1. D1M3 - Under a Funeral Moon: Episode 1 really kicks into high gear with this, its by far the best of the Egyptian theming of the set and the music and cloudy moonlit temple are extremely atmospheric. The level starts off with a bang, you have a quad damage from the word go as you tear through the starting enemies, then it leads into a bit of a catacomb journey with lots of platforming and secrets and smaller encounters before ending in a huge series of arena brawls that introduce the kamikazes. This part of the map is probably the best of the heavy combat arena orientated levels in the first episode, with lots of novel enemy setups and the first of use of the Berserk powerup, but there's lots of additional clever elements, my favourites are one of the secrets that requires you be quick on the draw to shoot red switches revealed by panels that close quickly and the other is an unusual combat challenge in the major arena where you have to stay on top of a small roof and kill the waves of incoming enemies without falling off, its very hard but you get an armour and quad damage for the final encounter if you succeed.

2. D1M8 - Prescience Overload: The last level in episode 1 before the boss, this is the most elaborate and difficult one so far with the most gruelling combat encounters as well, a kind of forsaken temple floating in a dark void it certainly looks the part, and is filled to the brim with secrets, a lot of which require careful platforming over the numerous bottomless pits. Its a very dense level and packs a lot into a space that's not particularly large but certainly feels like a massive achievement to get through it, every corner is hiding some punishing ambush from a bunch of zombies, ogres or vores, every bit of progress seems to result in even more deadly enemies being vomitted back into rooms you previously cleared, and if you have a keen eye you can hoover up powerups and pickups from well hidden but not bullshit hard secrets to give you that fighting edge. I always like maps that have a lot of vertical space and this is no exception, most of the map sees you fighting your way upward to get to grips with enemies above you and demands that you have careful footwork to avoid falling to a lower, more dangerous position or worse, right into the void. The feeling of risk is very strong with lots of points where you are tempted to push as far as possible into a dangerous situation to get the most possible out of a Quad damage or grab a crucial bonus, or make a dangerous jump into what might be a secret or even rocket jump into an area you aren't even sure the developer intends that you reach. The final fight is a gigantic bloody crush of basically every enemy cramming into the final arena, with Ogres and Vores blasting you from side platforms and Knights and Shamblars getting to grips with you up close, as you try to exploit the large amount of health, armour and powerups to blast your way through all of it. A really solid and intimidating final level for this episode that leads into an impressive boss fight in its own right.

3. D2M4 - That We Should Voyage So Far: So, in my previous review for Alkaline I mentioned that my favourite level of that set, and one of my favourite quake levels ever, was Dancing in the Golden Sun by Bal. Interestingly, one of my other favourite Quake levels ever is Arcane Dimensions's Tears of the False God, also by Bal. As luck would have it, That We Should Voyage So Far is another one of my favourite Quake levels ever, and what do you know, its also by Bal! This loving guy is an absolute machine, its just hit after hit with him, every time one of his set piece levels are featured in one of these projects it ends up being one of the best things I've ever played with the perfect combination of evocative, thickly atmospheric, downright beautiful visuals that makes me forget at times I'm playing Quake and not some kind of art game, and almost perfectly tailored map design and encounter design. I couldn't come up with a real complaint about these maps if you held a gun to my head, its almost unfair to anyone else. Voyage is just another masterpiece, the whole level is this set within an island and you can swim around the whole thing, which is recommended so you find the various goodies and secrets scattered in out of the way islets and caves. Off the bat it gives this great sense of freedom, that you can get to everything you can see, and it really takes that idea and runs with it, stuffing in bonuses and extra ammo in every corner and easter eggs in the more unlikely places you can get to with a bit of gumption. It even has access to this episode's secret level. The map has a very pleasing combination of compactness with that sense of freedom, the actual area you are in is fairly small and everything leads back around to a central aisle that spawns in more encounters as you collect and use the keys with a lot of slanted pillars giving a weird sense of space along with the large pools of water. The combat isn't too harsh either, this is the map that first makes extensive use of the crystal enemies and there are loads of ogres, fiends and shamblers, but it also gets balanced out by very liberal use of haste, quad damage and the Crystal Lance. Its more about the vibe and feel of the level, the twilight setting at the ends of the earth, strange crystalline architecture (and some enemies), strange alien looking statues and sombre music really gives it this haunting sense that you're in the midst of the ruins of some long forgotten, unknowable civilization. Its the Lovecraftian elements played more tragically than I've really seen Quake go for before, just absolute perfection.

