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I'm surprised there is no SoA thread yet - time to make one :-)
I just played halfway through again and watched the marathon from SDA. What can I say, consider me a fanboy from now on.
SoA, Quake's first mission pack, had been gathering dust on my harddrive, so when I untarred and rediscovered it, I was very pleasantly surprised. I remembered it to be OK, but it's really much more than that. It's great, as good as Beyond Belief.
It's not really something you'd consider "nice to look at" (hence no screenshots). What makes it so great is the intense gameplay, the secrets, the layout, and the overall build quality. There's not a bad map in there.
It has three episodes, the most remarkable being the first, which is completely base themed with some mine sections thrown in. There's a new monster, the unique Centroid (giant mechanical scorpion), and new weapons; a proximity mine launcher (press 6 to toggle) and the superb laser gun. The latter is so much fun that I couldn't put it down (impulse 225.) You get practically all weapons early, and lots of ammo, so there's no holding back. All in all some really good and extremely fun base maps.
Episode 2 is of a medieval/gothic theme. There's some intense fighting going on, good level design, just good flow. A bit like Quake's episode 2. It starts to become a tiny bit chaotic here, since you're mostly fighting gangs of several types of monsters at once. There's a new monster, the Gremlin, which is often seen dropping from ledges or out of small openings. They can theoretically steal your weapon and use it on you, but they go down too easily for this to be effective. Their sounds and animation are cool though.
Episode 3 carries on with the medieval theme. It reminds me of Quake's episode 4. It's visually pretty weird, and the action gets even more chaotic because of many weird secrets, traps and the twisted layout. You get another new weapon, the Mjölnir from Norse legend, which appropriately shoots lightning bolts on impact, but it's not as good as the laser gun.
There are new artifacts, the Horn of Conjuring (summons a friendly monster), the Empathy shield (not really clear what this does) and another kind of biosuit.
Verdict: Very much fun. Some of the coolest base maps around, if you like those.
There's a movie called Scourge Done Slick (at SDA/QDQ), but sadly I can't watch it as it crashes Joe and Proquake. :-(
AVI version Scourge done Slick:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/quake/videos.html
Sadly, it's on Fileplanet, but there's always Bugmenot.com.
I just played halfway through again and watched the marathon from SDA. What can I say, consider me a fanboy from now on.
SoA, Quake's first mission pack, had been gathering dust on my harddrive, so when I untarred and rediscovered it, I was very pleasantly surprised. I remembered it to be OK, but it's really much more than that. It's great, as good as Beyond Belief.
It's not really something you'd consider "nice to look at" (hence no screenshots). What makes it so great is the intense gameplay, the secrets, the layout, and the overall build quality. There's not a bad map in there.
It has three episodes, the most remarkable being the first, which is completely base themed with some mine sections thrown in. There's a new monster, the unique Centroid (giant mechanical scorpion), and new weapons; a proximity mine launcher (press 6 to toggle) and the superb laser gun. The latter is so much fun that I couldn't put it down (impulse 225.) You get practically all weapons early, and lots of ammo, so there's no holding back. All in all some really good and extremely fun base maps.
Episode 2 is of a medieval/gothic theme. There's some intense fighting going on, good level design, just good flow. A bit like Quake's episode 2. It starts to become a tiny bit chaotic here, since you're mostly fighting gangs of several types of monsters at once. There's a new monster, the Gremlin, which is often seen dropping from ledges or out of small openings. They can theoretically steal your weapon and use it on you, but they go down too easily for this to be effective. Their sounds and animation are cool though.
Episode 3 carries on with the medieval theme. It reminds me of Quake's episode 4. It's visually pretty weird, and the action gets even more chaotic because of many weird secrets, traps and the twisted layout. You get another new weapon, the Mjölnir from Norse legend, which appropriately shoots lightning bolts on impact, but it's not as good as the laser gun.
There are new artifacts, the Horn of Conjuring (summons a friendly monster), the Empathy shield (not really clear what this does) and another kind of biosuit.
Verdict: Very much fun. Some of the coolest base maps around, if you like those.
There's a movie called Scourge Done Slick (at SDA/QDQ), but sadly I can't watch it as it crashes Joe and Proquake. :-(
AVI version Scourge done Slick:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/quake/videos.html
Sadly, it's on Fileplanet, but there's always Bugmenot.com.
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