» Castle of Stroggos

Castle of Stroggos

Author: Brian Griffith | Rating: 8.95 | Download: grinspq1.zip

Your main mission objective is to find a way into the Castles of Stroggos and then stow away on a huge ship that is supposed to be filled with tons of biochemical weapons so the Strogg can attack and assimilate Earth and other planets. This mission is fought through a 3 level pack that features some fantastic quality.

From the start of grinspq1 you can tell what type of detail was put into this level pack. You find yourself looking at a huge base that is embedded in rock and holds areas both above and below ground. There are only 4 Stroggs at the beginning but their placement is well executed with two guards on both sides of the door, a gunner who is walking through the door, and a guard patrolling the top walkway. The guards will catch glimpse of you pretty quickly, so take a good sniping position. You don’t need to worry about the gunner as he won’t pay you much mind unless you shoot him.

Your first objective is to get through the main door and enter the Castle. This isn’t the easiest task to do but definitely not to complicated. You must first raise the huge gate that blocks the door and you must have the blue key to open the door. Sound familiar? To search for the blue key you must first gain access to the other parts of the level. Well, our good friends at the U.S.M.C. have left exploding charges lying around in specific places for us. Just walk over the charge and a countdown begins. Be sure to move out of the way. The charges were a very good idea and really help submerge the player into the game.

The rest of your first objective is pretty straight forward with following the set path of the level and killing the Stroggs that get in your way. One of the best atmospheric parts of the levels is where you are traveling through a tunnel and just when you get that feeling something is going to happen a Tank falls in front of you. With his death comes your reward, the rocket launcher.

After you find the blue key you return to the surface and walk through the main door. You now find your self in the first part of the base which is guarded by two gunners and a Tank. The gunner on the ground will give you the grenade launcher and the Tank will give you the chaingun. Yippee! You will need to kill of the Stroggs in the next open area to gain access to the inner parts of the castle. You won’t be able to reach the main door so you will have to start two huge gear mechanisms to rise a stair case for you, interesting touch. Be sure to set off the explosives for some extra goodies and don’t stand to close to the doors because they will grab you and cause damage.

As you will already know by now, the next objective is to find gate control B and destroy the computers to allow access to the secondary castle door. Upon entering the computer review be sure to take caution, you could be in for a surprise. Next your objective comes to you in 3 steps that are very easy to execute.

After this is done you proceed back to the secondary gate but of course you have to take a new route since a door only opens from the inside. That’s fine because the new route brings you to one of the more interesting areas where you will find yourself on a roof top. Some nice ideas were implemented here with having to knock down a power pole to be able to cross over a huge fan.

The next objective brings us to another great part where the player has to take out to crate cranes. Taking out the cranes is very easy but the explosion and the chaos that happens is very nice with water pipes busting and the area filling up with water, great touch.

Your next objectives begin to start moving you through faster. First you must stop the food processor for the Strogg ship. Pretty basic, click the button. Then find computer 1 and push the button to gain access to the loading bay. Next you will need to find the security pass to unlock the door to launch control so you can then find the button that will rotate the loading dock. Finally, find your way back to the loading dock to find your way to the ship.

Overall, Castles of Stroggos is a great level pack with some nicely implemented ideas, good texturing, and some very nice architecture. Gameplay is the real winner here with plenty of sub missions to keep you moving. Each level is very well balanced and work together to bring across the theme. The only real problems I had was with the doors. Almost everyone of them wanted to grab a hold of me.

- DorKwolf