The DWmegawad Club plays: Icarus: Alien Vanguard

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP02 Shuttle Bay

Hitscanners and silver.

weird progression too, those doors. also having to press the "RED ALERT" terminal & then shooting the wall behind it just to get back. no fun.

[SoundofDoomDoors]

MAP02 has lots of hitscanners, but unlike the last level, it gives plenty of health to compensate for it. I actually had fun on this level, unlike 01 where I was constantly getting ready to reload my game (and curse at the map maker) if RNG decided to kill me off via hitscan bullets. It just never happened. The level is pretty silver-looking, though. I've heard this is a running theme. As long as the gameplay stays fun to compensate, I'll be okay with a little visual blandness.

As I mentioned yesterday, I took a demo of my playthrough of this level. It's not an FDA; I've played maps 1 through 7 before. This is my second attempt. I exited on both. http://www.mediafire.com/download/cj2mcrgj9ahvaaq/Icarus_map02.lmp

98% Kills 50% Secrets

[purist]

2

Silver walls, space sky and hitscanners everywhere. Without having played before this map is pretty representative of my expectations of I:AV. This level is a little dull without being offensive.

Combat is almost always head on and plays out the same way every time but as the monsters used are nearly always zombies, sarges and imps they at least end quickly and the level contains more health and armour than you need to prevent the health deprivation corner crawling from the previous map reoccurring. A simple improvement would have been the inclusion of a chaingun for pistol starters to rip through the zombies with. I never found any secrets so maybe there is one.

Textures are rarely broken up so I felt a bit over saturated with SHAWN walls and it does not help that rooms are most comprising of rectangles of various sizes leaving no real architectural landmarks and certainly none of the nice gimmicky features that added points to MAP01's scorecard, the only possible exception being the view out the ship windows showing another part of the ship.

The layout isn't all that bad. The amount of doors in each room was a little intimidating to keep track of at first but I quickly learnt that I will most offenly end up in the intended place whichever door I took as everything links together quite well. Despite the inclusion of lifts and stairs the level did feel flat as rooms at different vertical planes don't really connect together by any other method such as walkways, open straicases or windows and there isn't much combat from different heights other than the yellow key room.

Mapflow is quite odd. I didn't get seriously lost but on more than one occasion I just sort of went with the flow without knowing what I needed to do to progress I found both the blue and red keys without knowing where the locked doors where and I wasn't sure what I did that made the red key accessible. Overall this for me was a step backward from MAP01 both in terms of challenge and design complexity but it was by no means a chore to play.

[Jaws In Space]

Is Icarus supposed to have custom story texts?

[Capellan]

For a release of its vintage, there'd need to be a separate DEH file for that, so it seems not.

[4shockblast]

Map 02: Kills: 92%, Items: 82%, Secrets: 0%, final time: 6:58 (0 deaths)

Much easier than map 1, but at the same time, there were practically no memorable parts of this map for me. Gameplay is totally inconsequential; I only found a shotgun (which didn't help), but even if there was an SSG or better here, I'd still be fighting mostly just hitscanners and imps and demons placed haphazardly throughout the map with no real focus on interesting encounters or challenge. Visuals are also pretty bland, just a bunch of gray everywhere, and none of the architecture looked that good. Very mediocre level in my opinion, but at least the music was pretty nice.

FDA here.

[7hm]

Slot: 2
Map: Shuttle Bay
Author: John Minadeo

Booooring. Gameplay was piss easy shotgunning of imps and minor hitscanners. The level itself had you running around empty areas more than you ought to, but at least it seemed somewhat non-linear, and it wasn't too big. This is not my jam.

And since it's the 3rd in a lot of the world right now:

Slot: 3
Map: Quarry
Author: Ty Halderman

Ty's first map of the set! Cool, I wonder how long it will end up being, we're still pretty early in the wad but...

...Oh, what's that?

...It's already over? Really? Damn.

The combat in here was similar to map 2, but I preferred the environment, so it had that at least. This seems like it was a map stub, something that could and should be fleshed out as an intro to an actual map. The hallway was a cool setup at least.

Maps 2 and 3 were both significantly easier than Map 1.

