Assassin’s Keep

Content - Quake2 - Quake2 Levels - Quake2 Multiplayer

Author: Discoloda | Rating: 8.29 | Download: adsadm4_r.zip / misc_dl.zip

Assasain’s Keep is a remake of an earlier map by Discoloda that he felt to be one of his bests maps. I haven’t tried that one out yet, so I can’t tell you what he’s improved on, but I can tell you how much this map absolutely rocks. For starters the map uses some superb texturing that looks amazing, but still keeps simple. Everything has a blueish-greenish tint to it thats really quite subtle and won’t cause any distractions from the matter at hand. Lighting is perfectly spot on, with nothing being overlit and no areas of complete darkness. I espcially like the trim that has the lights running down it.

One of the greatest features of this map, which is probably just a good accident, is that you can get Eraser bots to play exceptionally well. They’re not as good as real live opponents but not bad none the less. The action in this map flows beautifully and is best used for 1v1 or small DM’s of 3-4 people. Anything over that is going to get a tad bit cramped. All the weapons are included, minus the BFG of course, and they’re very well placed. You never spawn far from a weapon so you’re not often trying to fend people off with your blaster. I’m forced to question the placement of the rocket launcher though. It’s placed in one of the hallways, at a dead end. There’s only one way into, and out of the very small corridor containing the rocket launcher. I’ve always been one to think that there should never ever be dead ends in DM maps, espcially 1v1 maps. A teleporter right behind the RL would have made a gigantic difference. All in all though the map flows really well, just be careful when grabbing the RL, and be prepared for someone sending a couple pineapples your way.

Item placement was just about right on the mark, with just the right amount of ammo, and just enough health to keep you going. Check out Screenshot 3, on that bridge you’ll find the Body armor, which some might consider being a bit to close to the Combat armor. Speaking of the Combat armor, it suffers from the same problem that the RL did. You have to run up a short staircase to grab it and run into a wall that for the life of me I couldn’t manage to get over without rocket jumping. I found it to not even really worth the risk grabbing it from the staircase side, but you can drop down on it from above. The Mega Health requires a rocket jump to reach and as easy as it may look, you might actually miss the jump once or twice. Overall though, these little problems won’t bother you at all.

Now we’ve come to the end of this lovely review where I tell you whether or not you should grab this gem or not. Well, this map definitely gets my stamp of approval, as it’d be a blast to go 1v1 with someone in it. Although if your connection has you hindered, or you can’t find a server running it, you can easily get bots to perform superbly. Grab the map now, and you’ll also need the misc download to get the textures and sky working properly.

- f4nt