Just finished this map, here is my "review" as promised though there are people in this community much more capable at writing them than I, I've decided that I should try to be more vocal about what I play so that maybe we will see more stuff coming out when mappers see there are people playing and reviewing more often...
Anyways, I don't know if I've ever heard of you before or not, so I'm not sure if I've played anything else that you've released thus far (if this isn't your first), but I REALLY enjoyed this map. I played on Come Get Some and got 100% kills (261 I believe was the score! - Wow!). I didn't find any secrets though, but I also didn't actively search for them (I actually thought I had found a few but they weren't actually secrets, so it wasn't for a lack of trying). So as I said I played on Come Get Some, and I really got some! Lol.
Very large and detailed map that is very challenging. I had a lot of fun and was happy to beat it., but I'll be honest and say that no, it wasn't a "perfect run" (or "no death run", whatever the name they use these days lol) - I had to save and load quite a bit to get through to the finish. While I'm sure others will be able to plow through this quicker and with less deaths than me, it doesn't really matter. The difficulty here is not taking away from the overall enjoyment of this level. I am not familiar with the real-life location so I can't comment on how authentic it is to the source, but judging from the Google map, it certainly seems to be pretty spot on to the real place. This is certainly a more enjoyable "World Tour" than any of the ones we got officially. Great effort. This has inspired me to stop screwing around and get to making maps of my own. Please keep up the good work, and don't get discouraged. That's my short and sweet review, but below I'll give you (and other readers) some extra review info and input as a player to a mapper...
But first, here's some screenshots of my own:
I did run into a few bugs, but nothing that I would say are "game breaking", just the occasional sprite flickering and the like, but I don't think it's really a big deal since it is usually just stuff much further out from the player's view. There's also a few rooms that seem to change the palette of the player and enemies, but, again as a player I see this often in usermaps so maybe there's not much to work around that. Here's something onlookers shouldn't read until playing the map:
Textures don't seem to have any issues as far as I can see, and buildings and other things like that feel like they are all fairly realistic, at least on par with the original game I'd say so well done there, but I do agree with ck3d about the lighting and shading. It could use some work to make some areas look even better, but my personal recommendation would be to transform this level into a night themed map. I do like the daytime look, but I feel this map would really shine in nighttime, but this is just my opinion. I don't think it's a huge deal though, but maybe something to consider for future maps.
Enemy placement is very well done here and as a player, I think it was the strongest aspect to this level next to the architecture and texture layouts. I swear, something about this level makes the AI's act much smarter than they usually do, or at least it sure feels like it! Here's an example with a suggestion too: The starting apartment area might work better if when Duke jumps out, the inside collapses. There is only one other bathroom area and it is one of the areas I initially assumed was a secret area. To me, making this area become blocked off once the player escapes would prevent them from venturing back inside the apartment to refill their health. Maybe this was your intention, and if that's the case then don't change it. Anyways, as I was saying about the AI behavior seeming a little more intense here is when I ran back in there one time, I thought I was clear from enemy threats.... but I am not kidding, FOUR enforcers managed to jump their way into the apartment and fuck me all up! I wasn't expecting it and it was a very awesome moment. I really wish I could've filmed it in action because that was honestly really cool. There were a few other instances where I truly felt the AI was really trying to piss me off, and it made it all the more fun.
One other thing, there was an area of water (near the police crossing line) that maybe you could make where Duke can swim under there for a 4th secret? I'd like for there to maybe be a few more Duke lines scripted in to the final version of the map, but that's really all I can think of for this post. If I had to give it a star rating, I'd give it a 4/5 currently, but it will be 5/5 if you fix the issue in the spoiler. This is definitely a map I will revisit more than once, as it was very fun for me and I liked all the action. Again, great work!!