[Jaws In Space]

Icarus Map 03 - HMP, Continuous

Here we have our first map from the main man behind Team TNT & all of their wads, Ty Halderman. As far as leading project's I truly do have to hand it to Ty, he did quite an amazing job, anyone who has played Maximum Doom or any number of early maps knows what the quality of most maps were like in 1994 & 1995, but somehow Ty managed to pull together a team of pretty talented mappers & produced some quality Wads that really do stand out quite highly compared to their contemporary's. That being said I feel that Ty was one of the weaker links in the mapping department Wormhole while a really great concept & executed very well is a fairly unenjoyable map otherwise & Shipping/Respawning has it's cute moments, such as the TNT truck, the huge Doom furniture, & crazy computer room, is mostly comprised of a rather bland crate warehouse. This map is weirdly unlike something that I would expect from Ty, as it doesn't have any defining characteristics or set pieces that I would expect from him, except maybe the windmills. Gameplay is very easy, even if you release the monsters from their cages before killing them. The map gives off the impression of being unfinished as I couldn't believe how quickly that it ended. Overall this is the worst Ty Halderman map that I've played, it's basic, has boring gameplay, & doesn't have any of the unique elements that were prevalent in his Evilution maps, the only likable thing in this map is the windmills.

[Capellan]

Map03
Sorry to say that Ty's first level does not impress. It's a very boxy, very flat, very short little thing, with monsters mostly dropped in front of you or straggling about down narrow passageways you can easily dominate. It's also ridiculously loaded with goodies: a blue armour in the circumstances is enormous overkill.

The "hallway of doors" is a rather tedious but thankfully optional excursion. Probably the biggest fault of the map is the complete lack of content once you've got the red key. You can just wander up into the grassy area, shoot a couple of chaingunners, and the map is over before it even really feels like it has begun.

[Demon of the Well]

Okay, Icarus. I haven't played this one in quite a while either, but I feel like I know it fairly well, certainly better than I knew STRAIN last month. Naturally it's most often compared to Evilution; I think if you asked me to pick the better of the two I'd probably waffle around for a bit and then ultimately settle on Evilution ('higher highs', as they say), but truth is that I've probably played Icarus more than Evilution itself. Reason for this, I suspect, is that while Evilution has more maps in it that really hit the spot for me overall, it also has much longer/larger stretches of content that I never seem to feel like playing (e.g. the majority of the third episode, always the worst place for a megaWAD to trough out IMO). Icarus, by contrast, is more smoothly paced--there are some dud maps in it, to be sure, but also a fair few that are quite cool and a fair few more that make for some enjoyable casual play, and these are much more evenly distributed throughout the course of the whole 32 map set, so even if you're in a map you don't much care for at the moment, you're probably not long away from one that should suit you better.

As always, UV, pistol-starts, few/no savegames, etc. etc.

Map 01 -- Shuttlecraft - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
I've always liked this map. In fact, I might go so far as to say that it's one of the best map 01s amongst all of the iconic mapsets of its general era. Rather than farting around with a traditional Dick and Jane diet techbase setting where we smash a handful of pitiful weaklings with weapons 1-3 before promptly fucking off to a real map, instead we're treated to a charmingly well-realized space cruiser, staffed by a hefty complement of freshly undead conscripts into Hell's army who aren't liable to allow us to simply waltz in and hijack their ride without a fight.

Leaving the unusually gruff and uncommonly violent nature of the map's combat aside for a moment, I reckon the map's most defining (and best) characteristic is the way it jumps immediately into an intuitive narrative from the very moment the game begins, and in the way that has always suited Doom (and other idtech1 games) best of all--the story is told not so much through exposition or very thematically specific new graphics/assets (although Icarus does certainly have its share of those, perhaps most notably the iconic recurring exit-room tableau), but simply by the setting itself, and what you do and see as you move through it. For being made in idtech1, the ship and all of its purpose-specific rooms are very easy to recognize/intuit at first sight and it's stuffed with nifty details and elaborate sector/trigger mechanisms that make the setting feel alive and articulate, from purely cosmetic little bits of interactivity, such as the bone drill you can turn on the pinky's corpse in the sickbay or the combination of scrolling flames/inch-cycle piston sectors to simulate fire in the engine bays, to more ambitious sleight-of-hand setups used to enliven the actual progression, ala the much-vaunted transforming chapel, or the lights-out imp assault in the cockpit area. Perhaps my favorite bit of all is simply the shift towards a starry sky visible out the windows at the end though...simple, but classy. Very classy.

