Coagula 3: Bone is the final
map in Elek's Coagula series, and takes a different
twist on his well-known theme.
Wheras the first two Coagula
maps used id Runic textures (Gray-medieval and
Green-tech respectively), 'Bone' uses a red-blue
texture mix from the Daikatana set. At first
I had only seen one screenshot of it and it
looked quite odd; like a strange circus floating
in the void, but upon seeing it in-game it doesn't
really look like that. The red texture is either
stone or lesh - I'm not sure - while the blue
banding almost looks plasticy. The overall effect
is almost surreal; no one really knows what
this place has been built of, or what its purpose
is or why it is there. This is very Quake (ie;
what are the wind tunnels' purpose?).
Despite the different yet cool
theme, this still has much in common with the
other Coagula maps. For instance, the layout
style is quite similar - basically wide walkways
and platforms spiralling around a central structure,
and working one's way up these. Also in common
is the architecture, which some may complain
is too simple - but those guys should try and
make a map this wide-open and see how much finesse
they can cram in there. Lighting is mostly done
with spotlights which also prevailed in Coagula
2: 'Flesh.' The overall make of this map is
definately Coagula: uncomplicated, thick, solid,
architecture, spotlight and ambient lighting,
and multileveled, well-planned layouts.
As for gameplay, this map is
harder than either Coagula map. Perhaps I approached
the other maps too slowly or at least more slowly
than this one, but it seemed there was much
more horde combat here. Wheras some players
would backtrack to the lower levels and get
health, I couldn't be bothered. I found the
best strategy was to just keep pushing forward
- there are many monsters but also many items,
so if you have say 3 health and there are two
shamblers in front of you, it's safe to say
that if you can dodge them there will be health
and nails around the corner. This is sort of
a previously unseen risk-reward game-play which
made the map much more entertaining for me -
backtracking to get items would have been boring.
There are secrets in this map,
of which I only found one, which was a pretty
cool one. All in all, this is a different style
of map, I don't know if it's better than the
previous maps in the series but it is at least
as good. And given the standard those maps set,
that is really saying something.
