21st of November 2020
Chillin' | Single/Multi | Author: ToiletDuck64 | Download
The Review: You start off your day like Duke often does, by jumping
off your ship as it heads toward the horizon and an inevitable collision. This time
the ship crashes into a much larger alien ship, parked next to a research facility
located in the middle of a park. The facility houses a teleporter that you must activate
in order to reach your next objective.
The author relies mostly on vanilla looks for texturing & such, but the map has a unique feel
to it, as if not everything is quite right; it's the little things that feel a bit
off, mostly to the map's benefit. There are plenty of nifty little details, including a cool information screen,
scattered around the map. Visiting the alien spaceship right in front of the facility is optional (and I did
this only around halfway through the map), but I liked the level
of detail it has, which kinda reminded me of someone's LEGO project. Only the map's lighting was disappointing, relying almost
exclusively on uniform light levels and somewhat low visibility. The scale of your surroundings is realistic,
even too much so as it's not very accommodating to the game's running speed.
The basement of the
facility is flooded with slime; plenty of boots are provided, but a wrong turn or playing the
map in the "wrong order" might result in you having to take some damage - or abuse the crap
out of the jump key. A few puzzles must be solved to power up the teleporter. Hints are provided
and there are several viewscreens with a shit-ton of text and interesting background information - thank god Mapster32 has a proper function
for typing text now, as back in the day it'd have taken a day to type all that out. There's one
important hint that's probably easy to miss (even though I found it immediately), and there are a few
other annoyances along the way, but overall I liked the sense of exploration and working
my way toward the teleporter. I did find the
map's enemy placement weird though; almost all enemies appear in large groups, then there are
long segments where you don't come across anyone. Just don't waste time and ammo trying to take out all
the Pig Cops individually, as you can easily herd them into groups and take them out
accordingly with pipebombs. The map's scale may get in the way from time to time in combat situations,
but the map is so generous with supplies that I don't recall ever going below 50 hp.
Conclusion: Chillin' is a welcome, fresh-feeling map from an author who's mostly done Doom-type maps in the past. The author should be more mindful of scale in the future and lighting has a lot of room for improvement, but otherwise Chillin' is a solid piece of work. The map's somewhat expected-but-abrupt ending left me wanting a sequel, so hopefully one is on the way.
Rating: 91
