Mark Shan is certainly the
most productive mapper left in the small single
player Quake2 community. This is his fourth
large episode of levels, and they carry on the
theme from all his previous releases.
The levels are not populated
in their number of rooms and areas, but instead
by their enormous scale. As soon as you spawn
into the short one-roomed start level, you are
hit with a magnificient looking great hall,
with a perfection reflection in the glass floor.
For those of you who seem
to think there are no decent non-base Q2 maps
- this is the second release in a month with
a unique style. Mark has scrapped together textures
from many sources, including Rune, Unreal and
Quake3. The result is an exotic and fresh design,
much an improvement over Mark's previous releases.
The styles range from large palaces using Rune
textures, underground sewers using Quake3 bricks
to futuristic bases using Unreal tech textures.
Mark's usual design of huge
structures held up by a consistent display of
pillars is spread throughout. Very similar in
design to Progetto Genome, but with it's fresh
texture-set and less plainer areas, 1492 is
definitely a great looking episode.
There are seven levels in
the pack, including a short a start map with
no monsters, and a small end map which is one
hell of a battle.
The gameplay is the usual
Mark Shan standard - rather than creating challenging
combat scenarios, Mark launches mass carnage
against the player - in the hundreds. If you
liked the gameplay in Mark's previous levels,
this is more of the same, but only more of...
the same. As this time Mark has really flooded
the levels with enemies. When you first start
the beginning level, there are around 30 soldiers
all running at your in opposite corners of a
huge arena. This type of gameplay, feeding rediculous
amounts of enemies to the player at once, doesn't
sound all the great really. But once you get
into the game and open up on a flock of Infantry,
it really is a blast. Sprinting through showers
of blood as you just lobbed a pineapple into
a group of soldiers is very fun.
Unfortunately, it has it's
flaws. These problems could have been fixed
with some more testing, but I can't blame Mark
really, considering it takes around three hours
to play through it all! The first big problem
I personally had was the lack of a Grenade Launcher.
It probably is somewhere, but I never found
it and by about halfway through was really struggling.
I had very little in the way of ammo for all
other weapons, but a full collection of grenades.
And when you've got several Gladiators running
at you, struggling to throw a grenade at them
with the players weak arm is not very effective
at all. 1492 is far too difficult a mission
to go without the Grenade Launcher.
And while this gameplay is
fun and fresh, some players may find it a little
repetitive and too difficult in places. In fact,
I think many players will be forced to throw
the cheats on, as I did. How many of you are
going to wander into a room through a huge corridor
and behind you 20 (yes 20) Parasites emerge
from holes in the wall. And if that isn't enough,
the same battle is flipped into the next corridor
- so you get to take out 40 Parasites in a matter
of a few minutes with the only place to run
behind them all!
Unfortunately battling into
the second half of the game I cannot give an
accurate review of 1492, as I was forced to
'impulse 9' myself the Grenade Launcher, therefore
being granted full ammo aswell. But I can imagine
it would have been very tough on ammo and health.
There is one last problem -
you're going to need a meaty computer to run
this beast of a pack. Not only because the levels
have some huge areas, but entity counts really
get high. Particularly the final level with
400 enemies all in one large arena! I got to
250 down, and it was great fun but the arena
was strewn with bodies and ammo. The game spat
the dummy and I was no longer able to continue
with so much action on the screen. It is a real
pity that after hours of tough gameplay, the
finale would be too much for the computer to
handle.
Otherwise, 1492 is a great
episode with some spectacular designs and a
great mix of textures. The gameplay is typical
Mark Shan style at its best, with a great challenge
but can be too hard at times. I certainly hope
Mark continues with our beloved game, Quake2,
rather than waiting for Quake4.
