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Phoenix Rising |
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Title: Phoenix Rising
Phoenix Rising in a new 5-level set for ZDoom based heavily upon the Quake 2 textures recently released by Afterglow and Nightmare. Unlike most of the other mini-mods that are out there, this one actually has a good per-level story basis that sets a good mood. There is a hub structure present, but it is done by way of copying scenes from one level and pasting them into later maps. Which is OK, except that these maps specifically require ZDoom, so the hub system would definitely have made much more sense to use. "All the levels are set in a single military installation. Therefore in some maps you will see inaccessible areas, or doors that cannot be opened. Most of these areas/doors are accessible in later levels." This is a good idea, but very confusing without hub implementation. Some fairly consistent problems, espiecially in the earlier levels, were either lack of monsters or too many monsters. I had to get most monsters bigger than imps and demons into brawls with eachother because of having no ammo for half the level. Then on maps 4 and 5 the ammo abounds and there's hardly enough baddies to use it all on. The other thing was the non-solid windows; you can't walk through them, but you can shoot and get shot through them. The author also used the diagonal solid-white-line texture, which looked very out of place, instead of a transparent gray/brown texture. The first level is very dark and creepy; there are almost no monsters it. Fans of Doom's E2M4 should love this map. This is a great mood setter right from the first room, where you 'wake up' from stasis and have to hop up a huge pile of crates and jump into a vent before continuing. (That one took a while to figure out). All the doors on the vents are tagged "upper unpegged" for some reason, so you you don't actually see the vents opening unless you stand back. Which gets confusing, since you have to go through secrets to complete almost all the levels. Map02 seemed slightly reminiscent of the fourth level in Eternal Doom, wandering around the dark tunnels with nukage streams in the middle. This one appeared to be the most underdetailed map in the series, there was not much attention paid to lighting details (bright rooms with no lights in sight), more of those unpegged vents and complete lack of ammo once you pick up the blue keycard. The following 3 maps could just go together as one big level, almost all of them share 25% of the previous ones. Map03 is huge. Not very detailed, but there are some cool things here. About half the level is outdoors, on roads and courtyards, and the other half is in various buildings. This map is at least 3 times as big as the biggest Darkening E2 level. The snow-covered trees in the summer setting looked a bit odd though. The following map is a small room with 3 teleports to 3 different arenas: Basic Training, Armored Assault, and Arena Combat. Basic Training is a ripoff of the Cyberdemon scene in Tricks'N'Traps, but this time, after the other guys are dead you have to run in front of it and throw a switch that activates a crusher. The next arena, Armored Assault, requires you to jump from ledge to ledge around a circular lava pit with a spiderdemon attempting to take you out from an island in the middle. The final one, Arena Combat, is going back and forth trying to throw 6 switches in a particular order while avoiding a cyberdemon and various other monsters which teleport after each switch is thrown. And then the final showdown: back to the installation, clean out the last segment of the installation, collect all the weapons, kill another spiderdemon and take off in your spacecraft. I ended up leaving this level with almost full ammo. Too bad some of it wasn't available back on map02 when I actually needed it. Oh well. These maps aren't too original, but if you liked Darkening E2 or Quake2, consider downloading these levels. They're not bad to look at and provide a few good hours of fun. Overall: 6/10 Reviewed by Lüt. |
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