Quick Review by Seren

Posted:
8 Sep 2015, 14:31 (edited 8 Sep 15, 14:32 by Sir Ementaler)
For: The Citadel Tests
Level rating: 8.2
Rating
5.5

There is nothing interesting about this test. It’s just generic. At many points while playing you’ll likely ask yourself “did anybody actually test this?” and the true answer is “no, probably not”. This upload was edited dozens of times and no version ever was completely beatable. Currently you can’t pass level 23 without an extreme wall jump.

RecommendedReview by Rabid Rabb

Posted:
16 Sep 2013, 18:32 (edited 16 Sep 13, 18:58)
For: Arcane Observatory
Level rating: 7
Rating
7

Arcane Observatory

Someone cycled to the level and people started to criticise it, what i will use in my review.

Theme

Arcane Observatory, this name refers to WarCraft 3’s building where there are these magical floating stuffs in a building. What can I say, this level is totally based around that thing, thus there is the big building made of floating platforms, with a dark forest at the background, raining heavily with the really nicely fitting music (what is made by Alexander Brandon who made the musics for jj2 too), that adds a lot to the feeling while being at the this level. I feel like I was at a mediveal, magical sorcery place, genious, I love the Theme of the level.
[18:07:20] RabRabCC: the theme of the level is nice though
[18:07:25] PurpleJazzCC: well yes

20 out of 20

Eyecandy

Mainly it’s dark over there, it’s relaxing for the eyes. I especially like the background, even though it’s the basic offering of the tileset. There are some nice background parts, many windows, it’s simple but natural, what means you’ve put there the right amount of decoration. There aren’t confusing things, except for the BNC PUs, they are a little hidden but once you found them it’s no big deal, I mean, a part of them is visible. This amount of Eyecandy is really right for a CTF level (or anything else basically). It’s definietly nice.

20 out of 20

Layout

Well after all these nice points, I’m sad about it, but i have to say that the level is a little too much focused on the Theme and the look, what causes the level’s gameplay and layout to have problems.
Firstly I would explain it’s simplified layout: Bases in the middle routes side by side, Powerups at the 4 corners of the level, carrot in the middle. That sounds allright, it’s obviously balanced, fairly easy to understand. The carrot’s box is problematic though, since there is only a full carrot, and it’s really campy. The entrance of the carrot is campy, the box is a trap, and the exit of the box is also very campy, this makes a larger team game carrotless, as the flagholder can’t risk going to the carrot , because he/she has hardly any way to get out with more health. Moreover in these two critical places, the entrance of the carrot box and the exit from the box are the two ways where you can go to the other side, and they have seekers close so they are ultimate camp places. That is bad.
[18:05:45] -t3’: this dead end is a terrible design decision
[18:06:07] -t3’: it could just have a passage to the other side

He is talking about 69 23 to 73 25. I have to agree with him, there is a solution with triggers, so that the person can go up with the tube (or if he/she wants to get out he can get out by buttstomping) and the person who wants to go to the other side has one other nice way to do so.
[18:11:41] PurpleJazzCC: i don’t really like the platformish layout
Well In my view of things, being platformish isn’t an issue of layout, but okay, the level is platformish, I will come back to it at the gameplay section.
The layout is simple anyway, there aren’t many tactical issues, you can’t really chase else than in liner paths when the enemy isn’t far, you can rather camp.
It’s unique so that’s a good point.

16 out of 30

Gameplay

Duels work, since there is only one carrot, maybe in duels the carrot problem i explained right above is nonexsistent. It’s quite big though, so it might take a lot of time if someone decides to run around and hide. The size suggests 3v3, but the carrot and it’s campyness suggests 2v2 rather. In 3v3 it becomes a carrotless map, it might still be fun it does work then too, but it’s somewhat bad. The RF is crucial, BNC is useful too, and as there are both of them in both sides, it gives enough supply. The BNC’s dead-end is a bit dangerous, but I don’t think it’s a problem. The ammos are allright, they are functional in the level, yet there could be some non powerupped toaster, they might had some use. Ah and EB seems to be a little useless, there are no walls you could use it on else than the carrot box. The ammo placement is a bit agureable, you shouldn’t put seeks close a campy place.
Pits:
[18:06:20] PurpleJazzCC: i think the pits here are annoying and
[18:06:23] PurpleJazzCC: unnecessary
[18:06:46] PurpleJazzCC: they were fine in coffee
[18:06:52] PurpleJazzCC: but here they just seem really random
[18:07:12] PurpleJazzCC: a bit of a risky design choice considering this
[18:07:18] PurpleJazzCC: was to make a new mappool level

