Okay, class, a little history. Back in the days of Unreal 1, Mark 'Oz' Austin released DM-Observatory, which was generally regarded as one of, if not the best third-party deathmatch map made for that game. When the Deathmatch oriented Unreal Tournament came out, a conversion of Observatory seemed perfectly natural. And so it was done: Entropy's Dm-Beholden was released a few weeks after the game. Three months later, Oz released his 'official' sequel, DM-Observatory][, which FWIW has been on my hard drive so long I honestly forgot that it was third party. And finally, Entropy went back to the Observatory to do a second remake, DM-Requiem. Got all that? And does Beholden stand on its own? Kinda.

Gameplay is fine, with plenty of z-axis to be had, even if the battle tends to gravitate to the outside area all the time. The map itself has more playing space than Observatory][; you can fight on the roof of the main building and have access to its perimeter, to an extent. Bots are well pathed, and are maybe a bit tougher than usual.

On the negative side, Framerates are a tad spotty--250 polys aren't uncommon, although you can't quite hit 300 unless you abuse the Impact Hammer; most systems should be fine however. Yet, it's the lighting that gets me most of all; some of the colored lighting is just too over the top for its own good, especially around the redeemer, and in a couple places there's color w/o lighting to justify. I also can't get over the overuse of bookcase textures--could you imagine how inconvenient it would be to have bookcases half-buried by a staircase? (This reappeared in Observatory][ and drove me just as batty.) Apart from that, there's really nothing wrong with the level, but...

Beholden really isn't a bad map. In other circumstances I'd recommend it without hesitation. But let's face it: it's been done before. Thrice. And what with Oz's interpretation of his own map seeming to be the de facto standard (and imo much better), Beholden just seems redundant.