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UPDATE V 0.8
The new version of Skull Tag doesn’t warrant a new review all of it’s own, as most that can be said has already be said in my review of Beta 2… so what do you get for your time spent downloading? Well, you get some more levels, although unfortunately it still all starts off with the terminally dull Training Centre, or whatever it’s called. You also get some proper skins… Chubbs is now actually fat, for example. There’s also more of those secret bots, in the mould of Massmouth and Doomcrate, including John Romero’s head on a stick. Interesting, to say the least. You also get (in V 0.81) CS support, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test that, so if you have any opinions on this part of the mod, send them to icarus@doomworld.com . There’s a “skirmish” menu, where you can play normal deathmatch levels, Gothic DM et al, with Skull Taggy options, which is kind of fun, but not really essential. In the end though, the same flaws prevail. The first being it gets dull after a while – a very simple solution to this would be reduce the frag limits, but that’s up to the coders. It’s still fun once you get past the first level, and it still gets five stars. Well done, Team Skull Tag. After causing me to have a minor breakdown last week due to all the bot crashing, I’d given up on seeing a proper version of Skull Tag for quite some time. My mistake. The new version of Skull Tag, Doom’s answer to Quake 3: Arena was released a couple of days ago, and boy, was it worth the wait. All is forgiven, as the bugs have been ruthlessly torn out and what you’re left with is a damn fantastic deathmatch modification. As most of you know, I generally deathmatch against bots anyway (my friends having all moved onto Half-Life and Quake 3), specifically the Zcajun, on which Skull Tag is based, so my initial reaction was: why? How can they make it worthwhile? The answer is simple. What Carnevil and the rest of the Skull Tag crew have done is created their own game – this is not your mamma’s deathmatch. It’s much easier to get involved in a match if you know there’s some sort of purpose to it beyond just blasting away, and that’s what we’ve got here. Matches are limited to a number of frags, which count down as they’re scored, and you have to get the most number of frags to progress to the next level… which means I got stuck on the second level for quite some time (Orion is a real bitch). The new weapons are cool, but not essential. First off, you’ve got a rail gun. The graphic itself is cool, and reminds me off the Ghostbusters proton-pack thingies. This weapon is cool for impaling several people in a row to make a sort of human kebab. The problem is, this doesn’t happen very often, as most of the bots are super fast. The reload motion is also cool (take that, Edge), but doesn’t play too well in game, as you tend to get fragged whilst reloading. The grenade launcher is another of those cool but not practical weapons, and is a clone of the Quake grenade launcher, and also similar to the one from the Action Doom mod. The levels start off disappointingly with the buggy and kind of plain Training centre. Once you get past here, though, there’s a steep learning curve: Judgement Day (in which you face off against son-of-a-bitch Orion) is a Quake 3-esque arena, based around a marble colour scheme. Tricks have been used to get you thinking it’s true 3d, and it’s a vast improvement over the first. Then comes along Some Secret Level, which is an absolutely gorgeous piece of latter day Doom design work, with a few Gothic influences. All of the levels play really well. Other features in game worth mentioning are… Bots talking: It’s funny, but do we need so many jokes about Crash? Write some new lines, guys. Medals that are awarded to you when you perform spectacular feats: Cool, gives the ego a bit of a boost. In game skins: Very cool, even if the too included are very silly. All characters should have their own skin. In short, this is a very cool piece of hacking and wad making. I can’t wait for the full version, which’ll hopefully have many more skins and levels. Hmm… I wonder what Crash is doing tonight… |
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