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Area 15 - Nvidia Bunker by Casey
Reviewed by RawShark webmaster of RawShark's Quake2 maps
Filename: nv15.pk3
The sole purpose of this map is to show just how much more detail can be achieved with the new chipset from NVidia, used in the now famous GeForce card. Wrapped up in the zip file is a demo called nv15demo that can be used to benchmark the map on your system. I had to push my shitty ATI Rage Pro card to the brink to take some screenshots of this map and still do it justice! However, as you can see, this is a really detailed map and looks great. Any of you GeForce owners out there, start downloading now and then come back and read the rest of this review :)
The author is Casey of the Threewave Team (see also Q3wctf.pk3) and he's done one hell of a job, using nothing out of the ordinary, no custom textures (well - a few), nothing. This should be a lesson to all those authors out there who make shitty looking maps using the same tools as this man did - you can do much better!! I really like the "Forbidden Planet" inspired power plant room - it's a fav film of mine, and it adds a cool Tech element to the map like none seen to date. Screw Gothic - this is the way Quake3 SHOULD look!!
Playwise, it's a nice medium size FFA map, or alternatively a great Tourney map for 2 expert players. All weapons except BFG and Railgun, plenty of ammo, Megahealth and Quad Damage, some armour. Perfect choice of items for a good game. Rocket Launcher would have to be my weapon of choice, but then it usually is. This map supports bots and the .aas file is actually quite good.
A great looking map, but don't bother unless you have a kick-ass graphics card, preferably the GeForce that the map was written for. The future of video game graphics is hidden within the walls of the Nvidia Bunker - start saving up for those expensive graphics cards - it looks like they're gonna be worth it!
Does anyone else think it would be cool if Casey did a Star Trek themed map similar in style to this one? I think that would rule!! In fact, there is a game of Star Trek: Voyager coming out this summer (based on the Quake3 engine). If the maps were similar to this one, it would be certainly worth buying :)
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