UBerserker wrote:Lol did this map have no title
No official title, I guess the best name for this map would be
Fra'rr Lunar Village (IIRC as I can't check right now, I'm only sure of the "Lunar Village" part), as that is the actual name of the village as is mentioned on the sign post at the beginning of the third map of the original Shamu Quest campaign. Admittedly this name isn't very evocative!
This map is fascinating. To be honest I only played the original Shamu Quest series
after the remake. In fact,
Nak'halinra Peak is the first custom map I ever played! Well, the two Shamu Quest starter maps kick off their respective adventures in very different ways, with Fra'rr Lunar Village more mission-based. The main excuse is ridiculous (Skaarj took control of the lift; how is killing that monster in the church supposed to change anything? What kind of curse is this? Dumb) but whatever, the setting is epic. And the main quest is also introduced to you (the Crown of Na Pali as a powerful artifact that cannot fall in the wrong hands). The level is quite hard with all those Skaarj Troopers and Skaarj Lords (and respawns) and I did die here a couple of times or so. The boss battle is rather lame though, and clearly Chicoverde learned to use Titans much better later on (such as in
Valley of Eelhandra), but this key moment is the first to suggest clearly how consciously malevolent Soquatre is as an entity. Great setting, gotta say! If it were not for the inferior technical execution (BSP issues abound here, although they rarely impede gameplay), then this map (let's really just call it Fra'rr Lunar Village
) would be just as good as
Nak'halinra Peak (even though the latter sports more professional build overall)! Also, conceptually, this is probably a better start to a mappack than the first map of the new Shamu Quest series which made you feel like you were jumping right in the middle of the adventure, hence missing the beginning.
Great map, even today. It captures the classical Unreal spirit very well, there's a magic in the air here. However, the choice of music isn't bad but could have been better and it plays for too long, and while the first time I didn't pay attention to the lack of ambient sounds, I have to say that retrospectively this compares unfavourably to those maps that actually make extensive use of ambient sounds (especially outdoors in this case).
Conceptually grand as usual with Chico. Then there's the next map but that's for another time.