Reviews

The reviews that is going to be put up here will hopefully be more complete reviews and will each feature a few screenshots. Each map will be rated out of a possible 10 and will be rated for playability, looks, speed, and a few other minor stuff. You know! That tHiNg that makes a map!

Reviews by DRiVEN[D!]

This is the new map released for Stand: the Merge of Powers. Well I hope it wont be the newest for long! The layout of this map struck me as very nice (maybe cause it reminded me of a map that I made long ago for Quake1 hehehe. Well mine was just much smaller). The map consists mainly out of a few levels that are stacked on top of each other. through the use of teleporters and lifts you can get from the one level to the other very fast. What was kinda cool when we played the map was that there was the continuing sound of lifts going up and down as there are so many of them. The ammo placement and such points more towards normal DM instead of Stand: tMoP. But never the less, you can play it with Stand :] One more thing that I noticed right away was that there appears to be only one colored light troughout the map! Eh? This light is inside a pipe that comes out of a wall and appears to have dumped a heap of gravel beneath it. Stupid pipe! What do you think you are doing eh?

Mmm? Oh er sorry. I was eating chocolates that I got for xmas. The layout! The map is basically square with a block stacked on a block stacked on a block. The middle block is a bit bigger than the other two. The map is  riddled with lifts and teleporters which you can use to get up or down. Then there are also loads of catwalks and ledges if you want to get down or rocket jump up to. All these ledges and so makes it possible to be higher than your opponent most of the time and you also have a quick way to escape out of trouble by just dropping down and getting away. Each level has a corridor going around it so that you run round and round all day long! One of the rooms have a few boxes in it, and these days, when I see a box, I think Half Life. There isn't much Quake maps with boxes in it (nice textures for the boxes BTW :), but just about every Half Life map that I have seen so far has boxes in them. And well, I am getting a little bit tired of seeing boxes in HL. I know it is easy to use the prefabs that came with Worldcraft, but damn! Enough!!

Well, this is one of the few smaller maps with all the guns. Every one of them! w00p! The BFG is on a few boxes that you will have to jump for and the RL is on a 'stage' located at the bottom of the map. Then there is also a Body Armor near the top of the map on a catwalk that goes over a hole right above the RL (sheesh!). The Combat Armor is on a box that you will also have to jump for. There is lots of ammo in the map, which makes it good for  bigger games too. 6 Players is great fun, and ammo isn't always such a big problem. Once again, most of the guns has ammo near them, so games with weapons stay on works nicely. On the heap of gravel is a nice row of armor shards across it. There is 15 of these little noise makers which can be a great help, as long as everyone doesn't hear where you are when you pick it up!
The overall item placement is good. The spread of the guns and ammo throughout the map forces you to visit just about every room from time to time. Well done!

The map plays very nice, but one thing that I really likes was the way that battles progresses though the map. You will start the fight on one level, and as you fight you go down and down and then up agian until someone dies or gets away. I liked the whole vertical battle bit quite a lot. But something that I also noticed was that the r_speeds had some bad spikes here and there which whent up to about 1400 which doesn't do anything good for gameplay. Just watch out for this in future maps :]
I found one misplaced brush (take no note of the amount of armor) that doesn't look good at all! Hehehe. Ok so you don't really notice it, but here it is anyway. The pipe also looks like it isn't 100% right, but I am not sure if it supposed to be like this or what. Apart from all that, the textures are all still just so wonderful! Each Stand map so far has had it's own set of textures that all looks so great. I wish that more people will use custom textures as it is aways so easy to notice new textures (well after you have seen id's textures day after day, you start to notice the new ones! :).

Well man, a very nice map! Just be careful for those r_speeds in the future. But that misplaced brush brings Midpipeline down from a 9.7 to a 8.7 :] Nice!

This is the first map that was released in the .pak of Stand: the Merge of Powers. The map was thus made mainly for Stand play and therefore not so friendly to normal dm play as some of the ammo gets mixed up along the way.
Think of this map as the inside and a small outside of a castle with the front door one of two ways into the castle. Then there is a courtyard inside the castle from where you can get to the rest of it. There is a really cool looking sky in this map. Also a custom texture made by the staff of the Stand (sorry, don't know who exactly :). And of course, all the other textures are also custom made and great looking. I wanted to show you all how neat the guns look, so in each of the screenshots I left the gun in the picture so that you can gawk at it. In the pic on the left here is the Minigun. Hehehe. This one shoots those good old blaster bullets in all directions! EEK! Loads of fun with a lot of people in one room. No escape!

First of all I would like to point out that the gun in this screenshot is my favorite. This is the Laser Cutter. It uses those cool looking crystals as ammo and when you shoot, two green beams stream out of it and a certain distance from the gun, it starts to twist and go off in any direction. Good for shorter distances. Mmm....
The layout of the whole map is fairly easy and all the rooms arn't really close to each other. Most of the rooms have more that one way to enter them, which makes for good and strategic play. The room just outside the castle has a short moat in it with a bridge running over it. Onwards is a door that goes into the castle, but if you jump into the moat, you will get to a hole where you can also swim into and go to the GL room. The water tunnel is very long, but just when you start to drown, you get too the end. Sheesh! This works great if you want to listen for anyone going for the GL. Then a bit further on is two holes in the floor which goes into a small room with the Laser in it. The holes are just a little small, and you can sometimes get a little pissed during a game when you want to get in there fast. Then there is the big courtyard from where you can get to the other rooms. Both of the rooms that are left has two levels, and the upper levels are connected via a catwalk over the courtyard. Each of these rooms also has a lift or something in them to get you to the upside.

