Forum thread for bastardry
1aa0c5ea6daeb397dfd4efec5d51f5bf7ba0157ece416d3b8bbb02bfc4ad69c1
overall_rating
2.664502164502164
22
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I guess I should have written the readme or something because this was seriously lacking ammo if played normally.
Not realising they were supposed to be played in sequence, I played bast first, and assumed the severe lack of weaponry and ammo was intentional. It’s actually a lot of fun that way, as it forces you to make more extensive use of infighting and traps – and the zombies become a lot more threatening when you have only a measly shotgun and a few shells. Overall, bast is an interesting map, with a really nice opening scene.
mbb7, on the other hand, is a bit of a mess. It’s ugly, confusing and buggy. You can easily get yourself stuck in places you are not supposed to be.
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I think the author should have clearly written in the readme that you should start with the base map, even if one can deduce from the story text that the maps are linked as such.
Aesthetics: Brushwork was kind of crude, overall, but did its job. I quite liked the unconventional texturing used in the base map. Seeing city textures in the base was quite interesting, and the themes meshed together surprisingly well. It gave the base a more realistic/contemporary feel to it, not so much like a futuristic scifi base, like the vanilla base maps. I also liked the other “realistic” touches, such as the missiles, moving wind tunnel pipes and the getaway aeroplane. Too bad you could get easily stuck in the wind tunnels, as stated in the review above.
The medieval map started out looking quite nice, with detailed brushwork and nice texturing, all the way up until the shambler room, after which the quality petered out drastically. Perhaps the author ran out of inspiration. I liked the idea of the castle entrance rising out of the water. The nailgun turrets looked pretty cool too.
Combat: I played on nightmare difficulty, which meant that in the base map enemies were cluttered into huge clumps at times. It gave the impression of trying to make the map difficult simply by spamming the player with lots of monsters, instead of crafting encounters with fewer monsters but with devious placement and ambushes and whatnot. Still, it was quite fun to juggle the monster horde.
The map was maybe a bit too generous in regard to items, with shell crates visible almost everywhere and enough health to allow careless fighting even in nightmare difficulty. Maybe the map was designed with keyboard play in mind, when I assume it was still the dominant way to play FPS.
The medieval map had a different, more of a puzzle approach to deal with some monsters. The execution was kind of hit and miss, though. The first puzzle I failed to notice altogether as I just dashed past the room. It was also kind of difficult to make use of the puzzle element in the second combat puzzle, since it would have required me to be more or less stationary while being showered with fire from all directions. So I ended up dying in the room and during my second attempt more or less just made a run for it while avoiding enemy fire.
The puzzly element was visible in other monster placements too, with one seemingly hinting the player to make use of infighting and another hinting to use explosives against a horde of bullet sponges. Overall, the monster placement was more carefully designed in this map.
Overall, a very inconsistent map in terms of polish. However, it’s still pretty fun and has some novel ideas that are worth experiencing, even if the execution of some of the ideas falls kind of short.
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I quite enjoyed these, for all that they are primitive. I’m always a sucker for progressively blasting my way through corridors of base enemies, and the second level was inventive. I’d love to see a modern, AD-flavoured re-interpretation of raising the sunken castle.
Icant is right about one crucial flaw in mbb7: the most obvious thing in the word is to jump across the bridge where the nailgun is – but if you do, you’re stuck, and have to suicide-jump into lava. Careless.
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Unregistered user “pmk” posted:
decent 2 level pack for its time with levels that were fun to play though the level designer could have implemented secrets within maps which would have made the levels even more memorable. I enjoyed a feature in the second level with the wizard castle rising up from the water. I thought that feature was pretty unique considering the time period these maps were created in. Overall, I would recommend downloading this quick level pack and would give it a three out of five rating.