A good map from Elek designed
and motivated, for a natural terrain contest
for Quake. Design was inspired by the start
of Elek's The Occursed, which apparently received
quite a few positive comments. Gameplay started
out very solid, with the rocket launcher given
right for the word go. Gameplay was hot with
Shamblers, Vores and Fiends invading your colliseum
of a home. But after this section, I felt the
level might have been a little rushed.
Gameplay slowed down and got
a little easier, and really didn't get tough
again (as the readme suggests) until right at
the end. But it was still great fun, with plenty
of large scale combats, Ogres from above launching
rockets and many different monsters used.
As I looked outside the map
at the layout, huge areas were thrown all over
the place leaving little room for overlapping
and returning to previous areas. It was a very
linear map. Although there was some exploration,
I ended the level surprisingly, having seen
other areas which I never even reached and around
30 monsters still alive. These sections were
totally unecessary for completion, it would
have been better if they were actually used
as areas that need to be visited.
There is a lot of variety in
design, but all sticking to outdoors. Underwater
scenes were also used a fair bit, something
we don't see enough of in Quake. The map felt
much like it was one set-piece after another,
and some of them were pretty impressive with
large pillars and coliseums combined with the
mountains.
The gameplay was great, a tough
start and a tough finish. It wasn't frustratingly
hard, and there was just enough health and ammo.
The end was more of a fight with trying to kill
the monsters without running out of ammo, providing
quite a challenge in a tight space.
Some fantastic set pieces,
large scale design and well balanced gameplay
make this a great map.
