Bile Plant is the best custom Quake map I have ever played. Point. Even better than Zerstörer.
The atmosphere is disturbing, the sound is creepy with this electric noises and the whole plant is just… death. Corpses, dirty bricks and foul acid water, what more could I ask for? ^^ Everything smells of disease and the big monsters that will surprise you. Ahh my heart
I’ll never forget this experience and even playing it again after some months, it’s just amazing. This is exactly my taste. Do yourself a favor and get this now. Thanks ijed
I finally beat WarpSpasm on skill3, and I must say it is one of my favorite games of all time. The levels are so long and there are so many monsters that it literally effects my psyche. The horror and apprehension just keep on mounting until I finally kill the last monsters and open up the portal out, only to begin yet another grueling stress-fest of a level. To be honest, I had to use noclip three times. Once in Sealed City because I ran out of grenades and I couldn’t reach the Quad Damage that was absolutely necessary to kill the 6 Shamblers in the “library,” another time in Map 4 (I can’t remember the name) because I could not figure out how to open the bars that blocked a mega health and a Trinity, and finally I ran out of ammo completely and had to fly through the exit of Map 4 without killing all the monsters. Although I’m disappointed that I could not beat this game without a very little bit of cheating, I still doubt I could ever play it again. Just too much stress. 5/5 work, great job ijed.
I finally beat WarpSpasm on skill3, and I must say it is one of my favorite games of all time. The levels are so long and there are so many monsters that it literally effects my psyche. The horror and apprehension just keep on mounting until I finally kill the last monsters and open up the portal out, only to begin yet another grueling stress-fest of a level. To be honest, I had to use noclip three times. Once in Sealed City because I ran out of grenades and I couldn’t reach the Quad Damage that was absolutely necessary to kill the 6 Shamblers in the “library,” another time in Map 4 (I can’t remember the name) because I could not figure out how to open the bars that blocked a mega health and a Trinity, and finally I ran out of ammo completely and had to fly through the exit of Map 4 without killing all the monsters. Although I’m disappointed that I could not beat this game without a very little bit of cheating, I still doubt I could ever play it again. Just too much stress. 5/5 work, great job ijed.
I guess everyone it’s own, what you call “so many monsters” to me appeared just as a long walk. Horror quickly vanished replaced by boredom. I agree with the “apprehension,” but only for the lack of ammo.
Try “Dry Sorrow” or “Masque of Red Death” to see what I think is “so many monsters.”
There’s a common phenomenon with game modding where the community takes an interpretation of the creators’ intent - thematics, gameplay, anything or everything - and sculpts a greater exaggeration of it, far beyond the scope of the original. It’s not really possible to describe such efforts as “original” because their purpose is to capture and enhance the “feel” of the game, but they can’t be called totally derivative either since they’re not concerned with refinement or expansion as much as transformation and reimagining.
Quake has several possible examples of this and some are more effective than others. Quoth is probably one of the best, but Quoth’s just content; it’s not itself something you can play. A better attempt than any other mapset I’ve played, Warpspasm takes Quoth’s “world”, the “Quake beyond Quake” so to speak, and actually implements it.
No small part of this is due to the background story and use of ambient sounds and music - such things are worth far more for getting the player invested than the sum of the effort that goes into implementing them, and I’m surprised to see them so rare among Quake mappers. Maybe the lack of such things in the id1 resources leads people to generally not bother, or perhaps early attempts to tell stories by turning Quake into a cutscene-led, statically-mapped game such as Zerstörer and Nehahra poisoned the well. But better yet is how the world is expressed through the attitude of the maps themselves: There’s lot of criticism of the maps for being too big and too samey; however, I would argue that’s the point. They’re not maps, not places, but entire hostile, oppressive dimensions, with nothing but death for an interloper. The player has no idea where they’re going or when or how any of this is going to end, but can only keep spiralling deeper into their mad crusade. Reality breaks down and intersects with the elder world until all that’s left is abstract chaos and one lunatic tearing through it with a rocket launcher… and then the final map ends and there isn’t any conclusion whatsoever. Besides the total lack of an ending, is there anything more Quakey in theme than what I’ve just described?
I played this a few years ago and gave a pretty harsh review on it. I never finished it due to its fatal flaws. So, in the interest of giving things a second chance and because it’s raining like waterfalls today, I gave it another shot. Sad to say, it was even worse the second time. I gave up on the very first map, lol. Why, you ask??
Well, aside from the numerous issues myself and others have called out here already, I remembered the single, worst thing about this pack. It is impossible (or made such that you’d spend hours knocking on walls looking for how to get somewhere, fun!) to play without noclip. I got the silver key card but the gold was never to be found. So, I noclipped and scoured every possible inch the player could reach without fly or noclip. Gold key card is not reachable.
I noclipped into the Gold key area and there is nothing there that does anything to further the map objectives. Nothing. I did (with noclip) fly over the impassable wall behind this area and from there you can get… the gold key card. But, of course because there was no way back in, you have to noclip back and as stated, it is pointless to do so. Nothing happens there. Once I exited the map I saw a number of unkilled monsters which even noclipping I never saw. This is what I remembered from last time. Long, empty areas, pointless objectives, critical things that are unreachable without noclip.
Final thoughts. This map should be called noclip spasm as you need it everywhere. However, when you get deeper into the pack there are some really great areas architecture-wise. The pack author shows they have the talent to make good stuff but the game play is beyond terrible thus ruining the whole thing.
