3f994a3915b4a664d08ec176106dfc19a6e403517c40a1240a80418549494c00

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3f994a3915b4a664d08ec176106dfc19a6e403517c40a1240a80418549494c00
overall_rating 4.666666666666667 3
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3f994a3915b4a664d08ec176106dfc19a6e403517c40a1240a80418549494c00
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.quaddicted.com/db/canonical/3f994a3915b4a664d08ec176106dfc19a6e403517c40a1240a80418549494c00
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I thought this was really excellent until it wasn't. The first three episodes are all very good, just what I like, which is classic id1 feeling maps but slightly bigger and more intricate. Only complaints with the first three episodes is the 1) Shambler spam. It seems like one is waiting behind every locked door. And 2) secrets are honestly too hard to find, and often don't seem useful enough for how hidden some are. For instance, one hidden door, in a pitch black corner that is near impossible to see, hides a single health pack.

But the fourth episode seems just cruel and frustrating. Ammo becomes scarce and you have to fight so many tougher monsters with the weaker weapons. On e4m3 I still only had the two shotguns and basic nailgun and the level was throwing so many ogres and fiends and vores at me that I just quit. Maybe I could have had more weapons by then if I had found secrets, but again, they are very hidden here. Give me at least the grenade launcher!

Giving it 4 stars based on the strength of the first three episodes. I won't be finishing the fourth.

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I agree with DMXneon. As grateful as I am to find a whole new 4-episode mod, the secrets are almost impossible to find and so it makes the lack of ammo just brutal and frustrating. I am trying to get through the final episdode but I am stuck after killing 4 vores in an adjacent room which remain inaccessible. I'm pretty sure I have to get to the water under the elevator, but there is no way back to the room that accesses it.

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Fantastic map pack, loved it! But I agree on the secrets, those are very hard to find =)

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Unlike DMXneon and lodgerquake, I didn't find Episode 4 unreasonably harder than the first three episodes — just the gentle upping of difficulty that we'd want to see. Maybe I got lucky with an important secret early on.

Anyway, I thought this was just stellar. So much Quake, and so much of it really enjoyable. The total amount of content is about three times what was in the original game, and there is plenty of inventiveness. I mean, five stars, absolutely no question whatsoever.

That said, I'm not without some criticisms. The Shambler Spam comment above is fair — they did seem to crop up an awful low. Worse, the Spawn Spam. Is there any monster less fun than the spawn? No. No, there is not. And there are a lot of them in some of these levels. When I find such areas, I feel no shame in save-scumming my way through, picking them off at a distance before they activate using knowledge gained through earlier deaths. (I've always thought the original-game level The Pain Maze is short for The Pain-in-the-Ass Maze.)

Worse is the extensive use of fulldark areas — so many of them, all need to be visited in case there are lurking goodies. And so many of them concealed fiends or even spawns. It's not big and it's not clever.

But all of this is quibbling with what is a magnificent achievement. Thank you, team, for giving us this!