The Lost Rook (xmj21_jcr) is a refreshingly different, a fight downwards through a floating castle turret followed by a quest to find four gold keys to open the exit. There are combats on each key, and fitting the last produces an extremely unpleasant surprise that made me very glad I had saved the quad! Very nice.
9e4e3f1c9d2a4d0a8feafdc208e9f361e34879db46d83b503e8de307bd53e905
overall_rating
4.617021276595745
48
Father’s Hand (xmj21_chrisholden) is a beautiful climb up a semi-abstract floating construction, but it’s over all too soon (only 28 kills on Hard) and ludicrously over-provisioned. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t feel finished.
Cleanup for Santa (xmj21_mykee_ is a pleasant diversion in which you make your way to the top of a rather blocky, overlit house. Enjoyable enough, but the invisible walls keeping you out of the surrounding garden are infuriating – especially as I suspect they are what prevented me from getting the last kill.
The Ash Keep (xmj21_mememind) is a pleasantly minimal arena battle in the style of Leptis Magna, in which you initiate several consecutive waves of combat before using the exit in the middle of the arena. Nice use of the grappling gun. It’s all over very quickly, but nice while it lasts.
Santa’s Fragtory (xmj21_heresy) starts out like a regular sewer crawl before morphing into a puzzle-fest where you need to use machinery to kill monsters that you otherwise lack the weaponry to deal with. The idea is interesting, but the execution is a bit too frenetic for my tastes.
Video Kojima (xmj21_ish) is a stand-out in this pack for several reasons. First, clever use of the space means that it feels like the biggest of the maps I have played so far. Second, the atmosphere feels more serious than most or all of the other maps. And third, it’s by some distance the most difficult, with multiple combats that I had to over and over until I figured out a way to get through them. All in all, very impressive.
Midnight Mass (xmj21_magnetbox) is another standout, this time for the sheer number of enemies (although half of them don’t appear till the very end) and the surpisingly intricate gameplay that makes plenty of use of the restricted area. On the downside, the architecture is very blocky, very careless and very overlit. But all of that is redeemed by the absolute slaughterfest at the end. Love it!
Rust Clot (xmj21_omni) is yet another standout. It exceeds even Midnight Mass for enemy count, though like that map it cheats a bit, as the the great majority of them are weedy fish and floating skulls. But there is plenty of tough-but-fair gameplay here, especially once you get past the difficult prologue in which you have no ranged weapon. Nice use of verticality, and a very handily placed quad!
Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread. -Judith Butler (xmj21_nait) is maybe the best-looking of all these maps so far, a beautiful ruined stone courtyard dominated by a gigantic but decayed human skull. Around this courtyard and in a few small surrounding areas, a sequence of combat waves offers satisfyingly crunchy use of the AD triple shotgun, with the emphasis more on number of enemies than on powerful individuals – at least until the end. Really nice.
The Endless Winter (xmj21_scythe2) is short but sweet, a nicely designed and very AD-ish little castle to climb. Everything is competent, but nothing really stands out. Though it’s always satisfying to take out one of those disgusting scragmothers with a quadded SNG!
Well, Sewer Santa (xmj21_riktoi2) is certainly different! It was an interesting experience, but, shall we saw, not a map that I expect to return to repeatedly 
Wintry Quadupola (xmj21_riktoi3) is a waves-of-enemies-in-an-arena blaster. It’s not bad, and I appreciate the generous provisions of ammunition and a quad at the end, but not really my cup of tea. It suffers in comparison with Possibility is not a luxury, another arena, in not looking nearly so lovely.
Realm of the Carpenter (xmj21_textfish) is rather lovely, but very very difficult. I came through a midgame combat with lowish health, saved, and the found that the next two or three much harder combats contained almost no health rewards, so I ended up trying to kill a scragmother, a colossus and a pair of vores on eight or nine health. So it ended up being a challenge, but not always the fun kind. The moral: if you come through a combat successfully but with low health, probably reload and try it again.
Microcosmosophy II (xmj21_ionous) may be the single most extraordinary Quake map I have ever played, for the absolutely astonishing amount of gameplay it packs into its 1024x1024x1024 space. I made it to the end, gasping for breath, with 220 kills … and I’d missed along 88! I had found 17 secrets … and missed another 11. Honestly, I’ve never sen anything like it.
As a purely technical tour de force it would be worthy of the deepest respect. But more than that, it’s a ton of fun to play. Really just amazing. Ionous, we salute you!
The Library of Forgotten Dreams - by Grue (xmj21_grue) may be the most beautiful of all the environments in this pack. I’m a sucker for arcane libraries, but this one is laid out even more gorgeously than most, and the indoor visuals are nicely complemented by the houses floating mysteriously in the distant mist. Gameplay is pretty good, too, though it does contain two of my pet hates: nail traps (has any map ever been improved by them?) and monsters teleporting in behind the player.
Yule Be Sorry (xmj21_makt) is another gem, which perhaps falls short of the very top drawer because it feels more like two separate maps stitched together than it does like an integrated whole. The first, lower, map takes place is a beautifully constructed and (over-)colourfully lit semi-flooded area, and makes a pleasant introduction. Once that is complete and you take the elevator up to the main level, things step up a gear. This is a wintry castle with a nicely escalating series of combats that will leave you glad that you saved the megahealth on the lower level for later. Very nice.
Finally (unless I missed something), Yuletide (xmj21_scythe) is a very straightforward ending to what has been a magnificent pack. The textures are all light, clean temple; the monsters are all ogres (admittedly of three different kinds). What makes it work is the sheer exhilarating brutality of it. You start out with the triple shotgun, and half way through you get the SNG, both of them deeply satisfying weapons. So this map is a bit insubstantial (only 27 kills), but it’s fun.
Closing thoughts to follow …
[User added a rating.]
Finally (unless I missed something) …
Well, I did miss something! The entrance to Bee home for Christmas (xmj21_wiedo) lurks down under the main hall, where the Chaos and 666 pillars are. (What is the difference between these, by the way).
I’m really glad I found it! It’s a novelty map that combines a weird setting and a novel mechanic with some good gameplay, as you have to destroy all the cells in a bee-hive before you can go home. Lots of fun to be had, and I love the rocket-jump belt. A properly useful new(ish) power-up.
And that leaves Dichromatic Abomination (xmj21_krampus), which I can’t find a legitimate way to get into. Can someone give me a hint, or shall I just noclip through the grate and walk in unworthy?