Giant post incoming. 6 pages of a word document yay.
Multiplayer Level Reviews
Match
Emerald Hill Zone – 2
Oh my, there are far too many monitors lying around. That creates quite the problem, as the power ups are trivial to earn. That aside, the obvious copy & paste job done with the trees is very dull in both gameplay and visual terms, a large clump of identical platforms that make up the majority of the stage does not a fun match map make.
On the matter of the maps textures, the same texture, made up 3 out of 4 walls, aaaaaaa. While the trees and waterfall partially succeed at drawing the eye away from this, it is still ugly as anything.
With that aside though, the lower section of the level was more playable, with plenty of cover for the player to use with the trees and the water, although the waterfall area gives the player to much reward for to little effort, 4 ring monitors all lined up in a row.
Sloped Domain Zone – 4
First of all, random monitors? Do not want. You need to use SRM’s and WRM’s, not traditional random monitors.
I rather liked the purple, green and blue colour scheme at use here and the stage had decent flow to it was easy for the player to access any point at any given time. However, because of the open nature, Sonic felt a tad underpowered as he had to jump up the winding staircase to get out of the room with the large structure, leaving him open to attacks from Tails and Knuckles players. Furthermore, the random monitor at the top of the structure was to difficult for a Sonic player to reach, being unable to jump up there without the assistance of a spring some distance away.
But, random monitors and character imbalance aside, it was good fun to play and I had a great time.
Aquatic Relic Zone - 7
I had trouble navigating the place, to say the least, although when looking at the map in Doom Builder, I really can’t tell why as the map is well connected and each room has a recognizable layout and landmarks within, the vertical distance in several of the rooms kept things varied as well without spreading the map to thin.
That aside, I enjoyed the visual aspect of this level. The use of moss textures mixed with normal DSZ stone was nice, as was the geographical details (such as the collapsed ceiling in one room)
The item layout was fitting, with the weapon rings spread out enough to force the player to do some legwork if they want to amass a group of weapon rings and emerald hunt, without making them to distant and plenty enough rings to feed the players.
Oh, and the waterfalls were obviously copy pasted, it’s so obvious it hurts. D:
Bone Cave – 2
An ugly mess, to put it simply. This is such a small map, there isn’t much to talk about, but the texturing is painful on the eyes and unfitting (Black and gold chequered floors in a cave?) and the lava is unintuitive, lava normally just damages the player, when it suddenly insta-kills the player… Well, it’s an unexpected death for a first time player. Also, the level layout is unbalanced character wise with Tails and Knuckles able to access the centre cage at will, while Sonic has to take a run around several bone pillars and cross by the insta-death level to do so. However, item placement was alright, no glaring flaws visible there, but the rest of the map let it down.
Labyrinth Cavern Zone - 5
The music for this stage, while fitting for the theme, is incredible annoying. It’s a short loop that doesn’t sound all that great to begin with and by the end of a 5/10 minute match, it is very grating. The texturing here is very, very dull as well. So much blue, the green and black/brown cave walls offset this slightly, but it is very annoying regardless.
On the topic of visuals, the blackness that extends out far into the distance, just… Why? If you were attempting to give the stage the appearance of an underground cavern, the DSZ sky would have done the job just fine without looking so poor.
The death pits provided a nice risk/reward system, with groups of items or weapon rings only available by making the jumps. While this screwed me over several times, the deaths because of the pits were either my fault, or caused by another player shooting me off of a platform, nothing cheap about them so all is good there.
Complete Chaos Zone - 3
For a 60 minute rush job, this is surprisingly playable. However, the layout is not exactly ideal, with the blue spring section being simply annoying and the top left rooftop being irritating to reach, slow elevators is not fun for Sonic players.
Now, just to state the obvious. So very very blocky, many squares, MANY squares. Many squares, no weapon rings, make Whackjood go crazy. The fact that only the Bounce ring was present and the lack of other Weapon Panels was unforgivable and made the match, well, a red ring spam fest. Even though you submitted a version of the map with fixed weapon panels, rushing a map that close to the deadline is just begging for problems like that to occur :P
Oh, and special stage damage. While interesting, makes it easy for players to camp. Get a lead on the other players and gain invincibility from giving the other players points! Just pay 10 rings every few seconds while standing in the red water.
CTF
Storm Temple Zone – 3
Oh my, weapon rings and panels sitting on death pits? What happened there? Furthermore, using random monitors is a no go as well, make sure you use WRM’s and SRM’s.
The stage layout was questionable as well, the middle lower path was the direct route to and from the bases, and the red springs that takes the player to the upper path were not visible unless you take an unintuitive sharp turn as soon as you leave the base. As a result, most games on this map resulted in players using the middle path exclusively.
If anything, I liked the thunderclouds that served as the source for the stages water, a nice touch.
Concrete Conflict Zone - 4
This stage is so small, so tiny and as a result hectic, it became fun. Yeah, this map was a fast paced blast with small groups of players (Although, a bit much to handle with larger groups.)
With the item placement, I have to ask. Why oh why would you put 2 rail panels in each base? Using another panel in place of one of the rail panels would have been welcome.
Regarding the stage design, the middle ground for this stage is so small that it creates problems. By not giving the player any room to breath when playing (They are either in the other teams base, or their team is under attack and their flag stolen) it can get rather tiring for the player, as a point of comparison, Icicle Falls Zone is equally as hectic, but uses far more middle ground to keep the player from being on edge to much. While I’m on the topic of the stage design, I feel that the lifts in each base are flow breaking and makes escaping with the flag feel luck based as the flag carrier needs to leap onto the elevator as it is rising, or get pummelled with rings by the defending players and that player is out of luck if he or she can’t instantly jump on the lift.
