Level Of The Week Monday February 2nd Vostok Rising
by Ed Cope
(WWW Page)

Truly amazing level set inside a missile silo in a mountain. The architecture is stunning, the lighting subtle and atmospheric, the concept brilliant, the story crazy, and the beginning of the level with its detonator is pretty cool.

On the down side, getting up the rock at the start and into the base is a bit tricky, the level is way too short, and the ending is a little disappointing.

Vostok Rising is small but perfectly formed, and some areas put most of id's Quake II maps to shame...

1 - Vostok Rising
by Ed Cope
(WWW Page)

Truly amazing level set inside a missile silo in a mountain. The architecture is stunning, the lighting subtle and atmospheric, the concept brilliant, the story crazy, and the beginning of the level with its detonator is pretty cool.

On the down side, getting up the rock at the start and into the base is a bit tricky, the level is way too short, and the ending is a little disappointing.

Vostok Rising is small but perfectly formed, and some areas put most of id's Quake II maps to shame...

2 - Incarceration
by Greg 'Manx' Barr

Impressive level set inside a Strogg prison ship. You must escape from the brig (with your comrades if you're playing co-op) and destroy the ship. The design is awesome, with claustrophobic corridors and ducts leading into dwarfingly large open spaces. And the lighting is good as well - much more restrained than some of the gaudier levels out there.

3 - Strogg's Garage
by Ludovic Texier
(WWW Page)

A dedicated single player level at last from the creator of the excellent Warefare Warehouse deathmatch level... This is by far the best of the first generation of Quake II levels, an excellently constructed base level with some neat ideas, great design, nice lighting and plenty of monsters to keep you occupied.

I'd even go as far as to say that this map is better than many of id's original Q2 levels!

4 - Gib Me Liberty
by Ed Cope
(WWW Page)

An amazing level which oozes style with good design, nice lighting, and loads of great little touches. Gib is full of big open spaces but still manages a fair level of detail, and the architecture dwarfs you in places. The mission computer is used well, the objectives make some kind of sense, and even the exit is great, with you being flushed out of the level through a sewage pipe.

DO NOT miss this one.

5 - EQ2_SP1
by Erik Robson
(WWW Page)

The first real dedicated Quake II single player level...

Fairly small compared to id's levels, but big enough to keep you happy. This base level is nicely built, with good use of coloured lighting effects and some nice construction. It even makes use of the mission computer. And the particle accelerator at the end is a neat touch.

6 - The Outer Defences
by Tom Alphin III
(WWW Page)

Fairly impressive little base-style (well, what else did you expect?) level with a nice outdoors area and some well designed interior areas as well. It's only small, but much harder than Q2's original levels.

7 - Raw Sewage
by MarTim Team
(WWW Page)

A fairly impressive looking level from the MarTim team. "Raw Sewage" takes place in a sewage facility, which you have to fight your way around to find a way to drain the sewers, allowing you can escape through them, with the level ending with you climbing up a ladder to the surface... Relatively small by Quake II standards, but nicely built.

The polygon count gets pretty high in the main room, and there was a noticeable pause as you rounded a corner in the corridor approaching it. People with slower computers (mine's a P166 with 3Dfx) may notice a drop off of frame rate in that room...

The level would've benefitted from the use of the mission computer, but otherwise it's a tidy little level...

8 - The Man's Base
by Jon Seigel

Some amazing design and lighting - the first few rooms look eerily like id's original Quake II levels, and it looks great (maybe a little TOO similar). The warehouse section is terrible though, and brings the level crashing back down to earth. The end isn't very good either. But if only for the first room, this is still worth downloading.

9 - The Hideout
by YooShin Yang

A bad start to the level - there's monster stuck in wall and missing sound error messages, and the lowered area you start off standing in has a step just slightly too high to walk up, so you have to jump out of it, which just looks plain daft.

But from then on it's a great level. The lighting is a little garish in places, and there's a real surplus of monsters, but the design is generally good.

10 - Kronic Karnage
by Russell Hayward
(WWW Page)

Large and disorientating level full of narrow windy corridors. Some nicely constructed rooms (especially the cage room shown in the screenshot), but the linking corridors are a bit too extensive and featureless, and I kept ending up running round in circles...

The underwater section is pretty bland as well, but the way you're thrown out of it at the end is cool - I once saw a fish thrown clear out of the water and land thrashing around on the ground...


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