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22.10.2009 18:14
Quietly Judging You
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Vigilante - 19/10/09 Castaway Review
Introduction
If you remember, in 2008, Intel hosted a special Intel Crysis Mapping Contest. Offcourse, there were many entries, and one of them was also ZapWizard "Castaway" map, which I'm reviewing today for the new MyCrysis review competition. So, lets start shall we?
Level design
When I first started playing the map, I had mixed feelings. First of all, I liked the intro ZapWizard logo, and
the first custscene presentation. So, the first impression was quite good. Unfortunately, that feeling was not there for long. For example, the level design is nothing special, it has a lot of empty areas, bad textures and the whole level feels un-inspired, with repetive tree placement and a few areas could use some smoothing. Later on, the time of day changes, and you can see some improvements. I should also say that he made a very good job with the voxel editing, since the caves look very good.
Story
Well, the story is really basic and already seen before - you and your team are on a special assigment, and on the way there, the koreans attack your plane, causing it to explode. Soon, you wake up on the beach, where some strange machine damages your suit, which effects the gameplay pretty good, because you don't feel so powerful with the nanosuit, and gives you a lot of challenge. Well, later on, you must liberate the whole island from the KPA forces - do you succeed? Well, you will have to play the map if you want to find that out. The overall feeling of the story is actually good, because it is something to complete the gameplay
Gameplay:
Well, there is not much to say about gameplay, which is pretty simular to Crysis gameplay. You are a guy in a Nanosuit, fighting KPA (Koreans) forces. As I stated before, the only change in the actual gameplay mechanics is a weaker nanosuit, which gives you some disadvantage from the KPA forces, but you can still easily beat them, because there is a lot of ammo lying around. Let me stop there for a second - I found it kinda strange, that there is ammo everywhere, but no KPA's near them. There are a lot of other thing that are not exactly logical, for example some barrel and object placement. It's not a big minus, but it breaks the illusion. Moving on, the author included a various selection of tasks, but again I had a feeling of unispiration and dejavu, since there are only basic mission you have to do, for example, destroy a helicopter, kill that, go there... It would be better, if the player could do some adventuring of his own, and that you would have some kind of unlinear decision what to do. But then again, there are some interesting fights in the game, which is always a good thing.
Sound:
The sound is pretty good, the author put some of his time in voice acting, which turned out pretty good. He also included some interesting background music which was already in Crysis, and some other voice effects.
Conclusion
Well, my review sounds quite negative, but I think that this map is worth playing, and it has some good ideas and presentation, but the author could add some more ingredients to his map formula to make it even more spectacular and fun to play. Anyways, if you like Crysis, you're going to like this map, so don't hesitate and try it out yourself.
Plus:
- Explosive, interesting intro
- Various envieronments areas and tasks
- Good presentation
- Custom made voices
Minus:
- Uninspired level design
- Time of Day settings
Level Design: 7/10
Story: 5/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Sound: 9/10
Overall Score: 7/10
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23.10.2009 10:53
Community Manager
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Nice review Vigilante, this is a great submission and should help other contestants get an idea of the kind of thing we are looking for 
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23.10.2009 14:11
Lieutenant
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Yes very nice layout.
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24.10.2009 11:54
Green Warden
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Nice review Vig!
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