Played it and absolutely loved it! Though it's probably a map that requires some
acquired taste to fully appreciate. But let's start from the beginning - or from the negative aspects.
The first few minutes were a bit overwhelming to be honest. There's a lot of troopers attacking you from everywhere and respawning behind you/in the darkness where you can't clearly see them, which makes these fights at the beginning a bit frustrating, especially with a lot of stuff restricting your movement and lots of steam to burn you. It took me a while (actually by the time I got the blue keycard) before I really started feeling like I'm getting something done there. It was a bit difficult to really grasp the navigation, the actual extents of the map (with invisible walls blocking significant parts of the city) and what is going on at all there. Another thing I disliked were the constant steam sprites combined with darkness and elevation changes that made traversing the vents particularly painful. Also there's some cases of either spriteworks getting in the way or enemies getting entrapped in the spriteworks (I've had a commander stuck inside that long spritework vent on the side of the blue building). Now if these might sound like quite heavy criticisms, imagine how much I liked all the other aspects of the map that I pretty much can turn a blind eye over all of that!
First thing, design. This is absolutelly beautiful, from the level of details and how meticulously it is placed, through the complex sprite structures and intricate shadows, to how cohesive it all looks like, capturing the feeling of original Duke 3D, but also looking like a modern game. The sense of grandness of the scale is there, the city feels really immersive and the architecture is particularly well done. I really liked all the vents and air conditioners or all the other structural details on the rooftops and on the walls of the buildings, besides looking great it was also nice to platform over them. Using the "circular table" sprite for the shadow blend under the street lights was a brilliant idea, for a moment I just stood there trying to figure out how you managed to pull out such a smooth lighting, amazing! The apartment with all it's interactivity was mindblowing - almost every cupboard was openable and hid something inside, you could use the refridgerator and turn on/off the washing machine, the TV, the speakers... Wow! Another of my favourite little designs was the crane - it was all the way outside of the player area, but gladly you made it bright enough to serve as a focal point and fully showcase it's detailed design, it looks like a model. Nice touch with the round catwalk around the crane cabin too.
Now the gameplay. I admit I got fucked by the explosions on the street level a few times, but besides the confusing beginning and some monsters respawning too much "in your face", it was very good. My favourite parts were the parking lot and yellow key/construction site attack, as Merlijn pointed out already, but also the intense highway battle with the tanks - placing them behind the invisible walls made them a lot more dangerous since you can't just cheap them with autodestruct button, and standing behind the 2 attacking forces from both sides doesn't make Duke last too long, so it's quite a challenging battle, but also worth it since there's probably the only location of an RPG. I didn't use NVG that much while clearing the parking at first (didn't even realised I already had them at this point), but I found it particularly cool that all the monsters there (besides the commanders that make the taunting noises anyway) had glowing red eyes, but then also you were never sure whether it's just a pig cop, a tank or... a Battlelord
I mostly lured the stuff outside while clearing that part. Then used the NVG for the 2nd Battlelord that was surrounded by troopers, which made it all the more fun. As for the construction site attack wave, the street behind you was long enough so I could just back out and keep shooting RPG at whatever was coming my way, which left only the drones alive.
And finally, my favourite thing about this map - all the secrets, Easter eggs and alternative paths. It seems like you really put a lot of heart and effort into this map to make it more than just another forgettable 30 minutes of shooting aliens in a cool location, which I wholeheartedly appreciate! The jokes landed really well, I think I found most of them and they are a nice mix of both contemporary stuff (DNF 2001 leak), classical Duke stuff (sexual innuendos and all that little stuff like a tampons machine in a backalley) and tributes to the community and 25+ years of its legacy (from DN IP Gearbox box to the Shelly's arm in a backalley). Managed to found all the secrets as well, although some were very difficult, I don't think they were particularly unfair. Especially the ducks deserve some praise - they required just the right amount of exploration to find and were nicely spread around the map, not requiring going too far out of the way - and the reward was worth it too! The largest difficulties for me were with the "speedrun secret" and "boobs secret". I've located them both before, but then getting inside was a pain in the ass. I've probably tried pressing/shooting every boobs in the map (and there's plenty!) but it took me a while before I figured out
As for the speedrun secret, not sure if there was any hint, but I just went the brute force way and tried looking everywhere for it (also tried another playthrough to see how fast I can finish by using this secret, took me 1:30). The final secret I found was the one with steroids in the corner, was expecting something intricate again then randomly walked there
In conclusion, this is one of these levels that perfectly clicked with me, despite the trouble at the beginning. You should be proud of this one, Bruno, it's really quite an achievement to make something so complex and convey the intended feeling in the players!
Help
Duke4.net
DNF #1
Duke 3D #1
BRUNOHH.zip (285.79K)
