I felt that sinister625dfl, sinister625hcm, sinister625newhouse (at times), and sinister625rooster all had much too little ammo for the level to feel even remotely fair.

sinister625_hcm. Oh man, what a level. I completed this in 87:19 and I felt insane the entire time. What a pain in the butt. Besides running out of ammo about a dozen times, nearly all of the ogres were placed so they really mess up your day. I liked the homage to doom, but disliked the platform part over acid needed to get to it. Overall: unnecessarily hard.

sinister625_entsoy didn't feel fair either, both for lack of ammo and the excruciating underwater double shambler fight. Like *how* am I supposed to do this?

sinister625radiatoryang was neat. So was sinister625palmlix.

A lot of the levels in this pack are extremely hard. I can tell that level took a looong time to make and I applaud all the map makers' efforts.

@h3xx I thought rooster's map had far too little ammo until I realised that there were backpacks filled with ammo that appeared next to the entrance/exit portal when you get a rune. Before that the map felt basically impossible. With the backpacks it was easily doable.

entsoy's map is.. eh.. largely skippable.

... two weeks later. Still playing Mazu's map. He just taunts us :)

This is nice.

This is very nice.

Thank you, and happy aniversary!

RadiatorYang's map is one of my all time favorites. It looks great and I love how it moves between enclosed battles and wide open battles. So much fun.

So: as always, Mazu makes his maps both awesome (I especially liked the gun turrets) and also far too hard to be really enjoyable past a certain point. (One of the hordes has, amongst other things, 2 shamblers in it, at skill 0. This is just silly. Eventually I just checked out of taking it seriously and godmoded through the rest.)

Similarly for En Stoy, it looks lovely, but I just can't do what the map wants me to do consistently. I died 7 times in a row just about 30 seconds in from the killfloor.

I liked Naitelveni's map, although I think I was "tricked" by what looked like a secret and then wasn't? But this was one of my favourite maps in general in the pack.

I also liked radiatoryang's (full marks for music), although I got stuck a few times.

But everyone is right that by far the most impressive map is Palmlix's - it gets a lot of noneuclidean weirdness out of clever triggers and lighting effects, and is something I'd like to see more of in Quake maps in future.

Rust in Circles by Hardcore Mazu is a superb piece of work: long, complicated, and with many many brutally difficult combats. Over and over, I had to keep trying the same fights repeatedly until I found a way to win. For much of the map, ammo starvation is an issue -- not just at the start -- and at one point I was reduced to killing a shambler with grenades because I was out of shells and nails. But at the same time, it rarely feels straight-up unfair. When I made it to the finish line with 529/537 kills and 17/30 secrets, I felt properly pleased with myself. I'm going to go ahead and score this pack five stars because RiC alone is well worth that.

Daughter Drink This Water by radiatoryang is that rarest of things, something completely new in Quake, a quarter-century after the initial release. The way the landscape repeatedly crumbles to open up more of the map is both beautiful and effective as a gameplay mechanic, offering interestingly new kinds of combats. And it helps that the whole thing is beautiful, with a distinctively chilly sci-fi aesthetic. Five stars!

Newhouse's Temple of Taki v1 is another map that is interestingly different, though to my mind not so wholly successful as Daughter Drink This Water. It takes place mostly in a claustrophobic underground setting with a lot of powerful monsters but also plenty of high-end ammo and lots of power-ups. One section in particular would be flatly impossible to complete without both the pent and the quad -- woe betide anyone who misses the sort-of-secret pentagram when 60 or so death-knights materialise all at once! Progression is a bit random, but there are plenty of fun set pieces along the way.

I Hate Sand by DragonsForLunch is an enjoyable journey through an Egyptian tomb, but suffers a bit from all the areas looking very similar, so it's easy to lose track of where you are. It was actually the first map I played from this pack, and I felt it was a really solid start -- but there is no doubt it's surpassed by some of the maps that have come after it.

Rooster's The Sore is another lovely level, a perfect example of the kind of thing it is: a hub map where you can take several subquests in any order to obtain the four runes, and then a boss-fight to finish. It's not big, but it's full of interesting and atmospheric areas, and it invites careful exploration with satisfying results.

Heresy's Nail Release is a very strange map: absolutely beautiful architecture, very detailed and atmospheric -- but sometimes disappointing gameplay and a very anticlimactic ending where you're given infinite nails to kill off a series of monsters that you can take on one at a time. I feel like a much better game could have been made in that gorgeous setting.

I was just getting into Naitelveni's When you have to fight for an existence, fighting can become an existence, a lovely level set on a floating techno-castle, with a massive 759 kills ... When suddenly it was over. The last 500 or so kills come all at once in a situation that is very satisfying to play, but which is also kind of disappointing in that the fun comes to an end much more quickly than expected. Still well worth playing, but I feel it sort of makes promises that it doesn't keep.

It That Betrays, by Entsoy, is a strange hybrid of two very different maps. The first, I like very much: it's a crawl around the outside of a floating fortress in deep murk, with lots of ambushes. The second, I didn't enjoy at all: a mostly-underwater maze full of zombies. A rare example of a map that would better if it finished half way through.

And so finally we come to The Dead Room by Palmlix. I admire what's being attempted here, and indeed what's being achieved. But in the end, I'm just stuck, and that's never fun. Shortly after the second group of zombies, with 42 of the 114 kills, I just don't seem to have anywhere new to go -- despite having run around all the available areas in all possible directions. So with a reluctant shrug, I am moving on. C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas le Quake.

To MikeTaylor: I was stuck in The Dead Room at the same point you were. I had to refer to a YouTube video walkthrough that showed the way to progress was to run straight into a wall. A wall that is pulsing with light, but a wall nonetheless. The rest of the map offers more illusionary scripted events that challenge your sense of reality, so I recommend finishing it.

• Daughter Drink This Water: 5 Masterpiece. Would be utlimate in the Alkaline pack with robots.

• The Dead Room: 5 Masterpiece. Would be utlimate with a coop update. It should go in Arcane Dimensions.

• The Sore: 4,5 Would be utlimate with level expansions and health.

• Rust in Circles: 3,5 Would be utlimate in the Alkaline pack with explosive robots, more ammo, and alternative roads.

I don't want to play map like In That Betrays.

OMG, I'm loving the first map "I hate Sand" by "Dragons for Lunch". Such an exciting experience. Playing it on skill 2, was somewhat a challenge for me. found 0/4 Secrets, but died a lot of times... = 5/5♥

"It That Betrays" <- FK you.