Unreal Dreams

Author : Twisted Metal
Version : 226f
Release Date : 3-1-2003

Map

Unreal Dreams    Author..............Twisted Metal.............Reviewer...........Xavious

So this would be my first coop map pack review. Rest assured, however, that I have been playing coop for a very long time, so I think I'm qualified...

Now, you can just tell that this is a first attempt at a map from this author. From the floating stairs at the start, through the wrongly textured sides, along the badly zoned-off water zones, past the buggy lift which kills you somehow when you use it (intentional or not, its just damned annoying) to the shoddily made door right at the end. That, and everything is all quite uncreative.

There is no story or any other such things to give the maps some flow. you are basically shown a series of rooms with monsters in them, and you have to get from one end to the next. The attempt at a puzzle using translator messages in the first map goes a little way to change this, but certainly not far enough. It's not even that's there no story which bothers me, its that there's really not much in the way of anything at all about anything in these maps. The different rooms look entirely random, with no structure to speak of, leaving you thinking "What the hell am I doing in a big metal cube?"

It has to be said, though: there are some redeeming qualities in these maps. The highlight was the 'Cube' map, which basically involved you being plopped right into the centre of a huge cube, with 4 skaarj and 3 sides of the room. When I got to here, and picked up the ammo in the center, I had roughly 13 eightball ammo, 150 minigun ammo, half a belt, half my health, and my trusty dispersion pistol. Imagine my joy of being faced with 12 skaarj. I think I died about 7 times, but I persevered, and when I finally managed it, I was pretty chuffed with myself.

Other moments stand out too, such as the high lift which you catapult yourself off to the grab some scuba-gear from the air, to the in the huge lake (although this could have went smoother, since the lift itself was pretty glitchy, and I had a terribly low frame-rate in the lake area for some reason). It is these moments which authors need to concentrate on when making a single player map (and also, but to a lesser extent, a coop map). These moments are few and far between in these maps, however, so they far less than make up for the map's other problems.

Geometry: 2/10 - Basic shapes, no custom brushes, no intersecting or deintersecting, just boring old shapes...
Lighting: 3/10 - Pretty lazy
Texture: 2/10 - Horrible! You can just tell the author wasn't trying very hard...
Flow: 2/10 - No story, no details, no nothing, just plough on ahead and hope your doing it right.
Tilt: 4/10 - I'd like to see this map get a 3/10, if only for the 1 or 2 stand-out moments.

Overall: 3/10 - You can do better than that, I'm sure!

Note: About the 'flow' and 'tilt.' Flow is decided on weapon placement, story, locations, attention to detail etc. Tilt is basically the reviewer's way of adding or subtracting a point from the final score, for reasons not covered in Geometry, Lighting, Texture, and Flow.

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