4. D2M6 - The Waters Below While That We Should Voyage So Far felt sort of melancholic and a bit sad moreso than what you usually get in Quake, The Waters Below feels like a very deliberate attempt to hit upon the unnerving and disconcerting elements of Quake's Lovecraftian tone, there's pervading sense of 'wrongness' about the whole place, an overwhelming idea that something is very much not right and you've stumbled into something you should not have. A lot of this comes from the drowned feel of the map, even compared to the other ones in this episode so far its completely inundated and there's a particularly long underwater section where the Oxygen tanks you need to make it through respawn very slowly, making it feel even more desperate as you are trying to get through what looks like a place people used to live, filled with zombies but completely underwater. This first section of the map really feels run down, the architecture is in a state of collapse, everything is flooded, doors are blocked off crudely with wooden panels, wooden bridges are half destroyed, and there's overgrown plants everywhere. Interestingly, one of the areas you need to reach so that you can progress has almost the same layout as the starting area in Episode one's secret map, which was meant to be a presage of this episode, except in this area its monitored by a creepy, Old one-esque statue that pulls you in against your will and forces you to jump into a large pool filled with more lovecraftian entities. As you make it through you are then teleported to the second half of the map, totally different from the cramped temple of the first, being a misty, ruined town overlooking cavernous drops leading to a ruined castle. The atmosphere gets even thicker, there's a lot of environmental storytelling for Quake, the town seems to have constructed a rickety, desperate looking dam to hold back the waters, but its on the verge of collapse, springing leaks everywhere and only kept up by wooden beams. The central castle is completely overgrown, forcing you to find a way around the front door, strange fish heads underwater spawn dozens of rotfish if you get too close, strange glowing crystals spawn in even more enemies if you go near them and the omnipresent alien statues are overlooking the entire village. The soundtrack tops everything off, just this incredibly effective score at establishing the whole level as off and hostile, overall its just a fantastically atmospheric map, so thick you can cut it with a knife. I don't know if I can say it has that much more going for it, the combat didn't stand out to me too much although it could be quite punishing, but I really can't fault the sense of tone and dread it establishes as you make your way through it.

5. D2M8 - Abyss of the Troglodytes: So, from what I've read around some of the community comments on Dwell, I know Abyss of the Troglodytes is a very controversial map. I get it, the scale is almost unbelievable, 1155 enemies, and 60 secrets, 60. Pagb666's mostly blind playthrough is more than 2 hours long, and he only got 19 secrets. I've never played a Quake map this elaborate and gigantic before, it feels like Mazu wanted to cram in everything possible into it, it touches upon almost everything I can think of that you can put into a quake map between the vast array of combat encounters with every enemy and powerup used in all kinds of different ways, platforming out the wazoo to get to all of the secrets, including much more complicated movement tricks than I've seen in other maps that rely on combining Dwell's aforementioned penchant for incline assisted jumps with extreme speed to go flying all over the central chamber if you can nail it down, puzzles of all kinds that you have to figure out to find more secrets or progress normally (including a very frustrating pillar puzzle), sequences of traps that really demand that your platforming and quick response combat abilities are sharp and ready, exploration including lots of underwater exploration to get through such a cavernous level, and even collectible elements which I know that Mazu loves and which opens up more options and benefits for the player if they can find all of the orb switches hidden throughout the level. The map has enough content that if you divided it into three, the three distinct sections made out of the main routes to get the keys would themselves be huge and difficult maps for any Quake player to approach. gently caress, you could probably make an entire episode out of this map if you split it up right. Usually I'd hate this kind of map, and I know from reading various comments that a lot of people do, its interesting that Mazu also created Overengineering Mania in Alkaline which I found I got sick of very quickly, but the funny thing is that I kind of love Abyss, it really clicked for me in a way that I did not expect going into it.

