This kid's family must all have about an eight inch waistline if this map is based off his house.

Textures provided by drunk ventilation shaft installers.

This map is supposed to be based off of somebody's house? Who are we to blame here then, the architect or the mapmaker? Or the man who sold both of them enough crack to fill a wheelbarrow?

DESCRIPTION: Rarely have I stumbled upon such endearing text files. This one read like a book. Well, to be more exact, it looked like a book, because both have letters and sentences and such. I guess the similarity ended there. The map description was wonderful though, and had me hooked the first time I saw it on Fileplanet:

"Like Grenade launchers? Like dark places? Like machine guns? Like strobe lights? You'll probably like this map."

When I was looking for maps, I was saying to myself, "Self, I would like to find a good map. But where on EARTH can I find a map that has approximately 15 thousand grenade launchers, areas with no lighting and other areas with too many colored lights?" I couldn't find a single map. But then I found this gem and all my prayers were answered. Well, not the one about Courtney Cox, but where the hell would I find a vat of Jello at this time of night?

Anyway, the file goes on to spew such garbage as "Okay, lets see, so much to say. First off, this is based ROUGHLY on my house, but I took out 4 of the bathrooms, 2 rooms from upstairs, the breakfast room, I changed the guest bathroom into an exit, and I also took out the garage." Four bathrooms? What the fuck is wrong with this kid's family, do they eat chili for every meal or something? The kicker is, as far as I can tell, this map still contains about five bathrooms, so this little pervert's house must be a tribute to shit or something. Which I think would sum up this map nicely, "A Tribute to Shit".

"Unless I receive a LOT of mail, and my map is played on a LOT of servers, you can forget me updating this map. (That's my little plea for attention)." Serial killers often murder people for attention. I heard many of them mapped Duke Nukem maps as kids. I guess it's no big loss if he doesn't update this map though, as he'd just end up adding a few hundred more bathrooms with neon lighting inside.

But, as much as this may shock and amaze you, this map is not without its flaws. The author freely admits "The outside was so freaking dark, that whenever I fought with the bots outside, I'd often get telefreagged when I got cornered (the spawn spots outside are in the corners). So, I made the ones outside float 3 feet off the ground, so you can't accidentally step on them." You got that, all you aspiring mapmakers out there? If an area is too dark and you can't see anything, you should just make the spawn points float a few feet off the ground. That solves all the problems easily and makes the map much more enjoyable. I know it worked in my case, as when I was deathmatching out in the black hole outside, I was repeatedly saying to myself, "Thank God the teleporters are floating off the ground. Now if I could only see them so I could figure out if I'm running face first until a wall, a teleporter, or another player."

At the end of the file, the author concludes with "Enjoy the level, and mail me your opinion. (PLEASE!)", so I would encourage you to do so. His email address is deli815@ponyexpress.net, and I'm sure he'd be touched if you send him a quick letter explaining how his map ranks up there with siphoning raw sewage through a firehose.

THE MAP: Well... it's supposed to be a fort of some sort. Or maybe it's supposed to be a house. It's a fort, it's a house, it's a fort, it's a house... the mystery will rage on eternally inside my head, at least until I grab another six-pack to silence all the voices.

Anyway, many of the rooms in this map seem to have been built for the cast of "Time Bandits". Ceilings about four feet high, hallways Kate Moss would have trouble wedging herself through, staircases with steps two inches above the previous, this map is more like Barbie's Dream House than a Quake 2 map. I don't think I need to mention the terrible lighting, as it's plainly obvious from the screenshots. To escape the pastel pain resident inside the house / fort / other, you can run outside of it and hang out in the black hole, the author clearly had the players in mind when he designed this thing.

Weapon placement is excellent, with 90% of the weapons residing in 2% of the space. If you go on the top floor and move eight centimeters in any direction, you'll end up grabbing about 28 grenade launchers. You know, 'cause it's the Grenade Fort and everything. There could be weapons outside, I wasn't able to see any though. Maybe they were behind the floating spawn points.

GAMEPLAY: As bad as the map is, I have to admit it's not horrible for one-on-one battles. Sure, there's no ammo (just weapons), no health, no armor, and no point to playing, but it wasn't as bad as I originally had thought it would be. It's good for a laugh, I guess. Just warn your eyesight before you travel from the blackness outside the fort to the interior, where you will assuredly hear your retinas plea for help and scream racial slurs at you.

FUN FACTOR: OK to play on, for under a minute or less. Terrible to live in, if this was indeed based off a real house.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Give it a shot. Download it to torture a friend.

- Cranky Steve

Individual ratings go from 0 (bearable) to -10 (painfully terrible). Total score goes from 0 (ok) to -50 (the worst piece of shit you'll ever play).