Unbelievable, spectacular, grandiose, and a noveltyÖthis describes the latest release from Robert A. Wey. I have a very difficult job now, because this map rivals Epic maps in appearance, but the framerates stink. Why are they so bad? Well, this map was an experiment to see what the Unreal engine was capable of. According to Mr. Wey, it passed with flying colors. This map has over 30,000 polys, and a small BSP error that I never noticed, so that's remarkable to say the least. The poly counts soar in some places; this makes the game almost unplayable for many people, which accounts for the low score. The Playability and Fun Factor are directly related, and they do more to hurt a score than anything else does. Unfortunately, a map is not much fun if you can't play it.

I would encourage EVERYBODY to download this map, even if it's too laggy to play, just to see this work of art. I regret that we can't post 15 screenshots, because virtually every spot on the map is a visual masterpiece. I'm going to give this map two separate scores: One score is the normal review score, the other is a score for people who own the faster systems available. For those people, I would rate this map close to a 9.5, since the bots don't explore some of the map. For the rest of us who own slower systems, read on.

The place is a castle. I'm not going to fill you in on the story of the map, because I want you to download it and check it all out, including the Readme. It makes the Epic castle maps look amateur, and if I could sell me place and move in, I'd do it. The map is so large that 16 bots really don't fill the place up enough. It might be about right for some people, but I like a little more gunplay.

Custom stuff came with the map, including a custom texture package. I really can't describe how nice the map looks, how much work went into texturing, aligning, etc., but you'll see. The Shane Church package was used for a lot of the map, and there was a great combination of base and detailed work to compliment one another.

The bots did okay, but they tend to stay away from some of the higher towers of the map. The highest spire owns the redeemer, and you become almost claustrophobic and dizzy as you climb the spiral staircase for this monster. The author mentions an update to this map, including better bot support, so this would help. The item placement was fine: There wasn't too much health, and I found myself exploring for weapons quite often.

The lighting was top notch. This place would have looked good even with poor lighting, but good illumination techniques elevated the lighting to excellent. The author wanted to include a custom music file, but it never came about. Still, you do have music to listen to, along with many ambient sounds, and mover sounds.

As a final note: The author has scripted swinging doors that work fine. But there is a glitch with them online in that they look bad on the client side of the server. This doesn't affect gameplay, but it just takes away from the visuals a bit. The author may already have a fix for this, so we'll have to see.