I absolutely adore the brushwork in this map. It’s a level of detail that I aspire to when building, and I understand how time-consuming it can be to make. Unfortunately, the rest of this map suffers for this.
I came into this level feeling excited; I love base, I love detail and I love a good challenge. But by the end I felt underwhelmed and disappointed. Perhaps that’s because I telefragged armagon by accident, I dunno. Perhaps it’s because the custom enforcer is one of the most annoying enemies to fight in Quake (I’d be fine if the “shield” accurately represented the frames they were vulnerable for, but it has a strong tendency to stop your shots even when you can’t see it!). Perhaps it’s because for all the time and effort that went in to building a map to this level of detail, gameplay, flow and duration fell by the wayside.
I took a healthy amount of time to beat this map. In part that’s because it makes you traverse a large amount of itself to unlock the path forwards, and in part because I was wondering aimlessly, half-lost in the labyrinth of metal that blends too easily into itself. I never felt a strong sense of direction in this map, and at times would struggle to identify where I was in relation to areas I had previously visited, even if I could see them.
I almost feel like the map would be more fun without the visual distraction, but then I would miss that part of its quality.
On replaying this map, I enjoyed it more. But the ending is still dumb. You just can’t beat Armagon without some form of special behaviour. In my case, I tried several time entering the arena, until I got it just right and he landed on top of me. Then I just fired the lightning gun straight up his cloaca until he exploded.
To everyone playing in the future, I managed to beat the end boss by getting behind him as he starting firing lasers everywhere. I just lightning gun’d him until he fell to his knees. Once you know that, it’s pretty quick and easy.
I don’t know exactly what I did to get a better experience than everyone else here, honestly. I didn’t get stuck on the brushwork, I didn’t find the amount of items excessive, nothing. The only problems I had was I died a few times before figuring out the dude at the end and I forgot where the bars opened (that last part was prolly just me though).
This map really is cool as all hell, though, I must say. Played it on hard and had a blast all the way through. Nothing good I have to say that people haven’t already said.
I enjoyed playing this map, other than having trouble finding one of the buttons I needed to push to continue. I got to the end and killed Armagon with no trouble and was thinking the whole thing was just too easy; too much ammo/ health, etc., and then noticed I’d done it on skill 1. So I restarted and ran through on skill 2 and ended up getting my ass handed to me several times in the end. I restarted and played the whole thing through again and left the secret quad until I had the level otherwise cleared and then went back, got the quad and raced to the end arena, and put the boss down hard! LOL.