Pepperland: Psychedelia

Description
This map, by [SBF]Dann_Boeing, is a remake of his earlier map of the same name, set in a land of whimsy in which many songs of the 60s would claim setting to. I'm sure the dozens of reference to illegal drug use and abuse are purely coincidental (Note: Sarcasm aside, psychedelic drugs are especially dangerous. There's no way to say it without sounding trite, but [i]don't use them[/i].).

It is going to be what you've come to expect from Dann_Boeing, be that to your liking or not. Gameplay-wise, it doesn't feel any different from his other maps - there are the rocket launchers that shoot a lot of rockets, the guns that shoot a lot of bullets, et cetera, et cetera. Most of what sets this apart are the work done to make these look visually different, so if you're going to appreciate this, you'll have to appreciate the appearances.

There is a lot done to make this map look visually different, though. A large portion of this has to do with FragMe!'s contribution to this map - nearly every new model in here was his work. Also, there is no exaggeration in saying that every color of the rainbow is repeated many times over in your field of view. So much so, that it's often difficult to tell landscape apart from unit apart from structure. The creativity level is high here, as is the detail put into textures (perhaps even to the detriment of the map in that some detail is certainly lost). My personal favorite bit of detail was the work put into some of the unit textures (those units that were caricatures of real-life persons) - some of them are especially good.

There's also a lot of variety, which is a high point (again, if this is your preferred mode of play). Each mode has something different to offer, unitwise, and they are all very creative.

This is not without obvious flaws, though. Unfortunately, somewhere in the creation of the number of weapons, enough attention was not paid to making sure they weren't set up with "awards." There is at least one unit on which the game will freeze the computer if you attempt to switch primary weapons. Additionally, every unit with a different weaponmodel has a floating HUDtag - this looks very sloppy. I wish that, even if the HUDtag issue couldn't be figured out and corrected, that at least the tags had been [i]removed[/i].

In summary, if you like the author's previous work, you'll like this. If you didn't, then you'll probably feel the same way. Give it a download if you like, and be warned that it's a large file on install (over 700 MB).

-Mav