Amazingly enough, I have actually exchanged emails with one of them since writing my review of "Piranha Pool", and he was stunned that anyone had actually played it let alone emailed them requesting MORE of their work (there is indeed another map by them if I can track it down ... sometimes I love this job). I was actually aware of this level before finding "Piranha" -- the water theme title of "Flood" hooking me like a big fat Q2 map hungry bluegill one day at cdrom.com -- but passed it over for a review initially because I found it to be too plain, boring and dull-witted. Indeed our Swedish level design wunderteam demonstrates a certain amount of comparative restraint in this effort, so it stands out less noticeably as yet another color saturated reason to quit playing Q2 ... though in the end the result is still zero.

DESCRIPTION: Their English-language map info text reads thusly:

"A Single-player only level. Your troops has flooded the halls of a strogg control-centre! It's now up to you shutting down the console, so that they can't remove the water using their pumps."

Sounds good. But after playing the map I'm not really sure I understand what they are talking about ... it certainly has nothing to do with this particular level. Maybe they were thinking of something else.

THE MAP: Well, we start out in one of their trademark bare boxes intended to be thought of as a room, pick up the machine gun stuck in the corner (the only weapon included in the map) and turn to see a pool of water that appropriately enough glows with a sick blue/green hue that suggests the odor of unwashed dishes. But the real ticker is that they have selected a "flowing water texture" that zips along faster than the Niagara River below the Falls for the "flood". In fact, if you walk up to the water segments quickly in the same direction of the "flow" your brain is subjected to a virtual sensation of spatial inertia that is totally disorienting and made me feel a little woozy. As expected, plopped in the water is a school of the phallic Quake2 interstellar space piranhas, providing players with the arbitrary "shooting fish" segment so necessary to a Daniel & Frederik map. But then oddly enough when you hop in the water there is no current/push trigger to go with the flowing water texture: maybe they were too busy looking at all that Swedish goat porn to bother figuring out how to assign the push entity to a brush ... whatever; I was disappointed. So you swim down the flooded hallway (get it?) and emerge into a room where the water is flowing in a direction perpendicular to what it was at first, causing additional dizziness, and choke for air in the completely saturated glowing Smurf shit blue horror.

Yes. I have intruded into their world and will now depart, never to return again ...

There are a few more monsters to deal with, standing around in the uninvolved manner that seems common to their design tendencies (in the info text they even make an honorable attempt to acknowledge that " ... the three Gunners on the end of the level doesen't notice you ..."; how they intentionally managed to pull that off is beyond my comprehension), and after engaging them you move through another larger flooded room with the knee deep water flowing in an entirely different direction into a room that "goes down" (re: elevator, maybe?) and finally end up in what they refer to as a control room. But sadly it consists of a box consumed by pizza vomit red glowing Hell and festooned with a small box in the middle of it that slides into the floor making the console screen explode (??) ; this yields a message informing the player that they have FINISHED the level and can now go commit suicide.

GAMEPLAY: Tedious. Unrewarding. Disinteresting. Silly.

FUN FACTOR: I'm not sure this map was supposed to be fun ... I think it was intended to be played once and deleted, and on that level it is a triumphant success. "It's sad, really" (Hank Hill voice).

THE BOTTOM LINE: I certainly didn't choose to review this map just to pick on our two young friends (well, maybe a little :-), but the temptation to trot out another one of their studies in mutual masturbation was too much for me to resist. I kind of feel sorry for the lads because now that their work is out there and subject to the critical scorn of the discerning map enthusiast, reviews like this are almost inevitable and may haunt them for the rest of their lives. Let's hope then that these documents serve as a warning to budding mapmakers to be hesitant to release their work just because it compiles properly, and learn from Daniel & Fredrik's mistakes. Because some day it might come back to bite you in the ass ... and then you get an email from me asking if you have any other levels I can try.

Now you know what I'll be doing with them.

- Squonkamatic for the People!!