09/05/2016 - "Demonlord's Lair" by Shane Caudle

[Semfry]

Map Title: Demonlord's Lair
Author: Shane Caudle
From: Unreal
Filename: NaliLord.unr
Music Files: WarGate.umx, WarLord.umx



Video Playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfyOrjnXyrM

Sypnosis: One of the Skaarj's leaders stands guard over whatever lies ahead...

Discuss!

[Preki]

The Unreal's equivalent to Doom's Cyberdemon encounter, although it happens just a map before the final area. But unlike the latter this fight has a pretty dangerous arena, with lava pool limiting your movement. To make things worse, Warlord is not only tough, but also agile just as any other Skaarj out there. Of course you can take him out by shooting the stalactite above him, but that's just lame and not as fun as plunging Stone Titan on the bridge right into lava back at Velora Pass.

[Nightmare Kitteh]

A pretty awesome boss fight. Can be cheezed pretty easily on the earlier difficulities if you just shoot the stalactite above the Warlords head. This map makes me wish Unreal had a level dedicated to the element of fire or magma. Too bad Acerak didn't make it in.

[StalwartUK]

OK boss level. Nice use of flame & lava effects to create a hellish landscape.

[Semfry]

Does it's job as a small boss level, and the environment is hostile enough to make the introduction of the Warlord more intimidating (especially if you're not used to getting knocked around by it's rockets). The stalactite to weaken or outright one-shot the boss is also a nice secret.

[UBerserker]

The Unreal beta Warlord was some Blizzard-level-of-balance stupid shit. Able to shoot triplets of highly damaging rockets with splash damage that always homed on the target with 90% success rate.
At least that made the Warlord the actual strongest enemy in the game as it should always have been.

[Sat42]

Awesome boss, pretty cool arena. And yeah the stalactite secret is clever (I definitely used it on my last playthrough).

@UB: Blizzard have a good record for balancing things right (Starcraft...), but I suppose you're talking about their late entry into FPS (which I haven't tried)?