Underworldfan's Single Player Map Reviews

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## Reviews: 17th August 2008: Review 3 [Reviewed by Tronyn]

SUMMARY
Game - QUAKE
Map - xplore: Explore or Die
by - Speedy
Download - xplore.zip

FULL REVIEW:
Speedy's latest is a dark and difficult map called "Explore or Die." For me, it was mostly the latter. You have to be extremely careful, as supplies are scarce, and are often barred off by open-paneled doors. The enemies are appropriately limited, in keeping with the supplies, but even so it's quite easy to die, and I died more times in this map than any map I can remember recently. Some of the supplies can be found using secret-type mechanisms (one reminded me of a fairly cool secret in Doom's e1m3), but even finding quite a few of these, the lack of armour is deadly.

Visually, it's a mostly horizontal industrial complex, with well-done coloured lighting, and some outdoor courtyards accented by some cool work with large beams. The indoor spots are less exciting, being repetitively textured and without much variation in the way of architecture. There are some spots of detail that help this however.
This may appeal to players who like trying new things or who like challenges, but I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. In my view, the dark lighting (which admittedly looks cool) makes it difficult to see what is where (that is, to rule out areas in terms of finding anything else there for 'exploration'), which combined with the somewhat paradoxical idea of exploring in a map that is basically linear and mostly consists of hallways, stops the map from being a successful experiment. Still, if it is your sort of thing, download away.

Overall Score: 10/20