Many people (excluding me) hates pits. PJ is right, these pits aren’t carrying something tactical or intended, they are just there, like “why not?”. I can assume, the reason why the pits are there is the name, the theme’s concept, and now comes back what I said earlier, the theme is more in the focus than the gameplay. The base areas are neat, they can be approached from many ways, can be defended with seeks or something.
[18:09:52] Kenny-CDF-: i dont really like its flow :/
[18:12:20] PurpleJazzCC: yea lots of jumping required here

That’s true, you gotta jump a lot, but mainly the flow is allright I mean you don’t crush to unexpected obsticles, if I ignore occasionally falling down.
As the last thing about the gameplay I will say, the platformish layout. There are plenty of ways you can go on, you can always change direction, there aren’t anything to control your movement, like you needn’t go up, in the route you can just go right along, and this makes the players be very unexpectable, you can’t really predict where to go, and if you even could, you can not get in front of your enemy, or you can’t shoot him from a place. The carrot box and the middle place is an exception to this said, but I already told what’s bad about them.

14 out of 30

Conclusion

This is a nice level, it’s pretty, has a catchy feeling, yet the gameplay is dull, not too tactical, with a campy carrot box. What advice i would give is that, you need to plan the gameplay ahead and then decorate the level, what you, comrade, do quite right.

-RabidRabb

Review by Ron97

Posted:
17 Aug 2013, 10:32
For: Arcane Observatory
Level rating: 7
Rating
N/A

It was indeed possible as Spaz with some RF jumping. I’ve fixed it now, thank you very much for reporting it so soon.

RecommendedReview by Rabid Rabb

Posted:
5 Aug 2012, 14:46 (edited 5 Aug 12, 18:36)
For: Bannerwatch Base
Level rating: 7.7
Rating
7.5

Prelude

Lithium’s third uploaded CTF level just like the last one, containing pits, Bannerwatch Base. To be honest i don’t really get what the name means (even after googling it) but let’s stay at that its a kind of headquarters in a drear planet. I’m referring to the modern look and the shuttles in the background. So let’s see!

Eyecandy

Generally good, not glowing, not deceptive, natural (get it right) and goodlooking. I definetly like the spaceships in the background. The structure of the walls and layer 5 backgrouns are systematic mixed with random what is a right method in making such things. The windows as transpalucent wall items is loveable. They even have light around it, you used Lights pretty fine. On the other hand, this tileset is very rich in elements, yet the level doesn’t utilize it. The level doesn’t have just some tubecovers at the foreground layers, it doesn’t include any eyecandy, not even on masked walls. Some people find foreground things in the playing area annoying so it might count as a good point though. Moreover you optimized this nice and kind of simple eyecandy for low detail.

Rating:20/25

Layout

Mainly its like two bases facing eachother, each side the falg and +1 carrot in the middle, top toaster and bottom RF. between them there is an open area. The top of the bases are very abuseable places, considering that people hardly can get up to hit, if its camped. I was really thinking that maybe, there was some sneaky way to get up or shoot in, but no, I just could get hit to blink, and then have a try. I would suggest to make a tricky way to backstab the camper like a tube from the middle to up (also leaveing unmasked the place between the top warps). ‘Bout the lower tight way, it’s hard to chase trough, shooting in with Electroblaster isnt effecite, but it doesn’t ensure you to get to the base so it’s somewhat fine. Let’s turn the page to balancing. The level is symmetrical so its solved, its a very lazy solution though to mirror the half. Also, in such a small size i think it would be expected to make it assimetrical. Anyway the structure is fair, easy to learn.

Rating:9/15

Gameplay

This is the most important part of a level, especially in CTF. To begin, you recomend duels and 2v2s because of the size, however i tried a duel and it was very boring. The reason was that, there were 3 carrots and the map is full of defendable places. You hardly ever risk your life with chasing/attacking because your enemy can just hit you, you can’t even go with him and block his way or something because he can just simply turn back. This thing partially affects 2v2s too. Despite there you can risk attacking the flagholder, you will still have a quite hard time, he will mostly have a huge advantage. So both Duels and 2v2s are slow and actionless (obviously unless ppl make lots of mistakes). What’s next? 3v3s which lacks of this bad probably. I played the most of that in this level, it can keep 6 players ‘cause of the plenty of PUs and carrots, the little backward here is the small size. The fighting is near pure mindplay so is definetly great, furthermore, the bases themselves aren’t strongly campable, what makes a good tactical, domination game.
Turning to the bad, the ways are too narrow at certean places. Sadly i have to mention the flow here because its bothering. I usually have to retry jumping up with the srping down at the RF PUs. There is a little chance to fail to get the flag, you occasionally run to a srping or fall down so its bad. I’m not reflecting to that its a total failure, because its just time to get used to it (like most things), only that, it can weightly decrase the people’s impression.

