Is there a legitimate way to get into JCR’s map from the start map? The teleporter is blocked.
f5e40a5998e8671c89598cb14d04e2a4f6b032d480c9de47e76875466651a675
overall_rating
4.575
40
Use your axe 
D’oh!
Well, I am glad I went into JCR’s An Unending Dusk because it’s marvellous, a really unpleasant trek through a weird mixture of mediaeval courtyards and the innards of some giant evil beast. Superb atmosphere, and some really good gameplay too. Eight of the 133 kills eluded me, but then I only took 3 of 9 secrets so I guess some were in these.
Uh, sorry — I meant JCR’s Garden of Body and Blood of course.
I’ve been having a great time with Mazu’s The Call From Below … right up to what I assume is the last-but-one chamber, with the big exit in it and the massive fight with all the shamblers, vores and whatnot. Having won that fight, it looks like I need to get through the gold door to open the exit, but I cannot find the gold key. Am I doing something very very dumb?
Anyway, I really enjoyed Naitelveni’s In-Der-Welt-Sein, which has a unique atmosphere. I didn’t go in the area with the choice of three stashes until right at the end, and actually that work out well: it meant I had ammo-conservation issues through much of the level. It does fall down in three ways, though. First, while the opening section is very non-linear and offers lots of opportunity for exploration, from about half way in it becomes a linear sequence of set pieces. Second, there are a lot of locked doors that never open, and no way to tell them apart from openable ones. And third, the map feels underpopulated, as though it could sustain a lot more combat had the auther taken the time to put the monsters in. Anyway, it was nice for once to finish with all kills (101) and all secrets (six).
Newhouse’s Byzantium Ohm Quantum is refreshingly different, with its labyrinth of long, twisting blood-filled tunnels and its ample fiends. I never found any nail-based weapon, but I assume there is one since I found some nailes (I got 3 of the 5 secrets, and I assume that rocket-launcher that I could see but not reach is one of the missing two. Also, all 71 kills.) I was glad I saved the quad, in an early secret, till the final battle!
And so we come to Filtration Station by Pinchy Skree — which I believe is only his second map outside of speedmap packs.
Well, this is just marvellous. It’s a sort of base penetration map, but with a sufficiently wide open geometry that it’s really really difficult to make headway without getting picked off. I spent the first two thirds of the map constantly low on health and ammo, trying desperately to figure out tactics that would enable me to clean out sections without getting sniped from above, below or far away. It’s a pretty much totally unique experience in Quake, and while it was frustrating at times, I loved it.
OK, the last part is a bit anticlimactic, after you’ve got the silver key. I could have done with more repopulation at that point. But overall, it was a fascinating experience, and my highlight of the pack so far.
Strangework’s Eyes of Carbonado is neat, but limited. After the epic scope of Filtration Station it feels like a good 1990s map in comparison. I enjoyed it, but it was very easy and could really have done with at least double the density of monsters.
Ukko’s Mtal Keep is really beautifully designed, with a lovely sense of place and a distinctive twisted character to the architecture. The gameplay lets it down, though. Not only is 90% of the combat against the same two enemies (enforcers and fields), but there is a single long route that you have to travel, and you have to repeatedly go back to the very start to get more supplies and re-run the same route over and over. It’s a real shame that more inventive use isn’t made of the space, and that nearly all the supplies are at the start rather than being earned along the way.
Still, this is Ukko’s first non-speedmap, and I think it promises great things.
We finish with Yoder’s sewers, strange map that alternatives between very easy sections and very difficult ones, and that frequently puts you in a position where you can’t backtrack to pick up supplies that you earlier decided to save for later. It was fun, but in the end I began to feel that suddenly being trapped with a bunch of fiends was getting a bit old.
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Unregistered user “John” posted:
Looooved this four maps:
- Filtration Station by Pinchy Skree
- Byzantum Ohm Quantum by NewHouse
- In Der Welt Sein by Naitelveni
- The Call from Below by Mazu
@John, did you find the gold key in The Call From Below? I never did.
Unregistered user “John” posted:
I don’t remember, I will have to play it again and let you know.
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There’s too many maps with wildly different styles to really judge without going into every single map one after another. One problem that cropped up a few times where important switches or weapon pickups would just not be lit. This was in multiple maps, so people must not be listening to enough Valve commentary tracks.