
or made static, or repeated like a broken record
- that would have been great.
I suppose what I was saying
in that last paragraph is that the map has atmosphere.
It also has 'a point' to it, which not a lot
of levels can claim. To be truthful I didn't
really think the theme of Vigil's previous SP
maps (brown stone / metal) was very good; it
seemed bland and soulless. Well, 'Strength.
Service. Honour' is completely soulless - and
it is deliberately that way. However, the natural
textures - the rock, grass, stone, and water
- looked incredibly cartoony and idealistic
if I may say - next to the grimy, realistic
structure textures. It seems inconcievable that
in an area this polluted and filthy, that the
grass would be green and the rock would be straight
and well-cut, and that the water would be a
nice blue showing no signs of pollution. The
sky, upon thinking about it, should seem out
of place, but it doesn't. Another out of place
was the thanks for playing message at the end,
that sounded too sincere for the rest of the
map. It should have been a series of messages
bordering on insulting the player's intelligence
that the player was forced to read until the
exit opened. Anyway, overall a well done concept
map, could have been incredible, but will have
to settle for 'very cool.'
Gameplay is well suited for
the map - lots of identical, grimy grunts make
up the bulk of the forces, while several overlord
enforcers provide some more challenge, with
the odd Ogre and then a finale with 'Quake'
bad guys. There isn't a lot of health, true
(almost all the boxes are rotten, too) - and
this helps add to the rotten feel of the map
(and I mean that in a good way). As well, a
really cool touch is when you kill the Vore
at the end, and another one teleports exactly
on the spot as soon as he dies - it makes the
fight seem futile (again I mean that in a good
way).
This is just the sort of place
I'd never want to be. Overall, a dark, pessimistic,
ugly, futile, filthy, icky, polluted, cynical
and generally bad map.