Rating:24/35

Pickups

Lots of armour all over the small level, you always have something useful. I’m personally more the fan of big ammo piles to reload, but whatever. The powerup choice is definetly awesome. BNC would be too powerful, seeker wouldn’t really fit, but here i find myself using RF and Toaster effectively in face to face combat. The PUs are hardly controllable, even decreasing the functionality of duels (but increase 3v3’s)(imo). The toaster PU’s placement is fine, yet The RF powerup freaked me out a litte bit, it definetly needs time to get used it. At first glance i didn’t get what’s with the +1 carrots, but they are good and original, i didn’t really like it at the begining, but the more i played the more i liked it. The full corrot is in the center if the map, with warps leading to it. I once shooted it down from myself, with spamming some RFs, was funny. What to say, greatly placed. Maybe the only thing that makes the top place bad to camp is that there isn’t too much ammo, i find this nice, but if you go there with filled pockets you wont have a bad time. Oh and you left there some Daamm tasty chocolates! NOM NOM!

Rating:17/20

Music

Greatly fits. I personally love it. By the way it is named “Cosmic Outflow” and is made by Falcon and Pulse in 1996 (you should add it, really, they deserve it!).

Rating:5/5

Ending

Nice Job Sir, it’s a good level. Probably would be even better if you took my suggestions into consideration.

7.5 out of 10

~RabidRabb

Review by Ron97

Posted:
2 Aug 2012, 12:26
For: Bannerwatch Base
Level rating: 7.7
Rating
N/A

You weren’t a BETAtester, you played a duel after the level was released. However, I might add a thanks message including all the people who helped with 2v2s/3v3s and a duel on the first day :)

RecommendedReview by DrizzŸ

Posted:
2 Aug 2012, 12:14 (edited 13 Sep 12, 17:53 by cooba)
For: Bannerwatch Base
Level rating: 7.7
Rating
9

I want to rate this level a 9 since I tested it with a duel with sean.

GAMEPLAY: Very good except i recommend using Toaster for the bottom part where RF’s are because if you use Rf’s there they will bounce you all over the place and you will lose control.

EYECANDY:Backgrounds are cool and funky although it looks like one side of layer 4 has just been reversed….but otherwise it looks good

PIT: The put is good it is hard to get out if ya fall in.

CARROT PLACEMENT:great placement i like how you have to use the electro gun to get the 1+ c.

DL?: yea

One question though,why are the choco bars in there and i was in a 2v2 an i got a sugar rush is that supposed to happen?

RecommendedQuick Review by HiddenPalace

Posted:
24 Jul 2012, 18:35
For: Serbian Language File
Level rating: 9.3
Rating
10

i live in montenegro so this is my language

Review by GLaDOS

Posted:
13 May 2012, 18:46
For: Perfect Battle Arena
Level rating: 9
Rating
N/A

Nice map!
Thank you very much, Lithium! :3

Review by cooba

Posted:
13 May 2012, 18:01 (edited 13 May 12, 18:50)
For: Perfect Battle Arena
Level rating: 9
Rating
N/A

Lithium: Fair enough, I didn’t notice that.

Review by Ron97

Posted:
13 May 2012, 13:07 (edited 13 May 12, 13:24)
For: Perfect Battle Arena
Level rating: 9
Rating
N/A

Cooba: they were BETATESTERS, they had ACCESS to the level. Pretty much the same as with Rag and you.

RecommendedQuick Review by Zoro

Posted:
13 May 2012, 10:43 (edited 13 May 12, 21:40)
For: Perfect Battle Arena
Level rating: 9
Rating
9

Happy birthday Glados!!

And good level, gj Lith!

RecommendedQuick Review by wKtK

Posted:
13 May 2012, 10:19 (edited 13 May 12, 18:46)
For: Perfect Battle Arena
Level rating: 9
Rating
9

Happy birthday!

The level looks great, I’ll add it to my levellist.

Review by 1wumpa

Posted:
25 Jan 2012, 20:57
For: The Citadel Tests
Level rating: 8.2
Rating
N/A

Ron! i stuck at pos 422,323 because of float up at the end of lvl10 :(. Can you fix that?

