Single player votes
Sapphire Coast Zone, Act 2 – 8
In many ways, you could just look at my old review of Sapphire Coast Zone 1 to know what I think about this map. But it’s worth retreading those points while discussing a few new issues that came up in this level.
Overall, this map is gorgeous and a pleasure to look at. The oranges and blues in the palette compensate each other very well, which is also helped by the nice custom texture used for most of the walls that is visually pleasing near and far thanks to the pattern design. I especially liked how the vines were used in the jungle towards the end, it’s a small visual touch but it went a long way and made me grin like an idiot. However, the lighthouse desperately needs new textures, which I understand you are working on anyway. Also, I really
really dislike the opaque water, I understand your reasoning for using it, but I find it very ugly to look at and it also impacts gameplay negatively by hiding the penalty for failing a platform section, mind you, the opaque water is negligible in that regard because it is only an issue in easy platform sections with no penalty for failure other than a hurt ego. But as a visual element, I find opaque water so jarring when the transparent water is visually more appealing and tropical.
While unchanged from SCZ, the badniks are still interesting while also being used in clever and fun ways (for example, bouncing on a spring turtle then a mushroom to quickly move upwards). However, the buzz bombers raise a problem about the difficulty of Sapphire Coast Zone as a whole. You have shown a willingness to use buzz bombers with ranged attacks in zone 1, with this in mind, why are you so hesitant to give the player even a small slap on the wrist penalty for making a mistake under every other circumstance? Remember, everybody who plays Lost Worlds will have already played SRB2 at least once and you can assume they know how the basic functions of the game works, you don’t need to hold the players hand so much it feels like Greenflower Zone where the objective is to teach the player basic game mechanics. Low difficulty is fine, being an absolute cakewalk is unnecessary.
Overall though, this is a very well put together level and one I had a lot of fun playing and exploring with all the characters, from finding obscure secrets as Knuckles to figuring out how to reach the higher platforms as Sonic. Keep up the good work Blade, eagerly looking forward to your next map! (And the release of Lost Worlds, scheduled for NEVER)
Eggmansion Zone, Act 2 – 7
Well, this is certainly an odd map to review after testing it and providing feedback over the course of the past two months. In retrospect I should have been a harsher when testing to help you achieve the best result possible.
This map is so damn nice to look at, seriously. There’s so much love and attention put into the appearance of this map I can’t help but smile, however a few rooms suffer from overuse of the CEZ brick textures. The unique touches such as the paintings or hand shaped torches more than make up for this however.
http://i1110.photobucket.com/albums/h454/Whackjood/srb20058.png I squee like the Codename: Kids Next Door fanboy I am every time I see this painting. Hell yeah.
The Sandopolis ghosts were a welcome addition to the map. They added in some variety that the default enemies couldn’t provide by respawning, forcing the player to keep moving onward while also making secret hunting more rewarding with the increased risk. As well as introducing a clever dynamic where the player couldn’t just solve all of the maps puzzles in peace.
Moving onto Pinkie Pie. Oh Pinkie Pie, whatever am I supposed to say about you? I constantly complained about Pinkie’s presence in the map while testing, and honestly, I still don’t like it that much. Pony cameos are fine, but as soon as players are asked to understand the intricate workings of the pony fanbase to understand that Pinkamena is a threatening game mechanic you have a serious problem. That is going too far for objective game mechanic reasons, I thoroughly dislike the use of Pinkamena in this map, bleh.
Most of the puzzles in this map are good and worked fine as a series of gimmicks in my opinion, fun to solve on your first play through and still involved enough to not be a problem on subsequent play throughs. The only major offender was the gargoyle puzzle, and even that isn’t too offensive to be a serious problem.
A few of the gimmicks in this map could have been expanded upon. Especially the mirror room, for example, mirrors on the side in a future room or just used with more dangerous platforming to take the concept you taught the player with one room and expand upon it further.
