Cobalt Compound (bm_5th): ENOUGH WITH THE FREAKIN’ GUGS ALREADY! We get it!
Is it just me, or are rather too many of the Quoth monsters just not much fun to fight against? There are the justly hated vorelings and floaty green invisible things, but I also don’t find it satisfying to have to deal with scorpions, or those enforcers with flamethrowers — not to mention vermes or all the freakin’ gugs all over the place.
Sorry to be grumpy. It’s just that this pack is reminding me how much I love Arcane Dimensions.
Azure Ash Fortress (bm_myki) was a good way to end this pack. There’s plenty to explore, some fun combat mostly against stock Quake enemies, and nice sense of getting somewhere.
A fun collection of maps with varying styles of visuals and gameplay. My favorite was Celestine Cistern by Gnemeth, which both looked beautiful and played very well with classic looping, interconnected design and well-balanced combat. My least favorite was obviously Museum of Blue by Quasiotter. The author seems to hate beauty and fun, preferring to wallow in no-effort ugliness disguised as wholesomeness.
From what I remember I only put gugs in hard difficulty? You’re usually quite fair but judging these maps on the quoth enemies when you don’t appear to enjoy quoth seems a little unfair.
Also I agree with you on Raped, I see absolutely no need to name a map as such.
Good take on ‘Quoth’. Thematically pretty coherent, nicely done. I have some beef with evaluating jams, though, as the jams, tend to be eclectic and uneven in nature. The latter quality, emerges from their pluralistic and equalitarian aspect.
To an extent, your jam, deals with the eclecticism issue fairly well - minding the mission statement revolves only around aesthetic values - but the unevenness case, is still there present, at least to the potentially varying tastes of different consumers. I am mostly against picking up maps that I deem more suitable for my own taste or alienating those that do not match my kind of current fancy - unless they are made by the same author - albeit, what is good, is that the wealth of choice in the “Blue Monday Jam” pack, is decent.
The maps in the jam are rather of snack-size, which is proper for any jam formula altogether - as I believe that big maps, should be released independently, for more thorough review. Despite that, in all honesty and on a more personal note, I did not even play all the stages present; through some, I simply “god-moded” - I value exploration over challenge; completionism, is not my kind of thing; neither is secret-hunting. I am not a fan of tedious arcade-style encounters as well. So, here is my type of a consumer for your review instead; “the leisure man”, maybe “the vibe man” if to get me hooked on.
The soundtrack - blending into soundscape element - pulsating throughout the length of a start map, is superb.
On the technical side, I had to turn the “night light” mode off on my laptop, as to not make the landscapes of a jam, look more like some “violet monday”, rather than the “blue monday” instead.
Azure Ash Fortress (bm_myki) might have a broken trigger for Easy? I’m hanging around in the end room and the final couple of enemies (whose deaths unlock the exit gate) never spawn…
Similarly, Inhumed Sinopsis is almost certainly too hard on Easy - I ran out of ammo about 2/3 of the way through, and having to try to cheese things in doors is not the Easy skill level experience. (Cool Millennium Falcon, though!)
Museum of Blue, on the other hand, seems to be trying to do something subversive on the level of The Stanley Parable, but it just takes so long to get started with its narrated experience spiel that you lose any patience you might have had with the whole thing. And the script isn’t good enough to actually pull it off.
Towering Terror was nice, but short (and does exactly what it says on the tin). But I think The Color Burns did the most for me visually, even if the mechanical design left something a little to be desired with the symmetry. (But both did scale appropriately to Easy, which is good, too! They were still challenging, just on the right level.)
I’m not done yet but I’ve got to say, Gold and Tears is a beauty ! Nice to see the semi-auto plasma gun again, it doesn’t look like much but it packs a punch, and feels like a superior choice compared to the lightning gun or the laser gun when in comes to ammo consumption.
Like any jam, experience varies, but one trend I liked was occasionally getting a plasma gun early - that lead to aggressive play and some interesting ammo decisions.