RecommendedQuick Review by Toni_

Posted:
21 Jan 2012, 10:28 (edited 22 Jan 12, 18:58)
For: [SS3] Heat Shrine
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
8

It’s kinda hard to move here, idd. There are a lot of sucker tubes, and you don’t know exactly where will you exit on the end. I see, you fixed tilebugs and it’s a little better now. Maybe overloaded with ammo and warps, just like Ktos said. Eyecandy is good, and also OVERLOADED WITH CAKES! You get fat if you eat much cakes. DR!

RecommendedReview by Ktos.

Posted:
17 Jan 2012, 16:13 (edited 23 Jan 12, 15:57)
For: [SS3] Heat Shrine
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
7.7

I’ve decided to write full review, mostly because I couldn’t match in 350 character lenght rule for quick review(really, if the max lenght was around 600 I could easily match and create much smaller review, but I couldn’t so I wrote a full one. Isn’t it quite stupid when I can’t decide if the review is quick?).

Before I rated this map for 8, but I haven’t tested it really, just run around for few seconds to see how the level is. Still, its not that bad but its a bit annoying. Hard to move around. Actually, it feels like the creator of this didn’t liked players so he made a lot of spots where he can easily fall to sucker tube that brings them back or forcing them to make some jumps in rather strange way, like demanding players to make everything perfect(jumping to RF area is quite annoying). I don’t like lower path, because it sucks, takes much time and can be annoying because of pits and sucker tubes over players.

This level for me feels like its much smaller than it is. Why? Overloaded with some events. You tried to put everything in it, not really good way of creating gameplay. Too many warps, too many sucker tubes of which two are pointless and the only reason they are there is to annoy player. I want more space, I would understand if it was 20×15 level, they are supposed to be crowded. This one though should use more space. Just few minor changes, sometimes even One Way Floor event makes level feel a bit more spacious. This level lacks One Way Floor event. It also lacks space. Seriously. It’s hard to move and sometimes its made on purpose, trying to master this level might be very annoying, tiring and pointless because probably noone would like to play there anyway. Also, springs leading to warps the most to the left/right could use oneways under them.

Ammo placement is fine, I can’t say it’s not, although it would be a little more comfortable to put oneway floor under RF power up. Everything is almost fine, but there is just… too much of everything. Too many seeks mostly, no way you can run out of ammo. There should be more bouncers instead of seeks in my opinion. Also, probably for a level like that you won’t get sugar rush during the game anyway, but it’s good to see all of those cakes around.

Eyecandy is nice, hard to say anything else. Warps next to bases(to which you can get via sucker tube) have got layer 3 bug(hard to notice that while playing, but actually whole eyecandy is only visual problem, and I have noticed this), thats the only bug I have found. Everything else is fine and the level looks nice even on low detail(I mean, nothing what looks like serious tilebugs), though it doesn’t matter that much. I have found annoying only one place where tiles used for regular levels are on layer 3(right and left from RF powerup), at the beggining it was confusing, later I got used to that.

Overall: without much space, annoying, hard to move, overloaded, but its looking good. I just found it hard to move here, and that is the most annoying thing about this level. It’s not a bad level anyway, not that bad to rate it less than 7. The thing I liked the most here was eyecandy, and its worth downloading just to see how it looks(because why not).

That’s all I guess.

Edit: Oh, thats nice. I feel this one will be more playable now so I raised the rating. Thanks and good job anyway!

Review by Ron97

Posted:
16 Jan 2012, 09:08
For: The Citadel Tests
Level rating: 8.2
Rating
N/A

Fixed.

RecommendedQuick Review by wKtK

Posted:
17 Dec 2011, 15:26
For: The Citadel Tests
Level rating: 8.2
Rating
9.5

Looks good, I’ll add this to the levellist :3

RecommendedQuick Review by Zoro

Posted:
29 Sep 2011, 08:22 (edited 16 Jan 12, 20:46)
For: The Citadel Tests
Level rating: 8.2
Rating
9.2

Good one! Nice eyecandy, nice difficult tests… Wanted to do a long review but hadn’t enough time… Sorry..

GG

RecommendedQuick Review by Tweeky

Posted:
25 Sep 2011, 17:17
For: The Citadel Tests
Level rating: 8.2
Rating
8.8

nice :D

RecommendedQuick Review by HordY

Posted:
22 Apr 2011, 08:04
For: Serbian Language File
Level rating: 9.3
Rating
10

Serbia to Tokio :)

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