AT A GLANCE:

The Gargoyle takes a dump next to the Lava Pool of Instant Death.

Another highly entertaining Quake3 level culled from the morass of FilePlanet, this map is actually kind of amusing to play once you get past the chunky, sputtering framerates, horrendous brush alignment and eye taxing choice of texturing. It's a big clumsy "box" map with enough jump pads to make me wonder just what drugs Sebastian was inhaling when he planned out the level, but in the end it's actually kind of an disarming little timekiller if you can switch your brain off.

DESCRIPTION: The author makes some reference to the map being resembling a level for Half-Life at the download page I found, but if this is what HL is like than I may not be missing the game I've been led to believe it is. Whatever.

THE MAP: It's a big box filled with this odd assortment of objects and structures that reminds me vaguely of an aquarium without any water in it. In fact, the box is so big and devoid of vision partitions that it runs like a lawnmower engine that has been clogged up with rubber cement. The game jerks and chunks around depending upon which way you are facing at any particular moment, and combined with the reduced gravity environment the author imposed on us it really does feel like you are swimming at times.

There are ramps and ledges running up the side of the box that are crammed with items and a plethora of jump pads that fling you this way and that, some with no apparent target and others that fire you at the different structures and shafts inhabiting the various clumsily constructed nooks and crannies (one misses its target and leaves you hung up on the lid of this pit ... priceless). The silly "Flight" powerup is also included and I had a delightful time buzzing around in the air trying to rail my opponents and get at the items suspended in midair. We also get the BFG, and having that in the map naturally means LAVA: Sebastian created a wonderfully superfluous lava trap for us and filled it with what seems like 'instant-death' strength magma where just brushing up against the side of the pit brings fatal results even with full health. There is a toe-deep layer of fog in the middle of the map included for no other reason than to slow up your framerates, and a couple of prefab Gargoyles have also been thoughtfully added to make the map seem more menacing, I guess. And of course, hanging in the air in the middle is one of those big dumb flickering screens that flashes QUAKE III ARENA to help remind those of us whacked out on morphine what game we are currently running. I love stuff like this.

Indeed this map does suggest the term 'crotch'.

My only real complaint about the level is that Sebastian was apparently willing to allow Satan to posses his soul when he did the lighting design. The initial observation was that the map is fullbright, but sure enough the little boxes and ledges are indeed gleaming with evil red, blue and yellow horror -- my favorite bile vomit fucking neon olive green even found a home in the huge bounce pad shaft to nowhere. I guess his intention was to add little pockets of atmosphere to the map instead of learning how to do something more complicated with Radient, like make ROOMS.

GAMEPLAY: Hard to describe... it's sort of a silly low gravity free for all where it's hard to hit anything. Weapon use tended to center on the Railgun being that the map is so huge that it is hard to time the distance for a rocket shot, and forget about the grenade launcher. The reduced gravity also makes it exceedingly difficult to pick people off while they bounce around the floor like bionic bunnies and one tends to run out of ammo.