Cosmetic/thematic flair aside, it is exceedingly simple from a layout/flow perspective, really not so different from the ever-ubiquitous (and ubiquitously inept) 'office' or 'school' or 'house' maps that flooded the PWAD scene in the era just prior to Icarus' own. Basically you are tasked to breach and clear a series of similarly-shaped stuffy killboxes one by one; there is little in the way of height variation, and a lot of symmetry at play (e.g. the identical engine bays), and yet I feel like the very direct slap-in-the-face close-range gunbattles that define the action suit it well. Very hitscan-heavy, as others have noted, with the only armor vest being hidden in a secret halfway through, and after the most dangerous moment to boot, that being the attempt to enter the main area from the cargo hold, where shotgunners in the engine bays are primed to broadside you from both sides. Getting shot really hurts, too, (<--no shit, DotW) since medical supplies are notably limited. I would not agree with the opinion that this is inappropriate gameplay, though--on the contrary, I find the relatively rude awakening much more refreshing than the traditionally perfunctory usual map 01 fare. And speaking of fair, I don't agree the level's unfair, either, despite the tight balance--you can't realistically play this Rambo-style and expect to succeed, true, but it's very reliably doable with limited damage (I think I was at 85% health after breaching the main shuttle on this playthrough, though granted I am again enjoying the benefit of map familiarity here) if you play defensively and swing in and out of doorways and other cover while picking off prime targets with accurate bursts. Certainly not the way I'd want every map to play, mind you, but I think it's fine in a map this concise, especially since it's broken up a bit by a couple of big imp-based encounters as well.

I also can't say I'm particularly sympathetic to complaints about obtuse progression in this case. Granted it's not quite standard Doom fare (nothing about this map is quite standard for its mapslot), but given that it's a quite small play area with a really overt 'realistic' bent to its design style that you'd be hard-pressed not to notice, I really don't think it's too much to ask of the the player to muster the limited presence of mind necessary to start fiddling around with all of the many techy-looking bits and bobs in the environment after no obvious switch/key presents itself at a given point in the progression. I am a bit surprised to read all of the anecdotes about the mysterious empty imp cage in the sickbay, though...every time I've gone down there there's always been an imp present in the cage, and a slew of replacements who teleport in after him in order to get you to shoot that impact point. Maybe a port-related thing?

Anyway, quite cool. I wish more map 01s were like this.

Map 02 -- Shuttle Bay - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
In this case, by contrast, I pretty much agree with the general consensus: this is a rather poor map. I don't actually mind the heavily shawn/silver/chrome-based theme that defines many of the 'ship interior' levels--often the levels have very obvious thematic/depictive concepts at work that clearly distinguish them from one another despite the similarly anonymous texture schemes--but this is perhaps the weakest and least visually articulate of the bunch, with its plague-of-doors layout that will often lead you smack into totally bare/blank silver surfaces that are actually lifts. On that point, the doors in this map bug the shit out of me with their arbitrary actuation cycles--some are primed to snap open on a repeatable motion trigger mechanism as you approach, Star Trek style, while others operate as standard usepress-activated doors, and still others operate inconsistently from different sides. As a result, I found myself wandering about and regularly smashing poor Doomguy's faceplate into doors while trying to pass through them, sometimes because I was expecting them to trigger automatically, and other times because I would attempt to manually open them microseconds after they'd trigger automatically, thus unwittingly slamming them shut in my own face. Doesn't help that the layout is, apart from one simple building-bridge setup near the blue door, utterly joyless and mostly flat, with height variation tending to be more of a nuisance than a source of appeal where it does appear, e.g. having to drop down very steep staircases with monsters lounging about at the foot, or alternately riding blind lifts up to find your nose all of 2.4 cm from the barrel of an ex-corpse's shotgun. Not a complex layout, either, but surprisingly easy to get lost given how interchangeable many of the areas look, particularly the interstitial corridor and lift areas. One thing I will say for it, though, is that the simulation of the view into space (which also communicates that you're now on a much larger vessel) is not half bad, and something we'll get to see again for thematic continuity later on. It was largely Icarus (but not only Icarus) I was thinking of when I described STRAIN's map 07 as "comparatively half-assed" in this regard, incidentally. Pretty cool music track on this map, as well--rdwpa earlier mentioned the Icarus soundtrack's use of leitmotif to lend it cohesion as an 'album' if you will, one of the mapset's most endearing little facets.

