Mountainside Battle consists of a two small groups of buildings separated by a mountain in between them. There are secret underground passageways that connect the two small towns. This is the authors first public map release and shows that he has a good start on understanding the Mohr.
Presentation / Technical
Lets go down the list of scoring and discuss each area. Texturing was used with much variety almost to the point where you begin to get lost due to everything being so different. Alignment and scale seemed to all be good except for some areas that lacked texture altogether. I think the author forgot to add some within his .pk3 file. On a positive note I didn·t see signs of Z-fighting, which helped his texture score from dropping further.
Lighting was very interesting as the author was experimenting with various colors and applications. I gave him higher marks than probably should have been based off of tiring to be creative with the lighting. Overall I think he achieved the effect he was going for.
Brushwork was very basic with little detail and every building based off of 90° angles. What I mean by that was that everything was perfectly square. That, along with the texturing, seemed to take away from the eye. Some time with more creative brushwork would have been nice to see. There were gaps in between the buildings and the ground. There was allot of aspects in the map also that seemed out of scale.
As far as Creativity and Theme are concerned this is where the author got some good with the bad as far as review marks. He really tried to create something different, which I applaud but the casualty was the theme as there really was none. There was simply to many different aspects that didn·t seem to give one a "clear" theme.
Playability / Game Flaws
I was not able to play this map since I couldn·t find it in any rotation at the time of this review. I would imagine though that the flow, fun, and playability would be low due to the layout proportions in the map. Like I said everything inside is rather cramped and there are several dead ends. Now the secret passageways that I talked about earlier are neat but not when they are the only routes from point "a" to point "b". One has to study the map in spectator mode before even attempting to play it. More paths clearly visible to the player would help the flow I think. Flaws like I stated before consisted of missing textures, gaps in between some buildings and terrain, and the lack of gameplay flow.
Conclusion
Even though the review may sound very negative I didn·t have that intent when I started it. Like I said this is the first public map released by this author and it shows promise for his mapping abilities. If anything can be learned from this is that it is vital to take advantage of alpha and beta testing secessions before one releases a map. I give positive marks to the author for his map concept. I think with some time spent it could be reworked to make it a good solid map to have in your rotation.
