AT A GLANCE: I found this map on an active Quake 2 net server run by the "LagClan", a group of quite competent players, most of whom use the same Gumby skin and frequent one of my favorite DM servers. One afternoon a member of the clan joined and invited us all to come onto their server and check out one of his buddy's map, which turned out to be almost as Cranky as this one. I bookmarked their server and looked in on them from time to time, and am pleased to report that they seem committed to running custom made levels, a different map every day that runs over and over again. The funny part is that ALL of the maps I have gotten from them so far are about on the same level as "Ninja3" -- a huge, dopey, offhandedly constructed "arena" level with some sort of gimmick or novelty idea distinguishing each map. In one level the gimmick is a row of every Q2 weapon lined up by each of the spawn points. In another it was a dizzying mass of overlapping catwalks, dynamic colored lighting and a sheer vertical drop. Here it is a sea of radioactive flesh eating nukeslime inside a huge, sky-less box, and by golly, it kind of works in a demented, drug-induced way.

DESCRIPTION: Since I downloaded the .bsp file from the LagClan's server, it didn't come with any text documentation, and repeated queries during the game that ran along the lines of "WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GUYS FIND THIS THING??' went unanswered by the members that were connected. A visit to their website yielded nothing but a Flash animation completely devoid of any information about them or the maps that they run (which is actually kind of intriguing considering the moronic bullshit that usually gluts a Quake clan website), and the requisite forays into FilePlanet and cdrom.com's map databases was equally fruitless. The chances are pretty good that the map was made by one of the clan members, and the question instead becomes not who made the map, but why.

THE MAP: Imagine a huuuuuuge box with an innocuous mossy stone textured wall and an immense sea of nuclear slime stretched over the floor. Now imagine a batch of brownie-sized blocks of matter hovering over the slime in such a way that one can carefully leap from block to block for no good reason. Now imagine that in the middle of the sea of slime there is a perfectly rectangular patch of dry ground, in the middle of which is a teleporter that leads to a glaringly bright room with crushing walls. Now picture a patch on the wall that if shot by a player before they are crushed to pulp opens a door that leads to a room that is a deep, narrow shaft which pitches one down for about a mile if they miss the ledge. On the other side of the pit is a strangely constructed "room" with a lone Railgun and lava at its edges that slopes downward to an empty gutter, again glaringly fullbright and textured with the same innocuous graphic. A sniper nest with one machine gun and no ammo looms in one end of the room. In the middle is plunked a mega-health, and there is no way to get back up to the top. If you can envision those few things you have essentially reconstructed the level in your mind's eye, and actually looking at the map would be superfluous.

This player kindly demonstrates the usual fate of anyone brave/stupid enough to try "Ninja3".

Since the only weapons in the map are the Railgun and machinegun, and the only way to get to them is to run a gauntlet of death that more often then not results in your extermination, one is essentially playing the game with nothing but a blaster and arbitrarily dying over and over again. Blaster kills are perhaps the most humiliating and gut wrenching experience that I can think of; they far outweigh being beaten by a Q1 ax or even the "pummeling" of the Q3 gauntlet as an experience in humiliation. I suspect that my opinion of this map would not be so negative if only the author had included a couple of weapons resting on the brownie sized slabs of matter suspended over the sea of slime, which also would have given one a reason with bothering to navigate their purposelessness. Add to that the frustration of constantly teleporting inside of other players down in the crushing chamber (at one point there were about four of us packed into one entity space) and what we have here is basically an unplayable exercise in futility and frustration. But as a shared experience amongst nine or so players who usually frequent the same game server and are somewhat familiar with each other, it was kind of amusing, although I wondered if the other players were truly aware of just what a monstrosity this level is -- some people just like to play Quake and don't care what map they end up in.

GAMEPLAY: Pretty tedious, ranging from the traditional anal probing fun of the jumping puzzle (one of my all-time favorite indications of a shitty map) to the novelty of being smashed in a room that is brighter than the inside of an exploding sun. Bots certainly will be clueless as to what to do with this map, so its pretty much useless unless its running on an active, populated server. And as luck may have it, that was where I found it.

FUN FACTOR: It was fun to experience the map with the other players and watch them plop into the slime and dissolve like Alka-Seltzer tablets, though I myself really didn't enjoy being fried like a potato chip or squashed like a packet of ketchup over and over again.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The LagClan server can be found at quake2.lagclan.com (or 63.85.86.12:27910) and I can pretty much assure you that if this map isn't running, one of their other masterpieces will no doubt be awaiting you; they are all quick downloads and worth it if you like a good laugh while you play your Quake. And while I don't have the authority to even proclaim it an unofficial "Cranky Steve Server", I do hereby dub it as a Cranky Steve Approved server, earning the Haunted Whorehouse Seal of Approval for Applied Awfulness if only for casting caution to the wind and running this God-awful map, which you must admit takes a lot of guts. I'll see you there.

ADDENDUM: This review was originally written for a .bsp file titled "ninja2", but last night I downloaded a map named "ninja3" from the server and it was identical except for an additional spawn point. So this may in fact be a "work in progress". How very sad and disturbing!

- Squonkamatic for the People!!