AS-Area51beta
Map Info
	File Name as-area51beta.zip Author obi wan kaNEWBIE Gametype UT Assault Date Added 05-28-2000 File Version 1.00 File Size 737 kb Player Count 6-10 Map Description None Review Rating 6.5 User Rating 6 Overall Rating 6.5
Review
Reviewer Gnome and Sapper Awe Score:  1.5/3 Date 09-01-2005 Build Score:  2.5/3 Review Schema Cast Score:  2.5/3 User Point:  0 Overall Score:  6.5/10 AS-Area51b by obi wan kaNEWBIE AWE: 1.5 BUILD: 2.5 CAST: 2.5 ADRENALINE RATING: 4/5 RECOMMENDED NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 10-12 GNOME: I'll be honest with you Sapper, I never actually thought I'd ever see a decent Assault map not released back Epic. SAPPER: What? Sudden you're a pessimist? GNOME: No no, it's just that most of the Assault maps I have played really didn't have much in the way of storyline. Also really can't be played as botmatches for all the extra AI stuff that authors never bother themselves with. For the most part, usually just boring. SAPPER: I'm almost afraid to ask you what you thought of this map. GNOME: I thought it was great! SAPPER: Oh good...I thought it was great too. THE STORY GNOME: Rumor has it that on the night of July 4th, 1947, an alien spacecraft with three alien occupants crash landed on Earth less than 40 miles outside the town of Roswell, New Mexico. Within 48 hours, the entire world had turned their eyes to what had become known as the Roswell incident. Numerous witnesses came forward to local media with their own accounts of what they saw. The U.S. government, seeking to contain the situation released bulletins to the general public claiming that they simply had a crashed weather balloon that, due to unexpected atmopheric conditions, created a series of lights that appeared to be some sort of extra-terrestrial phenomenon. Over the next five years, the news of the Roswell incident spread like wildfire breeding mixed tales of what actually happened. Some believed that the U.S. government really did capture a crashed UFO. Some believed that the government wouldn't lie to them about a crashed weather balloon. Others believed that the U.S. Air Force were conducting tests of a secret new aircraft but something went wrong. More witnesses came forward, some of which included former military staff who claimed to have first hand knowledge of what really happened. Many of these cases were dismissed while others turned out to be more coverups. This further fueled the public's interested when the military established a base about 50 miles outside of Las Vegas, Nevada called Groom Lake, also known as Area 51, for the purposes of testing new aircraft according to information given to the media. Many found it odd that for the next 20 years, no one was actually able to find this so called Area 51 base, and when the location was finally determined two decades later, it was still more heavily guarded than any other known U.S. installation. There were reports of unusual building uncharacteristic of an aviation base and claims of silo doors and other small structures identifying the presense of an massive underground facility. It was later believed that Area 51 and the Roswell Incident were connected and that the wreckage and the bodies had been moved there for study. It wasn't until July of 1994 when the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force released its findings on and exhaustive search for records in response to a General Accounting Office inquiry five years earlier. Their conclusions indicated that the aliens observed in the New Mexico desert were actually anthropomophic test dummies that were used in high altitude balloons for scientific research and that the event was actually a crashed weather balloon. By the dawn of the 21st century, the Roswell Incident had almost been forgotten and public interest in Area 51 had subsided. However, there are still some rumors and still bits and pieces of misplaced evidence that still have people asking the question: "What really happened?" SAPPER: Are you finished? Anyone could look that up on Google or MSN Search if they really wanted to know. GNOME: I think it's important to provide accurate information wherever possible. THE OBJECTIVES SAPPER: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to assault the US military installaion known as Area 51 and capture the body of a alien for study. Your objectives are as follows: 1. Lay siege to the heavily guarded base entrance and force the doors open by destorying the spotlights in the guard towers. 2. Find your way to the security center and destory the CPU to disable the installations security systems and open the giant blast doors to the holding cell where you'll find the alien. 3. Get to the satellite tower and deactivate the communications array. Without it, the underground facility's external weapons defense systems will shut down. 4. Get downstairs and exterminate the alien beast so that it can be safely transported to your own research lab for study. THE AWE FACTOR GNOME: To be honest, I'm awed that I'm playing a decent Assault map, but apparently that kind of awe doesn't count. Although the architectual theme here was a little bland and texturing was pretty basic, the lighting was used to great effect. SAPPER: The thing I didn't agree with were the light boxes that pointed upward yet illuminated the whole area around it. Should have utilized different forms of lighting such as search lights in light boxes instead of standard radius light. Would have made more sense. GNOME: Wow Sapper, you didn't even complain about the few texture misalignments. SAPPER: That's because their in