Although a large pk3, it is worth every byte. No MoHAA textures are used here; Old and absolutley wonderful textures ported from Quake come to our very own engine.
These textures, put together with some skillful shadering and scripting, come together to make a revolutionary map.
Presentation / Technical
Usually, I like to leave the best till last. But, as my reviewing style has set in, I shall start with the textures first. Awesome. 100% fully custom, with some
reflection effects, animated textures, and some purely skillful usage of the shader commands to make you stare. Some of the textures were very, very highly detailed, but others had unfortunatley lost their sharpness, which was a bit of a shame. But that is just a scratch on a diamond. A 24 carat diamond. Lava, sludge, crazy telepads, jump pads... The swirling red sky is worth a mention of its own! Top marks.
I got a feeling the architecture was only there to support the textures, it was a little basic. But, it got the job done, and their are some nice touches. Some nice basic meshwork, for arches and twisting corridors, some nice, but slightly blocky chandaliers and such all contributed to the basic atmosphere which gave the map a 'sleek' feel; built for practicality, not style.
Lighting was good, some light emitting textures, some great colours used to match the theme of the rooms, some very impressive particle effects used to give the windows the 'beam' effect. The lighting really did help the atmosphere tremendously. Good marks here. The little farplane used was unseeable from close, and seeable over a long distance which was a good touch, and gave a steamy effect to the big lava filled room. The map was good and appropriatley gloomy, which was nice and fitting.
The soundtrack was great background music, good to sound cool, and good to be able to ignore. I found it a little wierd there seemed to be a battle going on
outside, though... Custom sounds for jump pads and the other unique features of this map were fantastic, and the music covered up for a bit of a useless ambientsound. Good marks are in order.
Well. Theme and creativity I am to cover in this paragraph. I could just cover it with a simple 'Great score here!'. This maps creativity. As usual, my roommate came up with an approprate comment: -RM 'What game ya playing?' -Mj 'MoHAA' -RM 'No really, what game are you playing?' (looks at HUD) 'Urm, Something cool has happened to your MoHAA...' I think that just about sums it up. Highly creative, unMoH like, and very cool. Well, I was thinking, how creative is a re-make? It's still creative enough, though, to get a good mark.
Playability / Game Flaws
There are a couple of dead ends, which could affect gameplay, and some teleporters only went one way, but otherwise I reckon this map would be great to play. The map runs at a great FPS, so trouble with performance should be non-existant. The two creators have improvised the MoH gameplay, by taking away the primary weapon on spawn, and in true Quake style, weapons are littered around the map, which is a fun new way to play MoH. One qualm is that this map is quite large and complex, so it could be quite hard to play with only a few people, but that is quite a minor issue.
Conclusion
MoH:Quake, anyone? A fun new way to play, and a fun new map to play in, with a whole fun new environment that looks as if it belongs to a great old game... A great remake of an old classic. Well done, guys; Get this map now!
