Friendly Pressure
2 - 4 players | Reviewed by GrindSpire - Sunday 15 October 2000 @ 03:33
Seth is yet another new Quake mapper, they seem to be popping up everywhere at the moment, but this is actually his fourth released map (he did two for Quake II) and he is certainly getting the hang of it.
The layout is based around two main, three-storey atriums and another smaller room located on the upper floor between them. A network of corridors as well as a cycle of three teleporters link these three rooms. Each teleporter takes you to the next teleporter on in the cycle. The teleporter in the atrium containing the green armour deserves a special mention. If you walk into it normally then it just takes you on to the next position in the teleporter cycle. However, if you jump into it, it places you on the second floor of the same atrium, facing down a corridor that leads to the ground floor of the other atrium and next to one of the rocket launchers. The corridors are well done, all of them block vis in some way or other, either by being L or S shaped or by sloping downwards. Despite this they look well done with curved roofs and don’t look slapped together as some corridors can. The architecture nicely mixes curved and straight edges and there are some especially nice curves on the bases of the stairs running from the first to second floors in each atrium.
The items are well laid out with all the main weapons present, as with all good maps the grenade launcher is placed on an upper level so that it can be used well. There are also two rocket launchers to add to the chaos. The second rocket launcher is placed on the top floor on one of the atriums, which is a position that I like as it allows you to grab the rocket launcher then jump down onto your opponent. All of the more powerful weapons are placed in the main atriums with the less powerful weapons located in the out lying corridors. This placement of weapons further adds to the carnage. The armour is placed in increasingly out of the way places as the strength increases. So the green armour is placed in the open in one of the atriums, the yellow armour is set in an alcove in the other atrium and the red armour is set away in the smaller room. There is also a mega health in one of the corridors for a quick boost as you try to escape from an opponent. Ammo is well placed with a good balance between forcing you to sometimes use different weapons and making you change weapons every ten seconds. Health on the other hand is a little scarce although this does make the games play faster , it all dep
ends what style of play you prefer.
Seth has included two different versions of this map, one uses the blue - grey stone and skulls of Headshot’s Bless To Kill and the other uses the sandy Egyptian textures from Escher’s Ultraviolence. Each of the texture sets is used well but I prefer the Ultraviolence texture set as it seems to work better. Unfortunately Seth had difficulties making the different maps work together, meaning that they are not compatible as in De Venator and Mr. Fribbles’ Powder Keg. This means if you are playing online you are likely to play the first version, which uses the Bless To Kill textures, it is a shame that Seth couldn’t make the two different versions work together as I would have liked to have used the Egyptian textured version online.
The lighting in the map is reasonable, it doesn’t flood areas with light and has some darker areas, but it doesn’t really stand out as amazing. It’s a shame, as with better lighting this map would have looked really good, but it isn’t a huge problem and doesn’t affect the gameplay in anyway.
Overall a very nice map that plays well in 1 on 1 or 3 or 4 player FFAs, go up to 5 players though and it just gets far to crowded and spawn frags become all too common. It’s just a shame that the maps aren’t compatible.
4.0 out of 5.0
Download 532Kb | readme | Seth | http://quake.barrysworld.com/seth/
