A nice Q2SP surprise has arrived
on our doorsteps, as Brendon Chung continues
his Citizen Abel series, where you play a criminal/assassin
(who looks like Commander Keen!) wanted throughout
the galaxy. But this time the story is much
more developed and conveyed. Instead of just
some text occassionally, you have a number of
interesting objectives such as meeting Makron
at the bowling alley. He forces your next target
to be the Mayor of Sand Yego, but once you kill
her you not only have the city police on your
tail, but also Makron who seems to be have gotten
bored hiring you.
You're given a new weapon which
you use against only the Soldiers, Infantry,
Flyers, Icarus and Parasities. for the whole
game until the final battle. The new gun is
much like the first gun in the Awakening mod
(see Awakening SP or Light), which is much more
effective the the Blaster or Shotgun. It's quick,
accurate and can take all the enemies down with
one hit. As expected in the Citizen Abel tradition,
fast action gameplay is not the main feature.
Despite being eight levels long, there were
probably around 150 enemies total, mostly small
fry Soldiers. Nevertheless there is still fun
to be had, especially in the scene after you
kill the Mayor - many enemies are instructed
to hunt you down.
Puzzle feature prominently,
and none of them are that hard. But enough thought
has been put in so that it's not just 'find
the button' for an hour.
Level design is very interesting.
The great details and architecture we are used
to seeing in Quake2 is not used much here. Instead
Brendon has tried to do a more futuristic (31st
century futuristic!) combination of sci-fi and
cyberpunk. Using the normal Quake2 textures
really didn't help much. There are some great
custom textures that Brendon could have used
to create the theme better. However there were
some very strange designs, definitely giving
a feeling of a very distant future world. I
was particularly impressed by the outdoor city
area where you climb along buildings overlooking
cars down below.
The Lazarus engine was used
fairly well. The easiest good feature to implement,
fog, was looking as good as ever. But many small
touches had been added such as a third person
view, custom enemies and the great sequence
with Markon.
Overall a very unique pack
of levels, Brendon's maps keep getting weirder
and weirder - in a good way. If you liked the
previous Citizen Abel maps and like a good amount
of puzzles with your normal action, then grab
Citizen Abel 4.
