Underworldfan's Single Player Map Reviews

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## Reviews: 14th January 2005 [Reviewed by Tronyn]

SUMMARY
Game - QUAKE
Map - coma: Coma
by - Ankh
Download - coma.zip.
Overall Verdict - old skool, good "dungeon" map.

FULL REVIEW:
This is a map that basically says, "Look at me, I'm old school." This is for me, a very good thing. Playing Coma, I was consistantly reminded of a variety of early Quake maps - both early custom maps and id's original maps (and often the former because they, like this map, were obviously deeply influenced by the latter). What you've essentially got, is your classic Quake dungeon here - a variety of different settings, sewers, a netherwordly outdoor area or two, sections of metal, stone, gargoyles in all varieties of (of course brownish) Quake-colour. Like many early custom Quake maps, this mixes all kinds of id themes together in one map, and the end result is a map that's both very large, and consistantly interesting to look at. There are at least as many themes here as there are in the entirety of Quake's first episode, although the, erm, strange and cryptic design (and I mean that in a good way) is very remniscent of episode 4: The Elder World.

There are lots of strange details, particularly to do with moving parts of the level and teleporters. I really liked a couple of the teleporters: one was a "tunnel" of teleport "liquid," while another portal appeared to be shattered, each shard leading to a different destination. Architecture was a mix of haphazard (again, in a good way) and blocky, again, very remniscent of early Quake maps. The layout was quite rambling, but managed to be connected in enough right places so that you'll always have a sense of where you're going, and you won't get lost. In terms of gameplay, you'll be facing off around 130 monsters in this map. They are a good mix of whatever fits into the elder world/old school theme, including the usual ogres, knights of both varieties, and fiends, as well as some shamblers and vores for the important spots and some rottweilers as well. Scrags are also used well, keeping combat from being too horizontal. In terms of gameplay tricks and traps, there's more than enough here: lava, slime, biosuits, spike traps, a sort of puzzle (heh). magical artifacts (ring and pentagram), teleporting monsters and secret closets, and the classic Quake trick of turning out the lights. It's a very active and involved map, kudos to the author for that. There was also a section that warned "You will die here," which is precisely what occurred when I went there. Perhaps linked to a secret, but perhaps not! I found the end challenging (I had to resort to getting the monsters to infight in order to win), but at no point was the map too hard or frustratingly so. All in all, I've gotta say, if you've got an itch for some classic Quake action, then Coma is your fix.

Overall Score: 17.5/20