If
this is what the dungeons of Stroggos are
like, I'll elect to wait in my cell quietly
until they come and process my internal organs
or whatever the fuck they are supposed to
do with their human captives. Such a death
would be far less painful.
THE
MAP: You start off in a narrow little
shaft with pulsating light and are more or
less forced to fight your way past three baddies
with only your blaster. Eventually you fall
though what appears to be a laundry chute
into a large dark room populated by these
odd conglomeration of brushes that are lit
to resemble what I can only describe as "failed
jack-o'-lanterns." A couple of stray
items have been dropped here and there seemingly
when the author sneezed and involuntarily
clicked his mouse button. And yes, in the
true keeping of Game Level Design Idiocy Theory
(that the author apparently teaches at ReachAround
University in West Bumfuck, GA), the entire
1999 graduating class from Crackwhore High
is waiting to shoot enough rockets at you
to protect the mainland US from missile attack
until you manage to scramble down one of the
holes underneath the jack-o'-lanterns that
leads to...
 |
|
Here we
see the tricky, insightful maneuvering
of the map editor to produce a world
that is entirely slanted at an angle
of -9 degrees to the vertical.
|
The
next levels! And yes, they are as gloriously
inept as the initial map! My favorite is the
one that has apparently been modeled after
those old Batman episodes where
the world is tilted/slanted to enhance the
despicable nature of Ceasar Romero's Joker
or whomever. Either through accident or design,
the author has twisted the frame of his map
so that the entire level slants at what I
calculated to be an angle of about -9 degrees
to the vertical axis. How he did this deliberately
and intentionally defies my comprehension,
although I can see how it would happen if
he selected the outside shell of the map and
tried to slant it and by accident selected
all of the map's horizontal vertices. The
point being that there are no right angles
in the entire map, and given the tiny little
halfassed "hallways", incompetent
brush alignment, and mind-numbingly offensive
choice of texture graphics, it only takes
about 6 - 8 seconds of exposure to result
in sea sickness.
This
is also one of the most horrendously lit maps
I can remember. No thought to designing lighting
effects was given; the author merely plugged
them into the map editor here and there to
seemingly show off how lousy he was at aligning
brushes (or his complete absence of taste
when selecting textures to adorn his crooked
brushes). To top all of this off, I could
not how to figure out how to exit the two
additional maps and get back to the first
to "finish" the unit (assuming that
would be the point). I tried three times and
the result was the same: one runs out of things
to kill and then you sort of wander around
until the power to your computer is unexpectedly
interrupted. What fun!
GAMEPLAY:
Ridiculous. Without cheat codes the maps are
unplayable and the ineptness of the execution
overwhelms whatever charm of the Quake
2 game is left.
FUN
FACTOR: I had more fun cleaning the Halloween
party vomit crusts off of my toilet last weekend.
THE
BOTTOM LINE: Forget it - this one is a
turkey. Not even ratable on the "so bad
its hilarious" scale. A genuine waste
of binary space that should be eradicated
before it spreads any further.
-
Squonkamatic
for the People!!
