arcextra1, Heretic Cathedral is simply what the name implies - a touched-up conversion of a Raven Software original. It looks somewhat cartoony due to the textures, yet retains an atmosphere and charm of its own. A quick, laid-back and enjoyable run.

arcextra2, Gateway to Earth reaches for higher standards designwise. A well-blended mixture of Wizard and Zerstörer styles, its angular, old-school and overlapping design is a must-see. High diversity in cleverly placed opposition, coupled with well-implemented vertical progression makes this one a joy to fight through.

Overall, another set of great maps from a seasoned author. Thanks Tronyn.

GREAT STUFF!!

really enjoyed this pak!

Not enough drake maps out there!

A mixed bag here. I found Heretic Cathedral (arcextra1) rather arbitrary and predictable, presumably because it's not an original creation. Perhaps the same reason lies behind its awkwardly garish aesthetics. It was enjoyable enough to blast through, but rarely very interesting.

But Gateway to Earth (arcextra2) is much better: a gloomy, creative, and (on Hard) very difficult partly-vertical progression through sewers and industrial areas. Monster placement makes this tricky -- you spend a lot of time being sniped at, and have to decide whether to burn ammo on taking out the partially concealed snipers or just run through the area, suck up the damage, and hope to encounter the snipers up close and personal later on. It's a war of attrition, but somehow a lot of fun.

Although GTE has fewer monsters than HC, it's a much bigger level, with far more progression and exploration. HC's numbers are rather inflated by lots of low-powered hordes, whereas each of the GTE monsters reall counts.

I'd score HC as a low 3, GTE as a high 4, and the pack as a whole just creeps into five-star territory.

Jesus, why do so many mappers think that they SHOULD edit/modify the original Quake weapons. The shotgun is my favourite weapon in Quake and in the creation it has been raped by the author. First of all, the new sound is lame (as the sound of the rifle), but most of all the modified shotgun is SLOWER.

Besides that in the first level the new monsters just sort of mostly "party" at the same spot at the level, i. e. they make (again new) noises, they shoot, but they don't move around. This looked so predictable and boring. So, I played maybe half of the first level, and that was enough for. I could say that a lot of effort was put into creating this, but why is it ALWAYS that modified (new) weapons suck? Haven't seen any weapons in partial/total conversions that were at least as good as the original weapons.

Both of them were perfect.

Just some notes on the map number 2: you can skip some parts. The sewer part, you can drop to the sewer in the right pillar for opening the central door.

The last two pillar, you can skip that part by jumping on the back of the gate.

After finishing the wonderful SoE: Indian Summer, I decided to play more of Tronyn's mods. My next pick is Arcanum (heh, no relation to spectacular RPG of the same name by Troika Games). Before going into main 5-level campaign, I decided to finish the bonus level first. WELL...

PROS: + The updated gameplay (thanks to Drake mod, I guess) is wonderful. Decapitations, better gibbing, monsters flying away after eating a shotgun blast to the face. + Tronyn's challenging-but-balanced enemy placement. This plays as modern top-action-FPS like Doom: Eternal, RAGE 2, or Serious Sam 4. + Thanks to this community, there is a lot to remember of childhood experience with Quake... and, usually, Hexen 2 (a lot of content from this game is adapted in mods). But now, I felt so much nostalgia for Heretic... arcextra1 is an excelent recreated level with familiar music. + The Magic Wand weapon... it's basically a slightly modified Elven Wand from Heretic, now red instead of yellow, and with charging attack! Again, blast of nostalgia! Truly, classic games live forever. + Super Shotgun has a new, satisfying sound and appears to be slightly powered-up. + Chainsawwwwww.....

CONS: - Map "arcextra1" has several imps stuck behind wooden windows in the main hall. They are unreachable and hard to shoot. - Somewhat missed grenade or rocket launcher on the same level.

Heretic Cathedral is an okay romp, but Gateway To Earth is really good. Almost rated a 5 on its quality alone, but the final fight felt so thrown in. Over as soon as it began. Still really good.

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Gateway to Earth - very immersive. Weapons great fun too.

I found something rather amusing. If you copy other maps into the map directory and load them, there is an interesting (Horn of Conjuring) type 'bug' - I say bug as it never happened in the Arc maps. Some, not all, and not always, of the monsters switch allegiance to the player. They fight other monsters on player's behalf and when done simply return to face and follow the player. It gave me some decent giggles I will admit. You may get a shambler on your side and he follows you through the map - where possible. As the wand will blast a monster backwards to a degree you can also blow monsties off ledges to try to keep them active in the maps. If you shoot the allegiance monsters they won't return fire and of course you may have to kill some to progress in certain maps. An example map I used was smej2 map 4 where if you noclip directly to the top of the hill where the fiends are gathered they may just be on your side. Didn't happen every attempt mind.