Fun medium sized level. Awesome ambience! The sound effects really add to the feel and the sound of rumbling lava flows combined with the skybox are great. It's too bad that the skybox doesn't have rolling billowing smoke and fire to go with it, as well as some glowing lava rivers, but it's nice as it is.

4/5 though because one of the secret areas was empty. :(

Wouldn't load the .bsp

I did it from Quake Injector, so I'll try again.

Sorry about that. It should work now.

Video playthrough at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONPbt11ujr4 enjoy :)

This map deserves 5 stars, but it has only 3.7 stars. This map is better than most of those 5 star maps.
I am only playing the four star maps just because to find a good one among them.

A very well-crafted map; far less linear and more interconnected than it seems at first. Good choice of monsters, mostly well used. Very reminiscent of 5rivers, but has the decided advantage of not trying to emulate Doom 3. Tough enemies and tricky terrain make for very challenging combat, but it did not feel unfairly hard.

It works well as a sequel to cda (which I would strongly recommend playing before playing this map), and deliberately echoes the earlier map. This deja vu effect was not always that interesting, though: the final battle in particular was, for all its spectacular violence, rather anti-climactic.

Although the atmosphere is this map is superbly engineered, and the skybox works very well, I had to mark it down to 3/5 because the final combat was just so insanely hard that it wasn't any fun -- and that was on medium. Where does it get fun fighting three gugs and four gaunts in an arena with no cover? Unless I missed an important secret like a pentagram, it's just not possible. I'm not ashamed to admit I turned on God Model just to make it end.

Finishing my trawl through JPL's maps, I return to Gateway to Hell, which I see from the comments I actually played a year ago. I scored it 3/5 back then, but I've revised it up one star this time, as I found it a more enjoyable exploration. The final combat is hard, but not impossible -- I didn't cheat this time. (Mind you, if I'd been on hard skill, I probably would have done!)

Great atmosphere due to the excellent lighting, texture choice, brushwork detail, fantastic custom sounds, etc. The dead Quakeguys placed near weapon pickups add a neat bit of implied storytelling. Monsters are well-placed with some exceptions, but the combat is not very memorable in general (hence 4/5). I played on Normal though.

The final battle is tough but not excessively so once you figure out the "right" way to do it. SPOILERS After you grab the quad and enter the arena, you can take out the droles pretty quickly if you have a lot of rockets left, and if you're fast you should be able to eliminate all but one of the gugs before the quad runs out. After the gugs are all down, killing the final wave of gaunts shouldn't be terribly difficult.

5 stars for sure.

Good enviroment, architecture and design. The megahealth that says "well protected" teased me to the limit. Couldn't find a way to open it. And the map sure seens like a hell gate.

I don't know what people are complaining about the final fight. You get a 'cell cannon', a quad damage and a megahealth. And moments ago you get a red armor. I came here to say that the quad made things a little bit too easy.

Although in most times I don't like the repopulation aspect of a map, I really enjoyed the bridge that everytime you pass is a different set of monsters.

Found only one secret, but I was with a headcache and didn't search for them properly.

Overall the walls, the hanged corpses above the blood pools, the aspect of a destroyed place leading to a gate of hell was very moody.

Very well done! Wished it was a bit longer.

Heh, I got the gold key with a not-so-hard trick jump and rendered the silver key superfluous as a result. Still picked it and used it just to finish the map properly. That was fun.

(I wasn't even trying to be clever, but rather it seemed the natural way forward to me at the time.)

I liked this stage very much. Reminded me heavily of 'Doom 3' - parts of 'Doom 3', that is - in a favorable manner. Great ambiance, great soundscape. Hard map, but doable. Everything well put together, wise selection of assets. Nicely done!