That boss however, argh, I’m not going to comment on why this boss is so bad because it shouldn’t even be there. It saddens me to know that the boss is the only in its current unplayable state because the more enjoyable and complete of the boss consistently caused game breaking crashes, but there was nothing else you could do other than use an older version or remove the extra bonus already. I find this inoffensive and unobtrusive on the basis of it being an optional secret that most players won’t even bother with or find in its current state.
Match votes
Pacman – 4
Oh god what, I had much more fun with this map than I can justify.
Regardless, there are quite a few problems with the concept and execution that need to be addressed. The maze is symmetrical, which leads to a lot of problems when trying to navigate. Furthermore, every corridor looks the same, forcing the players to wander the maze aimlessly until they find somebody else. However, when an enemy is found, I found that the fights became an interesting game of cat and mouse where the large supplies of rings allowed players to lure their enemies around corners and into traps before firing away with reckless abandon. In the larger areas of the map, spamming was the tactic of choice for me, but it really was more fun than I expected with this in mind.
Although the centre room of the maze was particularly weak, a wide empty space containing nothing but 4 random monitors. The map wasn’t visually appealing in any way, but that room took the cake while also taking dull to a whole new level.
Also, you’re using random monitors. Please use SRM or WRM monitors instead for the sake of everybody playing the game.
Oiler Outpost Zone – 1
You must understand the single player levels in SRB2 how certain gimmicks work have already taught the player. For example, while playing this map online, almost (if not all) every player was surprised when the deep pits of oil functioned as a death pit instead of working similarly to quicksand.
This, combined with a cramped level layout and corners that inexplicably lead the player straight into death pits lead for an extremely unenjoyable and unplayable map I’m afraid.
Generic Field Zone – 0
Flat plains do not a fun level make.
This map is so dry and boring, to the point of there being very little for me to comment on.
Seriously, I have nothing to say other than you need to put more than 30 minutes into making a good match map and placing two or more of the same type of weapon panel into a map is a bad idea.
It’s just that boring.
Techno Rush Zone – 4
A pity that one of the few maps I had fun that one of the two match maps I had fun with in this contest was a 2 hour rush job. I would have liked to see what would have happened if you spent a little more time working on this.
I liked how the vertical variation in the map played out and this created an interesting dynamic between the characters as Tails players could fly where they pleased while Knuckles and Sonic players were forced to take different paths around and become unusually vulnerable for it. The map was decently spaced out as well, the square layout helped the map too. Although I would have liked to have seen the factory elements of the theme used more, only so much could be done in two hours I suppose.
Capture the Flag votes
Jungle Ruins – 2
Please, please, make sure to avoid using a strong and prevalent colourmap in future maps. The visuals hurt my eyes and by the time I was finished I had to take a break because my vision felt strained. On the topic of visuals however, this map was a victim of having too much detail packed into a small space. With small crevices and brick structures littered around, seemingly at random, impeding player movement and generally being a mess of visual ideas thrown together as far as I can tell.
I think this map might also have benefited from having a larger middle ground, the tiny middle ground between the bases (which is basically a corner, making conflict within the middle ground quite rare) made the map feel even smaller than it already was by always placing players in either friendly territory or the enemies base. Remember that the middle ground can be present even in a small map like Icicle Falls by keeping the bases minimal and small.
Rush Flower CTF – 7
I must say, I’m impressed that you were able to make the Green Flower texture set fun again. Excellent job there!
For the most part, I had a lot of fun when playing this level. However, I often found myself without a sense of direction and unable to tell whose side of the map I was on. (In fact, in one particularly bizarre example, I attempt to capture the red flag and accidentally wandered into the red base twice while trying to return to the blue base) When I eventually figured out where I was going though, I had a blast. There was also a problem as the most direct route, the one that travelled over the bridge, was both very simple, quick and travelled through the path of the SRM while the alternate paths were confusing and filled with small platforming sections that would slow you down and make you easy targets for players trying to get their flag back, making one path the most useful route to take in the map by far.
Whoops, red team monitors in the blue base. That’s also something you might want to fix.