sm199burnhamyoder - Beautiful! Really great sense of place. A standout. sm199elithiumgreenwood - The texturing is a little plain (it is a speed map), but the combat is set up in clever ways. sm199greenwooding-ing - OK, kinda silly. sm199nhjcr - Solid castle level, nice menacing spikes. I'd like to see a speedrun of this one. Another standout. sm199pinchyion - A little hectic, and I keep getting stuck on the curved stairs.

Mystery of the Hidden Temple

Fun stuff, a couple of nice demonstrative techniques which suggest greater inventive application in the button for alternating path openings & the appearance of zombies you aren't yet qualified to fight in an area you don't necessarily have to return to. Also in particular the respawning rockets in a room full of zombies: mechanically odd because the rocket launcher starting ammo is more than enough to cover the arena, but also isn't necessary if one chooses to return to the main arena, where quad + shotgun cover your needs; it totally invites an expansion on the theme though, to have a arena with waves of challenging enemies in a room crowded with zombies, that could present an interesting set up (rockets dangerous and imprecise for the particular challenges of wave progression but necessary to deal with zombies). The drop down into the catacombs was a particularly beautiful example of an architecturally intriguing long fall into water.

Cerberus Depth

A really excellent chunky id1 era feel especially in the initial corridors, with some really lovely set pieces. The variety of monsters raining fire down from the archways was very cool, being starved of ammo with an arsenal alternating between sshotgun and perforator and risking grenades in a sequence consisting mostly of long corridors with melee corner ambushes made resource management and split second weapon switching very interesting.

Depraved State

Just a fantastic map. Extra hellish extrapolation of id1; brilliant switch-pushing / key-gathering / platforming in the main arena (really good traditional platforming, that is), with grenades and zombie gibs raining down from everywhere. Enemy positioning is perfect, every encounter its own great challenge. Stylistically consummate, possibly the best zombie map ever. Masterclass in level design.

Dragon Shrine

Nice later-90s fantasy articulation; visually appealing brushwork in some sense; the fact that it is so consummately harking back to a pre-millenium aesthetic is kinda dimished by the bad ergonomics — difficult edges making it hard to back out of some corridors, navigate certain walkways, climb up the curved staircase (particularly egregious IMO). None of the combat encounters feel particularly satisfying: scrags are easily blocked with obstacles and otherwise evaded in open areas; the big higgledy-piggledy splurge of assorted enemies dotted around the upper levels of the exterior are a gameplay mess because, what with the stairs being such a confusing nightmare to navigate, the instinct upon seeing a fiend, grenades, death knights charging at you before you can even get a glimpse of the terrain at the top means your instinct is simply to jump back down to safer ground. Because the enemies can't even navigate the stairs and won't be compelled to chase you down that direction once you back out, they're just awkward fish in a barrel. Nice idea, cool theme, bad execution.

Oops — continued from above:

Cosmic Onslaught

Good laugh, nice Quake 3-ish void platforming (thanks Ing, lol). A nice jumble of ideas thrown together. Some very cool very tense indoors sequences where strange angles and low ammo make for great trepidation, especially with intriguing positioning of enemies meaning you can kind of judiciously navigate to avoid triggering while you think of where ammo might be hiding lol.

Overall an extremely fun and high quality map pack, full of tantalising ideas. Collaboration is clearly awesome, it brings out so much and you can see how different tendencies complement and challenge each-other to bring discrete aesthetic and gameplay aspects into focus more than they would be in a less speedy, single-author setup. Cheers all!