an area that you don't generally go to anyway. THE BUILD GNOME: Fabulous use of custom imported brushes and terrain work was reasonably well done. In fact, their was plenty of appropriate sound effects and decent background music picks. I was most impressed by the flawless use of all sorts of different movers from doors and hatches to moving spotlights to shattering glass. Although I think that shattered glass effect needs to be a little larger, it was all very well done. SAPPER: It's not fair! I have no HOMs to complain about, no BSP errors to whine about, no real flaws at all to speak of. So I'm just gonna say that it's not really what I expected from the real Area 51 and leave it at that. THE CAST GNOME: How many times did we play this map Sapper? SAPPER: More than any other Assault map we've ever played. GNOME: As if to drive the point home, this thing plays wonderfully. We had a fine time playing a lan-based botmatch between the two of us. As soon as we booted this one up at the local netcafe however, the fun factor shot through the roof. SAPPER: There's not enough ammo. GNOME: We had a hell of a time trying to breach the main entrance let alone complete the rest of the objectives. The best kinds of Assault maps are the ones when the advantage is tilted in favor of the defenders and this one definately falls into that category. If you play this map as a sniper arena with a full load of real people...well, I wish you all the best of luck. SAPPER: It should be noted that the cast gets marks for an additional mission objective that is not stated but if you are able to complete it, you'll have an alternative entrance to the bunker that just might be safer when combating the monster. Unfortunately, the cast also get marks taken off for defending bots sometimes attacking and killing the alien thereby completing the mission for the attacking team. And sometimes the queen won't attack the bots...even though the bots will actually attack the queen. Although the bots' AI for an Assault map is above average, extensive work is still necessary. OVERALL GNOME: This is definately one of the better Assault maps that I've played. Although it really doesn't have much of an end sequence and isn't as beautifully constructed as AS-HiSpeed or AS-Mazon, it certainly takes the cake for being the most fun, for me anyway. SAPPER: Yeah...I thought it was great too.
Map Comments
{Linkin Park}Master 06-10-2003 12:15 AM MDT Rating: 6   sometimes the door gets stuck (the underground door)ok map though tenshihan 07-03-2003 04:46 AM MDT Rating: 7   Ya, this map is cool, but a couple of things I would fix; 1) give the attacking team more cover for approach, the defenders can snipe you too easily. 2) Make the defenders outside walls higher or something to stop attackers from jumping over when using the low-gravity mutator (or rocket-jumping). ...Heh, cool concept though. KRYZPO 10-30-2003 05:53 PM MST Rating: 5   YEAH COOL CONCEPT,BUT DUDE THERE'S NO ALIEN THE LAST PART IS KIND OF SAD IS LIKE YOU DID ALL THOSE OBJECTIVES FOR JUST GO TO A ROOM!!! AND IT'S A PRETTY BAD DECORATED ONE!! DeadUnGone 11-15-2003 07:33 PM MST Rating: 5   Humm, got the original, read the note, got the follow up, where is the Alien then. Gone for tea? What am I missing? Do like the level though, fast, furious and loads'o'blood... JoKeRmAn 06-19-2004 09:27 PM MDT Rating: 0   THERE IS NO ALIEN WHAT W+A WASTE OF TIME PUTTING IN THE BETA WHEN IT IS NOT EVEN FIXED XepptizZ 06-20-2004 12:44 PM MDT Rating: 4   Important:There is an alien, I know cause I killed it, but I've noticed some PC's will run UT wich won't generated the monsters including birds titans and so on. The wurst is reinstalling UT won't help, formatting is an option if you're desparet. It's way to empty for a hidden base, the archi is way to simple. I've got a treasure chest of ideas for such maps, but never tried to engaged an assault level. One big error of the map is when you're defending you actuallly kill the alien (queen) before the attackers do. This means the attackers can NEVER win!!! LOL Ideas for such level; -vent-shafts for an alternative way to get in. -Laser wich can trigger guns warnings and so on. -main power generator to knock of those lasers!!! -Code-triggers for entering secret areas. (I know bots will have problems here) -Mainframe room where th code can be found. Here are a lot of ideas free to use, because I'm not gonna make any assault maps anyways. You can contact me if you like, but that's up to you, GreetZ XepptizZ billyjoels 09-11-2004 03:46 PM MDT Rating: 10   joeanxvjafe Commander2 08-03-2005 01:16 AM MDT Rating: 8   An old time favorite of mine, I remember this a long time ago. I remember the alien, too... But reading the reviews discourage me. Oh well. *downloads again anyway* Manticore 09-02-2005 08:31 AM MDT Rating: 7   An old favourite. Fun assault map.... Vatcilli zeitchef 09-02-2005 10:41 AM MDT Rating: 8   I have two installations of ut one which does not and one which does support monsters. however if you play along with a server that does it won't matter anyway. Nice map -2 for making the map in a way not everyone can play it (hint you may like to use the Teammonser scrips in AS TheTower and GreatEscape have not seen any computer that does not support those) WolfZword 09-06-2005 04:28 PM MDT Rating: 7.5   I played this map about 2 times after downloading it. The first time, I destroyed the CPU before taking out communications. The second time I did that in reverse order. So I guess either the bots got enough brains to shoot the queen or something bad happens if you take out communications first.