Escape

Content - Quake2 - Quake2 Conversions - Quake2 Partial Conversions

Author: Loki | Rating: 10.00 | Download: escape.exe

Wow wow wow wow, wow! As you can see by the rating, and my wowwing, I absolutely loved this SP campaign from the crew that brought you one of the most amazing Q2 Mods, LMCTF. The only downfall in this entire campaign would be the story that sets you up on your mission. It’s definitely not the most original story in the world, but you won’t even care. Here it is though, you’re a prisoner, and you’ve managed to kill a guard and nab a blaster. Now you need to escape, but why just escape when you can also reek severe havoc on the Stroggs? This campaign includes six levels (one being a secret level), a new weapon, and one new enemy with two variations. Its not your typical linear run of the mill SP mission though.

You see this map pack allows you to complete your mission objectives in multiple ways. There’s parts of the map that you may never, and items you might not ever receive depending on your choice of path. The levels also intertwine within each other causing you to have to go from one level to the next, back to the other level, and then back to where you just were, in order to complete a mission. The way I explained it makes it seem as though it might be a bit confusing or tedious, but I assure you its not. You’ll thoroughly enjoy every last frantic second of it.

All the Q2 weapons are included in the set including one new one, the Plasma Rifle. The plasma rifle allows you to types of firing, bounce or spread. To be perfectly honest, neither are useful and you probably won’t use the gun much. It sucks up cells pretty badly, but I guess it does prove to be effective against Brains. Bounce the plasma off the wall behind them and nail in the back a few times. Works out quite well really, but besides that, its not effective. As far as its spread shot, I’ve never found a gun with a three shot spread effective. Regardless, you’ll find all your Q2 weapons in the map, and you’ll have plenty of enemies to unload them on.

Speaking of those enemies, I don’t think a single enemy was left out in the campaign. Every enemy that I can think of off the top of my head was definitely in there, but they were exceptionally well placed. You never went into a battle with too much, or too few of supplies to effectively take care of the baddies. It was just this beautiful balance of enemies and items that just worked amazingly well. The secret level is a ton of fun with you fighting in near zero gravity against an army of enemies, but its really not worth your trouble. Sure you get some cool items from the secret level, but you end up using them on the army thats against you. Oh, and how could I talk about the baddies without mentioning the two new baddies you’ll be facing off against. You’ll have two new enemies based off the soldiers that have a new black and purple skin, named Plasma Soldiers. They’re just soldiers that happen to wield the Plasma Rifle, and you’ll mow over them without much of a problem.

One of the most striking things of this campaign is the incredible mapping involved. The architecture is top notch and in most cases puts game dev teams to utter shame with their pure mapping skill. Three different mappers contributed to the project and they each have their own personal styles that blend together beautifully. You’ll just have to download it and see how amazing it is, because words just can’t do it justice.

Overall this is the best Q2 SP I’ve ever played, hands down, no contest. Everything just worked together so perfectly, and with the ability to choose two to three different paths, and ways to complete mission objectives you’ll be playing this one over and over. You’ll probably even need the handy-dandy walk-through to make your life a bit easier. If you think there’s a better Q2 SP campaign out there, please send it to me, because I don’t believe it to be true!

- f4nt