A truly awe-inspiring, monumental pack. Calling them endurance maps was certainly fitting - my shoulders even got sore a few times!
One of my favourite things in this work was the backstory. It was really engrossing, and put the whole experience in a new light, the mere implication of you playing as a depraved lunatic, relishing in the slaughter, not that much better than the demons and Iron Hand cultists you murder by the hundreds.
What’s great, though, is that the story wasn’t entirely limited to the readme, without resorting to cutscenes akin to the Zerstorer. The first map has implications that you could understand even without reading the prologue, and really, isn’t the way most people play Quake quite in-character? The start map was brutal in appearance as well, introducing you to the thematic of flesh invading “normal” landscapes. (That nightmare hallway was sneaky, by the way!)
I played on Hard, and the difficulty was respectable, but far from overwhelming. Both the first and starting stage left a good impression. However, the Bile Plant almost crushed me. Meeting packs of defenders and fiends around every corner, always encountering constantly renewed groups of foes while walking about the maze… It felt unfair, and I started to fear that those criticizing comments above were correct after all. Opening a door to be met by a line-up of fiends or shamblers packed up tightly certainly doesn’t leave a good impression.
The environment looked repetitive, even if I did like the aesthetic at first, it still felt like it was missing something - contrast, perhaps. Nevertheless, I stuck through, and then came across the main element, that, IMO, really brought the subsequent maps to a really unique and amazing level. The pieces of flesh stuck along the wall in the pit of that first Gug, their red contours clashing wildly against all the browns. Then, an open arena - tiles atop a massive block of compressed meat.
The time came in at about 50 minutes, and all the other maps took around the same amount of time as well. Thus, came the Sealed City, and oh boy, it completely changed my opinion, and really uplifted my mood. Instead of reminding me of Doom’s slaughtermaps, it was instead a steady flow of challenging, yet fair encounters, all in interesting and incredibly detailed areas.
The Sealed City was the best, but the next map, Nightmare Tangent, for me felt just as good, followed by a short but sweet action-packed finale. All unlike the Bile Plant, I rarely got lost, and only for a short while, never emptied my reserves of rockets or cells, and enjoyed every single encounter, despite their relentless, constant nature.
All the while, it was coated by a hostile atmosphere which I haven’t yet met anywhere else, granted I didn’t experience many works so far. I couldn’t call it dreadful, like in Zerstorer - combat was too common for that, but I could certainly call it… Wrong. And I think I can thank the flesh for that. It was everywhere. You were seeing it, walking upon it, jumping into it, drowning in it, it’s tendons supporting almost every piece of architecture; even the console and the readme were covered in gore. It was so beautifully blasphemous - endlessly hammering in the fact that you were somewhere wrong. Not just a castle, but an aggressive, alien dimension, vying for violence and blood. Further enhanced by the impossible landscape of Nightmare Tangent and beyond. And yet, for Sacren, it all must have felt just how it should be.
The nitpicks are obvious by now - the Bile Plant really felt like a bit of a chore, even if it wasn’t that brutal if you trod carefully and took your time. I also disliked the use of the Spawns, even in excellent maps such as the Sealed City, but that’s my personal dislike of the enemy type speaking.
My major complaint was the lack of an ending, though I did enjoy having so much left up to interpretation. After the journey, all the bloodshed, it ends as a regular Quake map would, with you unceremoniously booted back to the start. What happened to him? Did he perish, ailed by the killswitch? Or maybe he ‘ascended’, as planned. And what exactly was that device capable of doing - why was it so important? All interesting threads, left loose, hanging, leaving me both disappointed due to the lack of answer and glad for the presence of absence.
I definitely won’t be forgetting these maps any time soon.