Oh, and the gameplay here sucks. Dull, unvarying roomclearing at its most basic, with the only halfway interesting encounter being the yellow key ambush, which tasks you with dashing for an armor vest under fire with very limited cover in order to minimize the damage you take. Balance is workable but wholly uninteresting, with the gunplay being almost entirely shotgun-based (there is some limited scope for using the berserk pack later on if you know the map well enough), and the combat being almost universally 2D, again save for that YK fight. There's a limited element of nonlinearity in the way the layout flows, but this makes essentially no impact on the way battles play out, again because your arsenal is extremely limited (though your ammo is not), and because you end up fighting over flat ground/through doorways regardless of which doorway you happen to use. No potential for unpredictable monster-wandering, either, on account of those obnoxious doors.

Pretty lame, this.

[Demon of the Well]

Getsu Fune said:

MAP02 Shuttle Bay
weird progression too, those doors. also having to press the "RED ALERT" terminal & then shooting the wall behind it just to get back. no fun.

Huh. I had no idea there was an impact trigger involved there. What's the point?

(hint: rhetorical question)

[vdgg]

Capellan said:

Map03
It's also ridiculously loaded with goodies: a blue armour in the circumstances is enormous overkill.

The blue armor is on skill 3 only; one of many examples of a bit funny skill level tuning in Icarus. Like later on MAP14, probably the most dangerous boss is on skill 2 (1 mastermind is more dangerous than 2 masterminds or cyber).

[Capellan]

Demon of the Well said:

I am a bit surprised to read all of the anecdotes about the mysterious empty imp cage in the sickbay, though...every time I've gone down there there's always been an imp present in the cage, and a slew of replacements who teleport in after him in order to get you to shoot that impact point. Maybe a port-related thing?

There's an imp when you go down there, but you are most likely to shoot it from the side you see it from, which is not the 'breakable' one. And the other Imps don't come through until you shoot through the *correct* side.

[purist]

3

It's monster closet the map! The first entry by the reason we are not Sunlusting right now. Ty serves up a map based on two large areas, the first containing sheds of monsters (as in sheds containing monsters not loads of monsters) and the second an outdoor area containing the titular quarry and the exit.

This map is probably easier than the last map and definitely easier than the first. It does have the potential for multi directional combat if you don't keep an eye open but if you grab those 20 shells early on that isn't hard to do plus it's brevity and generousity with the stim packs meant I wasn't ever really in danger of my health chipping away. There was moment where I was surprised by some long range chainers but they were quickly dealt with and I had a surplus of health to patch up with.

The quarry itself is something of a non event and is not even compulsory to deal with. I get the impression this area and the whole map in general would have benefitted from a higher challenge but the fact it's so short makes it an unlikely proposition for a place further on in the game.

It's certainly nice to have a change up in location. Icarus has not exactly suffered from theme stagnation yet but I was expecting several silver maps in a row so it's good that is not the case. The map looks pretty nice despite the boxiness and it's cool that you end the level by re-entering the ship but the quarry itself is unimpressive quite frankly.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP03 Quarry

One word: inoffensive

but that's perfectly fine. very short map here with barely any threat to players. the most dangerous aspect here is at the exit, those chaingunners can be a potential problem if you want to dance with imps in the armor pit. most everything else can be handled without even taking a point of damage. aside from the imp closets and the secret, that "barrel run" of sorts was a bit of a fun aside, and there's a ton of shotgun ammo to go around this map.

interesting to see Jeremy Doyle come to the forums to provide insight on a few Icarus music, that he created! I've actually heard the main riff in this song (called Hell, for some reason) in a few other MIDIs as well.

Huh. I had no idea there was an impact trigger involved there. What's the point?

let's see, you need the blue key, then enter that one teleporter in a completely forgettable room to reach the south side of the map. There you get the switch past the blue door. Now how do you get out? yeah, having to shoot the wall behind a zombieman's closet that appears (preferably with a shotgun) just to get out of that area and to where the red key is (where you can finally pick the thing up). Don't have a clue what's up with that, but I'd imagine speedrunners who ignore monsters will not get the cue about this one.

[vdgg]

Getsu Fune said:

interesting to see Jeremy Doyle come to the forums to provide insight on a few Icarus music

What?When?Where?

[gaspe]

MAP03 - Quarry

Kills: 100% | Items: 100% | Secrets: 100%

Really small and easy map. Also visually is very basic. I like the windmills and the sheds with the imps too, nice touches that gives some more character to the map. The north hallway with the barrels was pretty fun though. In the quarry itself there are teleports only for the monsters to change the floor where they are, it isn't done very well and the density of the monsters doesn't represents a great threat, but still is a nice idea. There's always place for small maps in megawads.

