The Gridiron

Content - Quake2 - Quake2 Levels - Quake2 Multiplayer

Author: Lunaran | Rating: 7.75 | Download: lunq2dm1.zip

Set for 3-4 players, The Gridiron is a small, two story, wharehouse level featuring boxes, crates, and a great opportunity to watch your friends gibs fly. Or your own if you duel as well as I do.

Gridiron’s level design provides for some furious deathmatching because of its small size and interconnectivity. There are stairs, two elevators, and teleporters that bring the level together. A surprising amount in such a small level. As the author states on his site, “The teleporters are probably unnecessary - they were thrown in to increase connectivity, but that only served to make a map already suffering from small size even smaller.” I agree with his statement completely.

There is one teleporter that leads you to a small balcony where the rocket launcher is located. It could have added to the gameplay of the map if the teleporter wasn’t there. Players would then have to make a challenging jump to recieve this powerful weapon. Of course, any player can grab the rocket launcher with the teleporter present but this tends to become a rocket fest and takes away from the skill of the players. Another issue I had with the teleporters was that, while being chased by Darkwolf, we would get stuck in the teleporter and would have to commit suicide by blowing ourselves up to get out. Very frustrating.

Weapon placement is nicely done with each weapon sitting above a highlighted square. Weapons present are the super shotgun, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, hyperblaster, and the chaingun. Health was also abundunt with one mega-health in the map. It’s in a great location that I wouldn’t have even noticed except that I was spawned next to it once. There was also plenty of armor to go around and believe me, you’ll need to pick up every bit you can with that rocket launcer so readily available.

I really enjoyed the look of the map though it kept reminding me of a capture the flag map. The textures used have certain areas in red and others in blue. An interesting choice for a non-CTF map. The wharehouse theme is done well with minimal box placement. Thankfully, the level is not cluttered with pointless boxes as we have seen in other wharehouse themed maps.

In conclusion, Gridiron provides a great arena with quick speeds and easy navigation. Though not without flaw, it could easily become a favorite among small parties.