From the depths of Ethereal Hell comes an
actual HL map from a mapper who has an almost
complete history of making Quake maps. You
can see his level of expertise in the Quake
style architecture when you load this map.
This map looks like something straight out
of Quake 2. If you open the readme and see
the list of maps this author has made you
won't see one HL map (but future readme's
should include this map, since it is a good
one). The author is obviously influenced
by Quake's architecture and it is shown
in this map. This map looks very good. It's
been a good while since I've seen an arena
style map. But this isn't a "traditional"
arena style map (by "traditional"
I mean that a map is identical on both sides
and has no other purpose besides killing).
If you look at a more traditional arena
style map, you'd see that if you cut the
map in half, the two sides would be mirror
images. Not in this map. It almost looks
like it's a mirror image, but it's not.
It's just that the architecture is the same
all around the map. But that's not necessarily
a bad thing. When you've got a good arena,
such as this one, you really don't need
anything fancy because of the fact that
an arena has only one purpose : frag the
hell outta anything that moves. And this
map accomplishes just that.
This map, as I stated earlier, is not a
traditional arena, in the fact that either
half of the map is not a mirror image of
the other. This map is one large, very erratic,
circle with three main levels. Each level
is accessible by stairs only. There are
no ladders. There is a gauss cannon for
the gauss jumpers out there, but you don't
need to be an expert with the gauss to do
those jumps. There are lots of hallways
and ledges, which practically make up this
entire map. But it is an arena, so all this
is acceptable as the norm.
For all of us old-school DM'ers out there,
this is the map to get. Good arenas are
hard to come by, especially in HL. This
map is fun for the arena player in all of
us. If you don't like arenas, then this
isn't the map for you. There are no tricks,
no secret areas, and no moving parts. What
you see is what you get. Old-school players
you may stop reading this review here and
start downloading. Everyone else, please
feel free (and more or less obligated) to
read on.
The r_speeds are more like what I expected
from a map like this. All of areas in this
map have r_speeds under 600. There are only
a few areas that go over 500, but this should
not be any kind of problem. This map is
perfect for any kind of setup you may have,
high or low end machines won't have any
kind of problems. You can use this for LANs,
online, or for bots when you play with yourself
(somehow that doesn't sound quite right).
The lighting used in this map is actually
quite good. The author put in a lot of color
variation, but not so much that it looks
like a disco (thank gawd). The lighting
is also pretty dark and gloomy, but not
so much as that you can't see anything.
Everything is illuminated which eliminates
darks spots. But there are some "secret"
(and probably unintentional) sniping spots,
but you've got to be really good to find
them (unlike me, since I found them by accident).
The gloomy lighting is a good thing since
the sky texture the author chose is the
outer space texture. It's always nice when
the brightness of the lighting corresponds
to the chosen sky texture, isn't it?
The texturing used in this map actually
comes from Activision's FPS SiN, which was
pretty good game in itself. I'm not sure
exactly how the author got the textures
out of SiN, but he got them out, by gawd.
The author really chose the right textures
to use in this map. It really seems to fit.
And the gloomy lighting really helps to
make this map into one heck of an arena.
Good job, d00d.
You won't find a gluon in this map but
just about everything else is there. Weapons
can be foundon small square pedestals, one
pedestal in every section of the map. Ammo,
health kits, and batteries are spread around
evenly throughout the entire map. This is
the norm for an arena. There is no "weapon/ammo"
cache. No matter where you start, there's
a decent weapon and med-kits/batteries waiting
to be picked up. There is a slight problem
here though. There's a whole lot of rocket
launcher ammo lying around, but no rocket
launcher. How are you supposed to use rockets
without a launcher? That was probably a
careless mistake. But mistakes cost you
in points.
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