[NuMetalManiak]

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/creative-works/74429-old-doom-music/

[VGA]

MAP02
Lots of lazy silver texturing and weird progression. I found that usable console thingy only because I was wallhumping. I knew there had to be more since I used a key to get there.

MAP03
Maybe my standards were low after the first two maps, but I actually enjoyed this tiny map. It's very small though, like a speedmap or something. For example, a huge area with no height variation and just a green texture? Song was good.

I'm not sure why the exit area is the same as the exits on the two previous maps. We were on starships, now we were on the planet, so?

[Wildmajora]

Map 3 - 100% Everything

Small map. Easiest so far. Perhaps the outside bit could've been a bit more interesting. I'm very annoyed that I didn't expect the imps when I looked for the red key so I unnecessarily lost a lot of health (I perhaps got a bit complacent). I really like the soundtrack to this wad. I'm glad I have a backpack now, it makes ammo a non-issue.

Hopefully the difficulty will pick up a little bit in the future.

@vdgg - Just checked map 14 in the editor, just to see what you were talking about. I'm definitely glad I'm playing on UV now, 1 cyberdemon is definitely nicer than spiderdemons.

[4shockblast]

Map 03: Kills: 100%, Items: 80%, Secrets: 0%, final time: 3:58 (0 deaths)

Bizarre map, so small, and there's so little to do in it I don't have much to say about it. The start was interesting, I liked the progression to get the red key (though the ability to snipe all those imps under the doors made it too easy to cheese), but then the map just ended. I spent a little more time getting 100% kills in the map to get to listen to the midi (another good one), but none of the gameplay was that good; the optional area with the series of doors was just boring. At least the shortness of the map makes it quick to go through, so it doesn't get tedious.

FDA here.

[vespa]

Map 03
100% kills 100% items 0% secrets

Short level, good music, was happy to see pinkies. Other than that not much to say. Again I wasn't able to find the secret, I feel left out. I'm also considering restarting on UV, this feels too easy.

[Suitepee]

http://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/v/14285864 = part 1 of my playthrough, covering maps 01-15 plus both secret maps. (UV, continuous)

My first ever megawad that I beat back in 2012(?), time has been mostly kind to my good memories of it but oh god some of that 90's crypticness is around to annoy me to heck also!

A few points in summary:

-Shuttlecraft is a harsh harsh opener for any megawad. So many hitscans, so little health and powerups. (I didn't find the armor secret) Visually it was great, showing off a better 'space' effect than STRAIN ever did; gameplay-wise it was way too hard for the first level in my opinion.
-I particularly liked the 'simulation' levels, with Flipside's quirky visuals and Asylum's feeling of map madness, alongside the secret levels.
-Donnybrook. Fuck this map, fuck it straight to hell. Cryptically awful, took me ages to figure it out/have someone show me a Youtube video on it. It's all about speed, cryptic speed for that damn yellow key. And then the very next key is barely guarded. FOKGPSDFLOGPASDFPOSKGFOPAKG!!!!
-Feeding Frenzy was a very good map that I remember struggling on back then, but found much more manageable this time around. (also remembering how to get the keys helped, as this level has some crypticness also!) The drop into the radioactive pit with the HK's and Pinkies was still somewhat as difficult as I remembered though.
-I now know that enemies can absorb splash damage from barrels, and this can be used as part of a barrel puzzle. Thank you for blowing my mind with this solution in Hydroponics Mr. Gary Gosson, but screw you for making that little crate appearing another cryptic head-scratcher (even if you can cheat by pressing another crate down) that I still don't know how I got it to appear.
-Prestidigitation's changing architecture seemed a lot more impressive back then, but I guess I've seen much more complex examples since. Still a fine map though.
-It seems ol' Ty was good at making short and fun levels, and so far all 3 maps from him have been fun to play. (Quarry, The Bridge, Prestidigitation)

Here's hoping no more 90's crypticness is around in the second half (that I don't remember as well as the first half, bar The Haunting)....

[gaspe]

MAP04 - Engineering

Kills: 100% | Items: 99% | Secrets: 100%

Back to the starship theme. A bit more colored than beign completely silver or gray. Layout is simple and symmetrical and still the combat situations aren't threatening. Best part probably are the vents.

