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Reviews: 5th October 2003.
SUMMARY
Game - QUAKE
Map - nastrond: Nastrond
by - Vondur
Download - nastrond.zip
Overall Verdict - Medium/large medieval map in the "contract revoked" style.
FULL REVIEW:
A medieval map, Vondur style, with some Kell added in for good measure. Clearly inspired by Kell's superb quake 1 experience, "Contract Revoked", this is a medium to large level from the mapper who previous works include the #6 individual map in the hall of Fame, Castle of Koohoo.
As will be seen readily from the screenshots, this map is strongly reminiscent of Contract Revoked, using kells textures to good effect. Also borrowed are the emphasis on secrets [there are 9 secrets in this map], and to a lesser extent the brutal medieval gameplay, although the gameplay in this map is not quite as tough as in Contract Revoked.
The textures look just as good as they always did and Vondur also includes a nice iron-red riveted metallic trim. The grey brick walls are nicely offset by the white/red checkerboard floor texture, the bright reds of lava and colored books and symbols. I also liked very much the little holes in the floor where lava shines through from below. Architecture is good, without being spectacular. The early section of the map consists of a series of corridors, stairways and rooms, with some nice traps and shortcuts being set up. About halfway through, the map opens out into interesting, bigger, more expansive open areas including a couple of cool stairways/walkways over lava. There are no huge open areas, but there are a number of multi-tiered, very well constructed rooms, with lots of neat little details. Lighting is also very good, nicely subdued and shadowy to create a good quake 1 medieval atmosphere.
Gameplay involves a fair amount of exploration, there are a few buttons to be found and so on, but everything is fairly straightforward, nothing to difficult or obscure, which i actually prefer. The map layout is nicely interconnected and you will revisit earlier areas quite often. On hard skill there are 110 enemies [medieval monsters only] which provide a fair challenge, although personally i would have liked to have seen more enemies, especially near the start where some of the rooms seemed a bit sparsely populated.
The large number of secrets also may possibly tip gameplay into being too easy. For example i found a yellow armor which made the ending somewhat too easy and anti-climactic in my opinion. In fact i felt the ending itself was a bit weak and gimmicky, although the arena combat just before the ending was good. Also possibly ammo was over-abundant [too many rockets?] in some areas of the map.
Still, this was a highly enjoyable map, solid architecture, those superb textures, and flowing gameplay which possibly could have been tougher.
Overall Score: 17/20