The Castle of Koohoo

Content - Quake - Quake Levels - Quake Single Player

Author: Vondur | Rating: 7.00 | Download: koohoo.zip

The story of this modification is quite confusing, with a bent on very unusual (and nearly unpronounceable) names, and an atmosphere unlike most of the other Quake maps out there. I am categorizing it as a “level”, although it contains a start map, a main map, and an endgame (boss) level. This is mainly because the start just lets you select difficulty, and the endgame has only the boss to fight. Nearly all the action happens in the main level.

Seems that long ago some prince was ruling over a peaceful land, and some winds of change blew in causing dark thoughts in the minds of his servants… oh hell, if you can figure out the story, let me know… it’s just too weird to fully comprehend. Let’s jump in, okay?

The main map in this conversion is enormous, and will take you a while. One of the first things you will notice is that the look and feel of the level is quite similar to one of the large Unreal maps. There are some imported textures in use here, mainly from Heretic II, as well as a couple of ambient sounds from Unreal itself. The color scheme of the level overall is a striking green, which is quite a break from the dull greens and browns of most Quake maps. But the Unreal sound effects really threw me. Just to see if I was imagining, I popped in the Unreal soundtrack CD and picked one of the more surreal tracks. That had a profound effect and almost made me feel like I was actually playing Unreal. I half expected to see some Nali wandering around.

The map isn’t just like Unreal in looks and sounds either. Even the placement of enemies and weapons was pretty “Unreal”-like. Except that with this map, the combat is either sparse or very difficult with no gray area in between, so you have a tendency to run out of ammo in places. Better attention should have been paid to the balance here. Some of the combat takes place at range, which can eat up shotgun rounds quickly, and ammo caches aren’t always nearby. You also have to endure some pretty fierce combat before you get to the better weapons like the nailgun. The rocket launcher isn’t reachable until the boss level, but it sure would come in handy in the early going. Shamblers and Vores are a little too common on this map.

The endgame has you facing off against a pallette-switched (green) version of Chthon, called Raagoonshinnaah (try saying THAT five times fast). If anything though, he is far harder to beat than his counterpart at the end of the original’s E1. Here you do not have as much cover, and no electrodes that you can use to lay the smack down, plus you are on a sloping surface so even dodging is not a complete protection. You have to rely on reflexes, patience, and a lot of rockets in order to outlast this baddie. It takes about 40 rockets on average to bring this guy down, after which the level exit opens.

I must say I found myself marveling at the architecture. The flow of the map wasn’t always obvious, but I found my way around. The big sticking point here was the unfortunate shortage of ammo that I found myself having to contend with, which decreased the fun of the level for me somewhat. Overall though, it is still well worth the download, if for no other reason than to see what happens when you try to do “Unreal” things with the Quake engine. Worth a look

- Zoopster

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