AT A GLANCE: When making an indoor map, it’s only logical to start with a cube. At the very least, you need a skybox around the entire map, so you might as well start out by making a big cube and then hollowing it out. But for a certain mapper named Christoph "AEon" Loewe, the first step is the only step! After all, strange foreign things like ‘the second step’ and ‘the third step’ can easily be emulated by repeating the first step over and over. No one will ever know the difference! People like AEon are responsible for monstrosities like “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Part 12” and “Deer Hunter 8 Extreme Turbo Hyper-Fighting Champion Edition”, and should therefore not be allowed to reproduce under any circumstances.

DESCRIPTION: Cube with Alien Skies, Xen ambience pools, stairs in the 4 towers provide great in fights, Glass, Natural & Lamp lighting, very connective layout, should provide interesting game flow, you have to work to get at powerful weapons and their ammunition. Intended for 4-16 players, around 8 rockz!

I regret to inform you of this, but most of the description is a total lie. The stairs in the 4 towers don’t provide great in fights (whatever that means), and even with eight people the map does not rockz. In fact, if you ever got more than 4 people to play the map at once, the collective scream of horror would be enough to destroy homes and uproot trees within a 20-mile radius.

But for some reason he didn’t put the description in the map text file and the rest of the information in a separate text file. Instead he decided that people really needed to read the complete history of his map and what he ate for lunch on the day he thought of the idea for the map, all while in-game waiting to play. He gives ‘thanx’ to his map testers ([F\N\S], ^AP^, and [M]), informs you that the map supports deathmatch play with “Yes (like wow 8-), 8 DM starts”, and lists the exact number of seconds each stage of the map compilation took. A lot of authors include map history and compile information with their maps, but in this case it’s included in the actual text file that shows up in-game, the map is horrible enough that you never ever want to learn more about it, and it’s about as well-written as the information on the back of a Frosted Flakes box.

THE MAP: Well, I may not be a big fan of Mr. Loewe’s map, but I will give him this – he sure knows how to spot the difference between cubes and other shapes that are not cubes! That would be why AECube consists almost entirely of little cube-shaped rooms linked together. Of course, for variety, he threw in some really annoying brightly-colored posts, a couple of little areas where you can go to get weapons, and a highly advanced elevation device known as “stairs.” There are also stupid little xen structures outside the window which will make the map look really cool to anyone who has never played Half-Life or touched a computer before.

Even cooler.

And in running around the main part of the map, the only weapons you will find (unless you are more observant than me, which I do not believe to be very likely) are the shotgun and .357 magnum. Perhaps there are more powerful weapons hidden away, as the text file promises, or perhaps there are gluon guns embedded in the ceiling or something. Either way, you will rejoice in the fact that even though you’re playing a shitty map, you’re playing a neat and tidy shitty map with minimal clutter on the floor. That would be along the same lines as “Wow, I’m in prison on manslaughter charges and my entire family exploded yesterday for no apparent reason, but at least I found a nickel next to my cellmate’s rotting corpse on the corner of the bunk!” And if you’re that optimistic, you probably won’t notice how bad the map is, so you might as well play it.

GAMEPLAY: The ‘interesting game flow’ here seems to be ‘running around different cube-shaped rooms shooting the same three weapons at each other and praying for a head injury to erase all memory of this map’s existence from your tortured mind’. I suppose you could occasionally take a break and hunt for some powerful weapons, whatever those may be. I’m sure as hell not going to load the map up again to find out.