Clockwork Towers Zone - 8
Crazy original theme get! That aside, this stage is fairly dull on the eyes with a lot of browns, greys and blacks but it never got to the point of being off-putting, most likely due to the interesting graphical detail. Such as the towers, windows and cogs.
The layout for this stage was initially confusing, giving the stage a sharp difficulty curve, due to the size of the bases. This issue is made more severe by the fact that there aren’t enough team banners in each base complicating the issue if a player is lost. However, the design is lovely to play with once the player knows the layout, with intertwining paths, passageways and alternate paths galore and some extra routes for players willing to take the risk, such as leaping from the bridge in the middle area through the window below.
While the cogs looked lovely, the spinning cogs on the other hand were ugly and buggy and to be honest, I feel the stage would have been better off if the cogs on the floor didn’t move, the spinning cogs on the ceiling were fine though as the insta-death pinch never got in the players way there.
But, that aside, there was a great risk reward system in place and thing placement worked fine so the stage was overall, great fun.
Desert Dash Zone – 3
Red team monitors at the blue base? Really? I think you messed up there, to say the least by creating quite the team imbalance.
That aside, the timed quicksand gimmick was awkward to play with and made capturing the flag feel luck based, either the sand is raised so you will get stuck, unable to escape with thok/fly/glide, or the sand is down and you can use the red springs to make a speedy escape to your base and some of weapon panels were places in areas that made them to risky or time consuming to worth getting, such as the grenade and scatter panels that can only be accessed when the quicksand is down.
The base design wasn’t fantastic either, by giving the flag runner a place to escape from firing sight as soon as he picks up the flag, the base was to difficult to defend.
Vivacious Valley Zone – 5
This stage was perfectly functional as a CTF stage, with alternate paths and a layout that was only mirrored on one axis to keep things varied, but the colour scheme was painful on the eyes while outside due to the bright yellow walls and the inside of the bases were rather bland. While I’m discussing the bases, giving the flag runner a grenade panel while he uses the alternate exit is awkward and makes it far to easy to escape with the flag.
Moving on, the level design outside of the bases was fine, if a little small. But that aside, there were no obvious glaring flaws in the outside area of the level, so all is good there.
Circuit
Wacky Tesseract Zone – 7
This was really good fun, and original in theme as well. Aside from the NiGHTs stage in the official circuit rotation, I can’t think of any other special stage themed race maps.
Visually this stage had some lovely geographical detail, with the scenary pillars and pyramids near the start, or the floating platforms that were enlarging and shrinking. Texturally, it was good for the most part. But a few rooms were bland to look at, such as the waving platform and the 2D area.
Gameplay wise, this map was constantly throwing new things at the player that kept it from being a thokfest and interesting at the same time… Almost constantly, the 2D section did very little for the gameplay and was uninteresting, serving only to make the laps longer to be honest. It needs to go.
Green Hill Zone – 2
This map is in dire need of additional starposts, it is possible to take the shortcut, touch the second starpost and run back to the start line to cheat the level by skipping the water section, with a faster time no less.
That aside, the map small checker texture is a pain visually and the floating spike balls do not fit the theme, normal spikes would have worked far better. The level layout wasn’t excellent either, during the water section, forcing the player to backtrack and take a far longer path if they fall into the water was not a good idea, the punishment for failure needs to be there, but far less of it.
Jungle Ruins Zone - 6
Yes, this stage looked lovely, it was interesting to see a good jungle themed level as well. The theme was interesting and the geographical detail was a pleasure to look at as well, such as the temple at the start, the collapsing floor that leaves brick shaped indents as well, the tube with water dripping out was interesting on top of these things.
In terms of the functionality as a race stage, this was a little short, but it worked fine regardless. However, with the branching paths at one point. I found this a little questionable as when the faster path is discovered the other path will never be used, although, in this case, the difference between the paths was too slight to be very noticeable. Although I noticed players constantly ran for the spiral instead of the staircase to collapsing walkway.
However, regarding gameplay glitches. If the player triggers the starpost in the quicksand then dies, the player will die upon respawning and in one netgame, a player got stuck in one of the cracks in the ground. To be honest, I’m not really sure how that happened, but it did regardless.
Egg Hall Zone - 8
I loved the detail used for the inaccessible areas of the stage, with sharps and facestabbers used as effective decoration, the areas within the boundaries of the playing area was nicely done as well.
Functionality wise, this stage worked for the most part, although the use of cannonballs is questionable as they aim for the players in the lead with no chance of hitting them, but with a slight chance to hit the players in the back, widening the gap between the players. On a hazard related note, the players who keep getting hit by the maces just need to be more careful.
Oh, and you included Tails/Knux paths that actually give them a slight fighting chance. <3 <3 <3
Arctic Caves Zone - 4
To be honest, this stage was bland and uninteresting to play because, well, aside from a few harmful water pits, there was little in play to provide a hazard for the player, also there were few landmarks in the stage as the two tunnels look almost identical which led to confusion in one race game as, after a teleporter monitor went off, players ran off in both directions in order to try and figure out which way to go.
That aside, the stage worked visually, the blue colour scheme was easy on the eyes but nothing really stood out about it either, but Eggman trapped in the ice was win enough to be worth it.
City Jump -1
Oh what, just, what? This only gets a point because it is playable. I think I’ll just run through what is wrong with this level, it comes with no redeeming qualities.
It’s a bunch of platforms one after another, just, that, a square of square platforms to jump on with a grand total of three textures used for the entire level giving the player nothing interesting to work with, furthermore, the player can just backtrack upon touching the first starpost for an unfair shortcut.
Oh, and it’s crazy short. I’ve ran out of things to say.