I think a lot of it boils down the fact that it kind of earns its pure audacity, there is so much variety that it never grows stale. Every section is filled with unique challenges and gimmicks, the fights can be tough as nails but as I mentioned before are laid out in sections almost akin to a Doom slaughtermap where you can run laps around the arena at high speed and see everything descend into infighting. The creativity astounds me, one section starts off with the best use of the Ring of Shadows I've seen in a Quake map, essentially creating a genuine stealth section which is super rare in Quake as you weave between way too many Shamblers than you could hope to take on, going from ring to ring until you get to a massive falling crusher you can drop on top of them and kill them instantly. Later on you find a section that has a relentless combat arena and a portal that transports you into what looks like the same arena except flipped upside down, and even more enemies, both 'sides' of this arena have their secrets that work in tandem to reveal a very odd area. Then there's one of the most complex trap sequences I've ever seen in a quake map, starting off with an exploding bridge, dropping the player down into a passage where a moving spiked wall forces the player to jump through an area packed with Kamikazes and Vores, avoiding lava pits and nail shooters all the way, until you get to an area surrounded by ogres with a rotating nail shooter right in the middle forcing to duck and weave to not get hit by the ludicrous amount of projectiles, at which point you can shoot some switches to turn off the nails, but that causes the ceiling to collapse down on you and, if you successfully avoided that, a bunch of tetris blocks to drop down to give a route up to the top of the passage after some tricky platforming, at which point you can finally get the key after that gauntlet.

I'm really losing the run of myself talking about this map, there's so many things to touch upon I don't know where to stop and lord knows this post has gotten way too long already. The central area is great as an arena and as a hub to connect together all the different map elements while having some of the hardest platforming I've seen in a Quake level to reach the secrets. The secrets in the map are very well put together, I was able to find 56 out of 60 of them and it was a very fun time thinking about all of the unusual and outside of the box places they could have put them, and almost always your intuition pays off. The collectible orb switches that lead to bonus rooms were a particularly good idea, they are all well hidden but you get hints on how to reach them in the bonus area which are much appreciated, and the stuff they unlock can be lifesaving powerups or pickups to keep you going through this marathon of a map. I really feel Mazu learned a lot from Overengineering Mania's 50 circuit boards being too tedious to collect without giving you enough in return, the increasing rewards for finding the orbs is great incentive to keep looking and feeling like you are making progress. Even the water sections felt fitting and unobtrusive, this is the water episode after all. I can't really say that Abyss of the Troglodytes is the perfect map by any means, certainly Bal's offerings will always have a finesse that's not quite present here, but dammit, I kind of love this and just the scale of it demands a certain respect overall, its definitely earned a spot in the top five for me, maybe the top spot, but its a close run thing.

Dwell DM2 - Weeping Shades of indigo: I actually had a bit of a hard time deciding Dwell's worst map, that sounds like an insult but I don't intend it to be, there's not really any standout terrible maps that I just loathe in the way that I might for other projects, its just a few maps that either outstay their welcome (D1M7 - Darkstar Triumvirate) are a bit confusing to navigate while otherwise boring (D2M1 - Technomagical Transfusion) or just feel sloppy and not well put together in terms of flow, focus or atmosphere (D2M7 - Blessed Dwellings in the Dark). None of them are truly bad, so I'm going to give this spot to Weeping Shades of Indigo because it just made barely any impression on me at all. The map feels weirdly out of place, its an episode 2 secret level but it returns to the Egyptian theme except with the episode 2 crystal enemies who look and feel out of place. Its mostly just a rough and hard combat gauntlet without many surprises beyond some bruising, frustrating combat, while also being very short and kind of ugly. Just really nothing to write home about.

khwarezm fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Feb 4, 2024

Arivia fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Feb 4, 2024