9755bf7150f47e3ae285d3a9c188d3b3800d14c416bed99f1296cecea612e012

Files
9755bf7150f47e3ae285d3a9c188d3b3800d14c416bed99f1296cecea612e012
overall_rating 3.0 2
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9755bf7150f47e3ae285d3a9c188d3b3800d14c416bed99f1296cecea612e012
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.quaddicted.com/db/canonical/9755bf7150f47e3ae285d3a9c188d3b3800d14c416bed99f1296cecea612e012
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Seems to be a duplicate map entry of https://www.quaddicted.com/db/v1/maps/65894a8a8a6be1d28d6f7ee5a653f67aaaaa8a27846a8f5ba181fc9123d15059

Overall a great episode. Awesome atmosphere, good new enemies/weapons that fit well with the quake style.
Two complaints though, and the reason I give it 3 stars rather than 4 or 5, are:

  1. A lot of brushwork, while beautiful, needs refinement. Brushes often jut out and get in the way of combat, or snag you on a jump.
    Also, the brushwork of the first map especially, and to a lesser degree later on, lets you explore areas that suggests secrets but are simply “out of bounds”. For example, on the cliffs around the lighthouse in level 1. Loads of ramp-jumps to areas or ledges with nothing there. Similar, in ep 5 with the portals between the two worlds, you can snag yourself and prevent entering the far portal, and drop to the “ground” (sky texture) and need to noclip to escape. Many similar cases. It actually made me explore less for secrets after several let-downs, suggesting I should ‘stay on the rails’.

  2. I got lost in levels 4 and 7 (secret), and briefly in 5, due to lack of signposting. Level 7 was easily the most confusing. I loved the artistic use of the fog, but it did make it harder to navigate. I had to turn down the fog and draw entity debug info after failing to find how to progress in the secret level.

That said, I had a lot of fun and was blown away by the atmosphere of the game, and it would easily be a 4.5 with a bit of refinement.

4

I’m only part way through the first map, but I want to drop in some interim comments. First, I love the big, sprawling base aesthetic, all very dirty and industrial. Lots of delicious exploration to be done, and well placed combats.

But I have quibbles.

First, the weapon-change sound is a horrible addition. I know that sound. It’s the ”I’m being attacked by a knight” sound. I do not want to hear it, with all its triggering effects, every time I do a perfectly innocent weapon change.

Second, I’ve just picked up the double-barrelled shotgun replacement weapon, and I am sceptical. Obviously I need to play with it more, but in general I think it’s not a smart move to change the base game.

We’ll see how my opinions change as this excellent pack continues.

5

I finished the first map. It’s excellent for all the reasons I mentioned before.

Now I find myself with a very slow frame-rate in the second map, on my ten-year-old MacBook. I suspect the rain may be guilty. Is there a simple way to turn it off?

6

I very much enjoyed the second map. Even as a standalone release, it would be worth five stars, so I’m going to go ahead and rate the pack at this early stage (though of course I will also play the rest!). My only quibble would be that it’s a bit too easy to get lost. Lots of possible paths open up, and the areas look sufficiently similar that it’s not always obvious where you are or where you should go next.

7

Oh, I forgot to say: I solved the rain problem just by turning down my resolution. In fact I halved it (from 2880x1800 to 1440x900) and hardly noticed any difference.

And I am warming to the double-barrelled shotgun’s replacement weapon. My main problem with it is that the slow action makes it hard to use well on fiends, who tend to eviscerate you while you’re still cycling through a firing sequence!

8

I knocked my rating down from five stars to three, even though this is a work of genius.

There are two reasons.

The first is that the final combat with Zeus is just ludicrously too hard. Even when I god-moded, and ran around and electrocuted him three times, he wouldn’t die. In the end I just shrugged and gave up on that final map.

But worse is that it’s so incredibly hard to find your way around these maps. His Still Breathing Corpse took me well over two hours, of which half was just running around trying to figure out where the heck I was and where new areas might be. I can’t even say how long I’ve been messing about in the bonus level, having found not much more than half the kills, because Quake won’t give me a time until I exit — and I have no idea where the exit is, and no clue how to look for it.

In the end, the main experience of playing this pack — which, again, is a work of genius, no doubt — is frustration. That’s not good when I play games for, well, fun.