Over the whole map you will find the Crossbow, Sniper Gun, Minigun, Grenade Launcher, Flamethrower, Laser Cutter, Demoralizer and the Scullstick. Most of them has their own ammo lying close by so that you wont have too much trouble to keep shooting. Then all the armors are also around for you to find. There is also some health here and there to help you out when someone figured out how to use the Demoralizer. Doh! Item placement is very nicely done and even in the bigger games you don't have any trouble to always have some gun in your hand.
In this screenshot is the Flamethrower! Now, this actually throws flames, and when these hit the ground they explode with a small radius damage. One unit of ammo shoots out three of these flames, and since you can carry 200 units, you can bombard one spot for quite some time, non-stop. Would be great for CTF yes!

The map is mostly bright, but these textures just captures my heart every time. Since the courtyard is where most of the rooms connect, there is usually something going on there, and with the Demoralizer and  the Scullstick so close to each other, this is one room where big explosions and lots of frags takes place. Hehehe. Not a place to pass through without armor. The architecture looks great and the amount of detail is just about right  to make the map look great but also keeping r_speeds low. The courtyard does get a little laggy with all the guns in their full glory, but it's ok. :]
Oh and in this screenshot is the Sniper Gun! Yay! This is another one of may favorites. It shoots a small plasma ball, but it's a hitscan weapon. It's amost like a railgun that is more spectacular at the point of impact and less noticeble smoke trail. A nice gun if you are good with the hitscan type guns. But I keep having the feeling that this gun is easier to use than the Railgun. Don't know why though...

A very good looking map. Great texturing and architecture. The layout doesn't do anything to make it more realistic, it's more just a deathmatch map with some kewl features :] Go get the Stand and get this map! Front Door scores a 8.4

One thing about maps comeing from these guys is that they have some of the most exellent texture usage around. They make all of their own textures that is actually for the Stand: Merge of Powers mod. If you don't have this mod already (which you should) you are seriously missing out here! These guys has some of the best models and textures for all the new weapons which is just plain damn exellent. You must see these guns! My favorite gun is the laser. Hehehe... If you like to have the element of fun in a game and also like the feeling of mass destruction, you will love this mod as much as we do. The guns can be a little bit unpredictable now and then which makes it all the more fun to play on. Ohhh sniper rifle! This is also a fun one to use. When you get the mod  you also get a map which has all new textures in it and is also a pretty cool map.
The connectivity in this map is great! You can go anywhere from anywhere! Hehehe. Every room has plenty of entrances and exits. Which one are you going to use? No that one is occupied!

But let us start with the review already! This is a smaller DM map, but through the use of some clever design, you feel like you are inside a much bigger map. The level over level architecture is very nicely done and brings back that old DM4 spirit. There are lots of places to fall down into and also lots of stairs, lifts and ramps to get back up. There are a multitude of ledges and catwalks here for you to get higher than your opponent and blast him away, just be careful not to run out of that every precious ammo!
The textures in the map is just lovely. I love it! The lighting varies between a yellow and light blue which surrounds you with a spooky atmosphere. As you go deeper in the map, you notice how the marble walls have been covered with moss and dirt. The upper areas is nice and clean, but the pit in the middle of the map is all green and sticky. But there are some teleporters to get you out though! There are quite a few teleporters in the map. Your best bet would be to learn where each of them goes so that you can know where to cut players off. What I like about this map is that there are lots of places where if you can see the player, you can send a rocket to the next room and watch him as he walks into it. This is also something that you get in ZTN's Crucible (his best map so far I'd say :).

And here we have something that isn't much heard of these days. A BFG! Well if you run Stand, it's going to be another gun, but for normal DM, you get the BFG by jumping onto a small ledge from another. In the map is all the guns except the Chaingun. We played a 4 player game for a while which was one big load of fun, but you do run ot of ammo pretty fast. There is lots of cells in the map, but I was looking more for shells and rockets. The constant battles that breaks out every few seconds are usually a fight between a few ppl all on different platforms, shooting up and down at each other. Most of the guns has ammo near them which makes the map very freindly towards weapons stay on games. This helps so that you don't have to count on getting the gun to get ammo. We also have a Body Armor hanging around in one corridor just sitting there atracting lots of ppl around it to shoot it out. This is a place where lots of the battles takes place. But the big pit in the middle and the rooms around it is the big battle ground. This is where you can see most of the map and also most of the players. There is one room with a Megahealth on a pillar in the corner which you will have to jump for. This is also a room which gets plenty of attention.

The holes in the walls is not without purpose. Most of them can be used to snipe players through, or you cna just jump through them as a quick way to get into the room rather than to walk all the way. I try to avoid battles in the room with the two lifts and the RL cause I keep falling down and mess up. Hehee... Health is also not such a widely available thing, so you will have to be more careful as usual. Most of the lights comes from something. The textures that comes with the map also includes these cool looking round lights which looks pretty neat. Also the stairs and some things like that has some of the little round ligts on them. The map seems to be set in a rather medievil castle. The moss on the walls kinda gives you that feeling that this is not a place for wanted people. Maybe the king throws all the prisoners into this dungeon so that they can fight it out. The last one standing gets to go free!
The map moves fast and is fun to play on. Just what you have always wanted! I loveit and so do you! Just look at this cool round lightby the Megahealth in the corner on the screenshot! Ahhh...

This is one good looking, low r_speeds map with a great atmosphere to it. Fun to play for small games up to some bigger games. Ammo runs out though. Neverfly (cool name) scores a 8.6!