sacrifice in blood - jon washburn

Filename: sac_bld.zip

File size: 533K

Author: Jon Washburn

Homepage: www.hybernation.org

Other work: not known

As I had never heard of the map's author prior to this level, I had no idea
at all of what to expect. What I got was enough to bowl me over. The
architecture in the level is amazing; beyond anything I have ever seen
before (these reviews included ;-) What grabbed me most was the use of
scale; I have never seen maps of such enormous dimensions before. As
can been seen from the screenshots, the building is really humongous,
stretching overhead for many feet; almost as high as a factory.

Gameplay is the only let-down in the map; the main problem is that there
are far too many monsters for far too little ammo (on UV, at least.)
They can really overwhelm you in some places, especially when they
crowd around the entrances to enormous open areas. This is compounded
by the fact that you get few weapons to start off with; just a shotgun,
and you have to get by on that for a while, unless you can find a
chaingun or somesuch. But on lower skills it's more enjoyable, I must say.



There are no bugs that I could see, texture-alignments etc. were perfect.

The aesthetics of this map are of a very high standard; this is one of
the few maps I've seen (except for a few of the other WADs in this review
collection) that makes good use of the GSTONE/MARBLE motifs. The author
is quite evidently one of those extremely rare designers whose strong
construction point is humongous rooms and outdoor areas. One other thing
I really liked about the map was that its various areas looked reasonably
realistic and ancient; on visiting ancient ruins I always think 'wow, how
in heaven did they make something so huge and not have it fall down?' and
this conveys the idea of the same thing some years before. Another part
of this section was my observation of the dormitories and ablutory
facilities; I personally could really imagine monks living there in
conditions of relative poverty and sanctity.

Thing placement is a bit sparse, but you should expect that from such
an enormously-sized map. Overall pretty good.

verdict