[User added a rating.]
504984de0206082e0bd15ad5d136ca99ea9fb9bf2f8733569c2fddc909cd8ec7
overall_rating
3.744736842105263
20
Packet overflow happens because ammo is spammed in that underwater part. After that map crashes…
[User added a rating.]
I started with Salrath’s tomb (rotj_chuma). It was quite the experience! It can’t really be described as good, with its wide open bland spaces, bright uniform lighting and crazy over-provision of ammo, health and armour. But, holy heck, it was fun. Just blasting through waves of high-level enemies without taking care to conserve ammo, topping up and and when convenient, and generally having a good time.
I finished with 455 of the 465 kills, and ten of 14 secrets (though I have have found more and passed them by, not needing the stashes at that point).
I got about half way through Crucible of Worlds by entsoy (rotj_entsoy) before running into the no-fun-at-all combat with the mega-enforcer with the shield and the vast number of hit-points in an enclosed space with low visibility and poor manoeuverability. I died a few times, then though I’ll come back later and try again, but when it came to it I never wanted to actually make that attempt again.
Two weeks passed and I thought “This is ridiculous, I’m letting a single badly-judged encounter block my enjoyment of a whole jam”. So I went back in, god-moded, and killed him. Then when I came out, I ran straight into a big herd of apparently unkillable vores.
Screw that. I’m moving on. There may be great artistry and innovation in this map, but I’m here to have fun.
Towers of Torment (rotj_strideh) is much better: atmospheric, distinctive, beautiful and disgusting at the same time. Armed only with the shadow axe, you have to make your way through a complex of Coagula-style ruined castle segments hanging in the sky, dealing with zombies of various kinds, those exploding monsters from Forgotten Sepulchre and the occasional voreling.
Enjoying and unsettling in equal parts. My only criticism would be that it’s sometimes difficult to tell where you are and where you’ve been. Some kind of progression marker, such a different coloured lighting in successive sections, would have made this clearer. Excellent work, though!
Castrum in Inani (rotj_zetabyt) is excellent along every dimension. A beautiful place to explore, a lot of very brutal combat, also plenty of opportunity to approach it tactically. It’s big, and its difficult, but rarely or never in a way that feels unfair. I was often low on health, but every time I died I felt it was my own fault. Lovely work.
I really enjoyed Mall Prison Dump Hybrid (rotj_nickster), a smallish area that uses its space extremely well to squeeze out a lot of very brutal gameplay. Arcane Dimensions’ always-satisfying triple-shotgun comes into its own here. The gimmick is the many many explosive objects — barrels and bags. Each counts as a secret and there are 99 of them. Infuriatingly, I destroyed 98 but just could not find the last one, even though I finished wil all 154 kills. (It only now occurs to me that the last secret might have been an actual secret — a rocket-launcher, maybe?)
Excellent.
Cannibal’s Abandoned Meat Packer (rotj_cc) is another winner, once again going hard on the sheer brutality that Arcane Dimensions affords, but this time in an industrial meat-packing facility. My only real quibble is that the walking trashcan in the final battle absorbs so much punishment before it dies that I almost gave up on just pouring ordnance into it, thinking I might be missing a Chthon-style special move. But no: just keep shooting it, and you can get there in the end!
Frustratingly, I was unable to play the last map in this pack — Fish-God Grotto Outpost (rotj_alexunder) — because my Quake engine (Quakespasm 0.93.2) crashes saying
Texture solid_blue_lt is not 16 aligned
Any ideas?
Not a big fan of the Arcane Dimensions Mods. Maybe just haven’t played enough of them. The one notable exception for me is Tears of the False God (still playing that one). Anyway agree the Strideh map Towers of Torment was the best of the bunch visually. 2 of the maps seemed super bright, the lighting almost unnatural but maybe that what they were going for. Then, I think it was Crucible Worlds super dark. Huge contrast with the other maps. Even the Mall Prison Dump seemed bright. Anyway, sorry I couldn’t be more positive, this was just not the map jam for me. Regardless, thank you to the authors! Tons of work I know! Keep it up and thanks again!