Bebop

Description
To start off this review, I'd like to borrow a phrase from the author's readme:

[quote]I wouldn't be surprised if this map gets wailed upon, since there's currently no music, bad architecture (have I said that before) and swoops with no textures.[/quote]

Hey-ho, the author is right on both counts there. I am going to wail about it, (In the nicest possible way, of course,) especially about the lack of music, bad architecture and untextured swoops. I am also going to moan about the lighting, (or lack thereof) the layout and everything in general. It's a pity the author got me as his reviewer really, although to be fair, it is a pretty bad map... ;) *Sigh,* It's times like this when I need Nozy around to try and say something nice.

So. The first problem with this map is the lighting. The console tells me there is a light-grid mismatch, which means either the -light section of the compile was never done, or it was done with the wrong BSP. The result is a monochromatic lighting scheme with no shade variance. Neat huh? :P Then there's also the textures. It's not the textures that are bad per-say, more the fact that they Z-fight, are misaligned, oversized, repetitive and placed in areas where they don't belong. Did I mention the fact that they are hugely oversized? Good, just wanted to clarify that. Oh, and the lava shader looks more like a blinking neon light than lava.

And then there's the architecture. Now, I'm all for lots of brushwork, and patches aren't always necessary to make a good map, but the author could have at least made an attempt to stay away from the box rooms, box corridors...and well, box everything. The only curves I found were...well I couldn't work out exactly what they [b]were.[/b] ;) So, there's a lot of work needing to be done here. I'd also have appreciated bot support, and perhaps a working levelshot, but I didn't get those either. Ah yes, and the layout. Well, there's lots of dead-ends, water pools on the ceiling, (there must be weird gravity in this map's dimension) and a general lack of flow. There are also some custom vehicles included from different authors, but I didn't find them, and I didn't really want to play the map any longer than I had to, so I'll leave that to anyone who decided they do want to try this.

I apologise if that all sounded a bit...condescending and harsh, but honestly, there's not a great deal of positives to be found in this map. The only remotely interesting section was the underwater rooms where there's a few broken pillars and stuff. The beginnings of detail! Hey, if the author concentrates on adding more of the stuff, I'd be a much happier chap. :D

New Sounds: No
New Textures: Yes
Bot Support: No

~Szico VII~