This map is a nightmare 800 odd kills on skill 3, this map cannot be completed, in anyway or form.Its the toughest quake map ever,just getting down to the bottom of path at start, is a major achievment.Other grumble is, its like theres a earthquake all the time, so ground and walls dont stop shaking.The broken wooden stairs part, even the terminator would die lol.

ohhh i almost forgot the ending part, in or around a circle open building,dont even bother, your f--king dead before you take your 1st breath.But at same time its that bloody hard, you keep going back to play it, even if you know your dead in 1 min time lol lol

One more advice, save every 5 - 10 seconds thats how hard this game is, im not joking, the enemy are pouring out everywhere, im talking high end enemy, not just the normal gruntz.

Despite all the problems getting through this one on hard difficulty, it was still really cool and creative in some of its locations. Really impressive for the first level created too.

Some of the issues: Not being able to get NG early. Broken staircase climb is ridiculous without finding the secret quad for it. Some of the knight hordes are pointless gibbing. Lavaclimb is a bit too long to be enjoyable. Map isn't vised if I'm not mistaken, correct me if I'm wrong.

What I liked about the map is that when you just let loose and go nuts against the horde fights it can lead into some really cool action where you just delete hundreds of monsters in 1 minute. Visuals are really cool too in some of the locations.

A pretty good effort for a first map. Even though it uses 95% stock textures, it has this titular nighmarish atmosphere going for it. With 790 enemies on skill 2 though, it is way too crowded for its own good. It gets tedious quick.

Played on skill 1. Not perfect but I thought it was pretty cool. I like maps that don't fuck around. I hope the author continues to make maps with this level of style.

Not sure what Mazu means about not being able to get to the nailgun early, as I got it in the second "room." And yes, this level is crazy hard.

Solomoriah, I mean it is like an unmarked secret. I looked for it quite a bit and didn't find it. Proceeded to get SNG and go through rest of the map without obtaining regular NG.

At the start where teleport to get Mega is a secret, but the NG is not. Does not make much sense to hide only NG in the map in a secret like place.

Okay, so this level... wow. Not usually a fan of arena battles, but this is like a sequence of them, with all the stupid "monsters appear behind you" crap and everything. And I LOVED it! This was GREAT!

Yup like it a lot but I'm not as good as you top level Quake players...Over 800 enemies and the start swarm surprised me...Love it...Please make more...

Somehow I didn't find this map to be overwhelmingly difficult. On my first playthrough, I died only three or four times. All of them right in the very beginning. But after that, it was OK, except the tedious "climbing" part, where I had to reload a couple of times. I can upload a video of my blind playthrough, if author wants to see it. I have no problem with hordes of enemies, it's always fun to gib them with grenade launcher + quad. But I think it should have been executed better. It's just not fun, If you are overwhelmed and have not enough room to maneuvre between enemies. Battles are expected to be difficult, but fair. I believe you can do better next time. I give it a solid 3 star rating. Some of my remarks: 1) There's a secret (second or third in order), an opening above your head with a yellow armor in it, which you can spot, but cannot access up until a good 30 minutes later on. I wasted like 10 minutes trying to find the entrance to that secret, and I just gave up. It was unnecessarily confusing. 2) Red armor secret is not funny at all. 3) I encountered many Scrags flying through the walls, like if they use the noclip cheat. It happens occasionally in other maps aswell. I think it happens if there is too many of them at once. Probably not your fault. 4) That "climbing" part is tedious. You should have optimized the position of each "step" in the way you can fluently run and jump from one to the other, without the need of stopping and focusing too much on each jump. It breaks the dynamics of the map. 5) The overall layout of your map is good for the fact it's your first map, but it could not stand a chance against the other maps nowadays. You will get better, it just takes some time.

Thank you all for playing my map and for feedback!

Marian, sure it will be interesting to see your playthrough.

Hello Mars, here is my video: https://youtu.be/nlRRA4PaCzo

I had fun, except for that damn stair case!

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Cognizant of other's warnings of extreme difficulty, I started this map on Hard, then gave up pretty quickly on being swarmed from both ahead and behind by masses of scrags and death knights when I had nothing but the single shotgun to defend myself.

I could have given up then, but instead I wound the difficulty down to Normal and tried again. Boy, and I glad I did! This was a very intense and brutal experience that provided a couple of hours of gaming, most of it really excellent. I particularly enjoyed the liberal provision of explosives and the many opportunities of using them to good effect. To my amazement, I finished with all 623 kills — and in theory only four of the eight secrets (though actually I found another two or three, but didn't take them because I didn't want to waste loot that I might need later).

So why only four stars? Because there are just a few too many misjudgements to award a perfect score. First, there is that unreasonable beginning, when there is nowhere to retreat to and no way to handle the horde strategically. Then, about two thirds of the way though, there an interminable jumping puzzle where you make your way up the inside of a very very very tall square chimney over a lava lake. At one quarter of the length or better still one eighth it would have been fun; as it was, I longed for death before the end. Honestly, when I play this map again (and I will) I might just shrug and fly my way up there.

