The Villa of Pain

A short and sweet classic level. Some interesting architecture in some areas. The warehouse type area with the boxes and wooden structures is my favorite fight in the level; feels great to run around blasting everything in there with rockets and plasma. I guess my only point of critique would be that the area is inexplicably bright despite having no visible sources of light, using a couple flat textures with some lights and a couple of torches would be a nice improvement. 

Overall, a fun classic map. 

Villa of Pain, designed in 1996, is a medium sized map with a rather cozy and cute design. As the name suggests, it's a sort of villa in a setting without much detail, but the villa interiors are incredibly well structured (for 1996) and the layout of the map flows sweetly as if it were a simple Dungeons & Dragons dungeon. The use of textures, despite being super simple, is cohesive and non-intrusive, creating a fairly clean look that vanilla (and brown) lovers will find very positive. The map design is quite varied; despite not being gigantic it has multiple rooms and different areas that give it a refreshing feel without feeling too extroverted; hence why I compare it to a dungeon. Exploration is challenging, but it feels good.

And Villa of Pain, of course, has pain; this is a map that, I imagine, was solidly challenging for 1996. A huge crowd of enemies in tight areas and ambushes designed to surprise the player without crushing them unfairly. From hordes of shotgunners in columned rooms, to a fascinating box area with plenty of vertical combat and good variation. A marvel from start to finish; those little vanilla flavored gems that get lost in time, but from time to time are found for new appreciation.

Sure, it's a 3/5 for modern standards, but hell, it's a solid 4 for the 90s.

Cool lighting and simple gameplay. The secrets are too grateful. It's not so memorable like hoover dam.