[SoundofDoomDoors]

MAP03's Ty's first offering of the WAD, and I liked it. Boxy, simple, and easy are all words others have used to describe it and I agree with all of these. I also didn't like the passage of doors either, until I started thinking that it was meant to be a mineshaft of sorts. The entire level is more a Doom model of a quarry than a proper level, with a green armor at the bottom of what the title references. Overall, I had fun. The music's good here too, even though MAP01's was probably my favorite so far. I get a Metroid vibe from the soundtrack of this wad, and I love it.

100% Kills 0% Secrets

Here's a demo, my second run through. I've played up until MAP08 overall.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ezff1juoes12fhm/Icarus_map03.lmp

EDIT: I decided to do MAP04 early, since people in other time zones have a bit of a lead on the US where I am. It was pretty good, non-threatening like the last level with plenty of ammo, but I wasn't bored. The vines and air quality warnings were nice visually. So was the time when imps came out of the vents. I had a Doom 3 flashback there. The soundtrack on the last level was better, though.

Demo, not an FDA. I did that a week ago and didn't record. I haven't been killed in this wad through 7 maps, including my recorded runs through the first 4...EDIT 2: I mean 3. I didn't record the first map because I thought I'd die multiple times to the hitscanners and ragequit. I wish I'd recorded it. I didn't die. http://www.mediafire.com/download/f0k8wl3eea0wjna/Icarus_map04.lmp

[7hm]

Slot: 4
Map: Engineering
Author: Jim Lowell

A pretty cool ruined spacecraft thing going on here. The gameplay is pretty straightforward still, with a couple little ambushes (chaingunner at the top of the stairs, imps hiding in the ducts, the barrel / demon room), but still pretty easy overall. Lowell makes good use of the semi transparent textures and makes this actually feel like a place, though it still doesn't really stand up in any way to modern scrutiny.

One thing I noticed was the use of the cross texture for the secret (hearkening back to the secrets thread over in the general forum). That made me smile.

[4shockblast]

Map 04: Kills: 100%, Items: 0%, Secrets: 0%, final time: 3:05 (0 deaths)

Another map I don't really know what to say about. Narrow hallways just don't make for very interesting gameplay, and parts of the map again look like areas that were unfinished (empty rooms filled with barrels that can't even be used to kill anything :\). Some parts of the map looks pretty neat; I had nothing against square walkway, but it's pretty empty, just some monsters kinda thrown into it. As with the last map, the shortness at least makes the map quick to get through.

FDA here.

[Capellan]

Map04
At least this level offers a bit more space to run around in and some barrels to explode. That makes it feel a bit less static than what we've had before, though the odd fact that map01 has been by far the toughest level to date remains intact. We're cleaning up more hitscanners and imps again here, with a few pinkies thrown in to give you something to do with the secret berserk, should you be so inclined.

I'm not much a of a fan of Icarus's new computer panel textures, especially when used in broad swathes as they are here, but this isn't too bad a looking level on the whole. Some nice embellishments on the walls and ceilings in places. The lighting feels a bit flat, though. While there is a reasonably broad range of levels used across the map, most rooms tend to be dominated by one level with maybe an extra patch of brightness somewhere. Coupled with the mostly-grey textures, it doesn't really pop.

Progression was pretty straightforward – again the first level has been by far the most challenging on that front, to date. I seem to recall some quite obtuse maps coming up, though.

[Jaws In Space]

Icarus Map 04 - HMP, Continuous

After doing whatever it was that we need to do on the planet we are back to the ship & this time it's a much more interesting visual affair. This map is from Jim Lowell the man who brought us Crater from Evilution, which is a pretty average map, & the same can be said about this map. This map has a better variety of textures used compared to the previous ship map, & Lowell makes an attempt to make the level actually look like the interior of the ship. The level itself is very short & if you know where you are going even the average player could finish in less than a minute, but I wasn't too bothered by the size of the map. Monsters are very few & far between here with less than 50 on HMP so it was a pretty leisurely stroll. Overall all I can say is that this was an average map, it was better than the previous ship map at least.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP04 Engineering

seeing all those dead marine bodies at the start may make this spaceship map a bit more interesting, but in reality it's just another inoffensive outing. A bit more dangerous giving the hitscanners in more open fields as well as a few barrels hanging around, but not enough to really warrant danger to the average player.

I remember seeing an awesome speedrun of this map involving a chaingunner and a suicide exit as well.