But these and a few lesser transgressions aside, this is magnificant, and all the more astonishing for being a debut map. Love it.

Mazu wrote: "Some of the issues: Not being able to get NG early." I think from subsequent comments that it was discovered eventually, but for anyone else who needs it from the start (rot13): Va gur irel svefg nern, orsber lbh ernpu gur fjvgpu gung bcraf gur svefg qbbe, ghea nebhaq naq ybbx onpx jurer lbh pnzr. Ba n avpur ba lbhe yrsg, lbh jvyy frr fbzr cynaxf obneqvat hc n abbx. Oernx gurz jvgu lbhe nkr, pyvzo guebhtu, naq svaq gur anvytha. (I agree it's strange that this is not marked as a secret; I'd say the same about several other secret-like areas later in the game.)

"Broken staircase climb is ridiculous without finding the secret quad for it." Oh, I didn't find that. Slow and methodical did it reasonably easily.

"Some of the knight hordes are pointless gibbing." There is no such thing as pointless gibbing! :-)

"Lavaclimb is a bit too long to be enjoyable." A bit??!!

Nice map, very many monsters, very many ammo and power-ups. Start location, when you have only first gun, was really hard, later map was easier. Strange decision with eathquake, It will be better, if eartquake was only in some specific locations, like lava tube with ledges.

I think the continuous earthquake effect throughout the whole map added to the overall tension and fit this nightmarish environment very well.

I wonder if this was play tested, or maybe the author was thinking of Serious Sam when he built this map?

PROS: Nice architecture and some clever surprises. Indeed this was the nice thing about it.

CONS: No concept of real playability, at least in the hardest difficulty levels, though even in easy I don't feel the game play is balanced at all. There is almost no room to breath or explore as you are send hordes and hordes of enemies from everywhere in a very linear and predictable fashion.

There's quite the range of comments on this map, so I thought I'd add mine to the mix. I played this with QSS .93.2 on skill 2 and really had a great time with it.

I noticed right away that this level was going to come at me pretty much full throttle, so I decided to save early and save often. Good thing too, because The Forgotten Nightmare kept me busy dealing with those 623 monsters. As far as combat goes, it was fun and never overwhelming. I never ran out of ammo and had the weapons I needed to do the job.

I enjoyed the layout and design of this map. There's a lot of novel and interesting architecture to look at and the background sounds are just creepy. There's plenty of fun combats and the level flows well.

I did not care for the lava tower. I found it too tall and too tedious.

Overall though, a lot of fun and going onto my replay list. Thanks Mars, I'll be watching for your next creation.

I

Update to review above. I apologize that I had posted playing this level on skill 2. I must have neglected to restart because I certainly didn't play the level on 2. I'm not sure I could. I started it again and made sure it was on skill 2 and after about 2 dozen tries, have not been able to get out of the start area.

IMO, skill 1 on this map is in reality a low level of hard. I know that's subjective in many ways, but that's my opinion. For me, it's perfectly playable at that level just as it seems to be unplayable for me at skill 2. I'm going to keep trying for a bit to see if I can find the groove!

What a hoot! I did find a way to get past that start area on skill 2. It wasn't easy and involved using several of the different features of that area. I'm not gonna spoil it for someone who might want to figure it out for themselves or maybe figure out an entirely different way.

So then I went all the way through the level and got 5 of the 8 secrets and 783 out of 791 kills. Once past the start area, it's a reasonable game, except for that lava tower. Not a fan.

Overall I love the level and will certainly play it again.

a

Why is everything vibrating. Just why.

I replayed this, and loved it again. As before I had had to wind down from Hard to Normal before I could get started, and as I predicted on my first playthrough, I shamelessly fly-moded my way up the interminable chimney. All the rest is excellent and deeply satisfying. Were it not for the chimney, I'd be upgrading my mark to the full five stars.

Oh, and what a shame that two years on Mars has not produced another map.

Agreed to that last.

Wowzers. Yeah this is really close to being a 5-star... amazing first release. I love the atmosphere and especially the use of height and darkness. Some pretty crazy/unique fights. The biggest fights are not super technical but rather a (mild) test of how fast you can mulch large groups of enemies using power weapons, which is pretty cool!

FWIW I played on skill 2.

The opening is a little stressful yeah. :-) In my case I did come across the NG after a couple of restarts, and even a MH, so I got up on a perch and whittled away those initial rushes. It does seem like a situation where you need to quickload a few times if you don't come across the correct approach (especially in finding the NG) which isn't terrible for a map start but a little odd.

I do agree in general that you will need to find a few of the secrets to have a truly good time. Like in my case I didn't get a quad for the broken-stair climb and didn't feel like I particularly needed it, but it did wear down my armor and ammo enough that a couple of following secrets were very very welcome.

I did not have the "continuous earthquake effect" that a couple of folks mentioned. Only some quaking in one spot I think. Hmm. Played on Ironwail, FWIW. Glad I didn't get that effect!

Anyway, the adventure laid out in this map is almost uniformly great. I love the details and the gloomy-monumental look-and-feel laid over the sequence of pretty ridiculous monster mashes.

That lava-chimney climb, though... come on now. :-)