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e1f7b48e210e56c793105497439c88dc2ada1bd2bbb8be5947ec2f99f0965797
overall_rating
4.263700181159421
96
If Quake wasn’t brutal enough
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It’s a classic. Challenging, but not really difficult gameplay, good level design, creepy atmosphere. Also remarkable due to its surprising (somewhat anticlimactic) ending. Belongs into anybody’s collection!
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Unregistered user “spy” posted:
3/5
1- good level, quite short nothing exceptional
2- cutscene
3- simple architect, very 2d gameplay
4- wtf? alotsa textures been used and simple design
5 - classic
6 - classic
7 - classic
8 - wtf cutscene
should’ve been a 2 episode adventure
Unregistered user “spy” posted:
so basically the most beautiful levels came from kandyman with a manzer addition
Unregistered user “Quakeman” posted:
Did I do something wrong when I played the game? Are there multiple endings? If not that was the shittiest ending I have ever witnessed. No one kills Quakeman, he’s too tough.
This exchange inspired me to replay Zerstörer. Plenty here that is innovative and memorable; some things that are not so great.
Firstly, the biggest drawback to this episode, both when I first played it a few years back and now: the cutscenes. I appreciate that they pushed the boundaries of what could be done with the Quake engine at the time, but as when I played this before, I found them to be distracting and cheesy. In my opinion, the story of a Quake map/episode should play out within the maps themselves, or not at all. Without the cutscenes, though, this episode largely loses its overarching sense of narrative (even though some of the individual maps manage to tell their own stories), which highlights another major weakness – namely that it is ultimately a set of mostly nice but disjointed maps, with very little real connection between them.
zer1m6 is the definite highlight for me. I have since played far better-looking maps, but it still stands out in due its fantastic sense of tension, narrative and location.
zer1m1, zer1m3, zer1m5 and the start map are all pretty good, with zer1m3 being a little finicky and confusing to complete, yet wonderfully atmospheric in a B-horror movie kind of way.
zer1m7 is very immersive, but I also found it confusing and hence frustrating to complete, perhaps due to the samey visuals everywhere. Plus, I still have no idea how to use that strange weapon you get at the very end. I tried firing it a few times, but just ended up injuring and/or killing myself in the process, finally gave up and went back to rest of my arsenal to complete the map. A weapon like that (as opposed to e.g. the souped-up shotgun and nail-chaingun, which anyone who has used the regular Quake weapons will instinctively know how to use) should be introduced a lot earlier, so as to give the player a chance to learn how to use it.
I agree with spy that zer1m4 is the weakest map of the bunch. Whereas the other maps all brought back memories from when I played Zerstörer previously, I had no memory of having played this one at all.
In case this all sounds overly negative, let me stress that there are more things I like than dislike about this episode/pack. The maps are mostly fun, as are the new additions (monsters, weapons, etc.), and there is no denying that it is impressive for its time. I do, however, think that it’s far from perfect.
“zer1m6 … stands out due to its fantastic sense of tension, narrative and location”
D’oh.
BTW., according to the Quaddicted maps database, Kandyman never made any other maps than his superb Zerstorer contribution, True Love Waits. Can this be true? Or was Kandyman a one-off alias for an established mapper?
One can find out quite a lot from just reading the included documentation. 
Kandyman is Marin Gazzari and is credited with the start map/“Another Perfect Day”, zer1m5/“Blutsturz” (along with Cole Savage a.k.a. Manzer), zer1m6/“True Love Waits”, zer1m7/“Bunker” and zerdm4/“Brutalizer”, according to the Zerstörer readme – so that’s the majority of the playable SP maps in this pack and a fair bit more than just zer1m6.
A quick internet search suggests that Marin Gazzari/Kandyman has made a few Doom and Quake2 maps in addition to his Zerstörer maps.
But no other Q1SP maps outside of Zerstorer, unfortunately.
Still, I guess that’s more incentive to have another go at the whole package.
(I don’t play Deathmatch.)
You could certainly do worse. A word of warning, though, MikeTaylor: if I recall correctly, you once wrote that you use DarkPlaces on Linux, which means that you may encounter a bug in zer1m3, where one of the keys (the silver key, as I recall) drops right through the platform where you’re supposed to find it. Perhaps the latest version of DP fixes this or perhaps there is a way to fix it manually – or you could just cheat at that point. Or use a different engine to play this, like Quakespasm (also runs on Linux).
Just thought I’d let you know so that you don’t lose time looking for a key that is not where it’s supposed to be.
Actually, what I wrote about zer1m4 above is not entirely true: certain sequences did bring back memories, such as the three doors that you open and close with the single multi-sided switch. It’s not as good as the other maps, but especially for 1997, it’s not too bad either.
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Unregistered user “NoNameUser” posted:
Thanks a lot for the tip on that gold key, I was running in circles for a while there. Anyway, I think the TEAMShambler description above is overstated. It’s not really scary, only very dark (you might want to set gamma to 0 because some areas are almost pitch-black). It’s only difficult because it forces Nightmare mode on every map, but it’s not terribly hard either. Nevertheless, this wasn’t bad at all. I honestly wasn’t expecting much given its age but it turned out surprisingly good, especially the new weapons (loved the Chain-Lightning gun). The ending was kind of a bummer (for the protagonist anyway), but at least there was an ending. Nearly all the maps that exist don’t even have a text screen at the end, what can be worse than that?
By the way, I thought that guy in the HUD looked like Quentin Tarantino.
Unregistered user “jesus” posted:
In these instructions…
Unzip into a directory beneath the Quake directory. (Ex: c:\quake\zer)
Start by typing: quake -winmem 12 -game zer
** The ‘-winmem 12’ is needed to force some versions of Quake to
** allocate enough memory for the massive levels in Zerstˆrer.
** You can substitute bigger numbers for the ‘12’ if you have
** lots of RAM.
WHAT DOES START BY TYPING MEAN??? TYPE IT WHERE>>???
Unregistered user “jesus” posted:
In these instructions…
Unzip into a directory beneath the Quake directory. (Ex: c:\quake\zer)
Start by typing: quake -winmem 12 -game zer
** The ‘-winmem 12’ is needed to force some versions of Quake to
** allocate enough memory for the massive levels in Zerstˆrer.
** You can substitute bigger numbers for the ‘12’ if you have
** lots of RAM.
WHAT DOES START BY TYPING MEAN??? TYPE IT WHERE>>???