Colony 1 : The Colony

See 'Colony X' for my rants...

This campaign was a breath of fresh air. I adore this mapper's excellent id1 style (and this is coming from a guy whose bread and butter is Alkaline, Arcane Dimensions, Dwell, and the monolithic QBJ3. My reasons for giving 5 stars are as follows:

• The aesthetic is nailed. No over the top colored lighting as seen in many "vanilla" maps. LIghing, shadows, architecture, underwater sections all remain pure and natural looking. Very pleasing on the eye.
• No huge spamming enemy mobs. Thank You so much! One orgre and a deathknight in the right position with a couple of knights can get the player sweating, if used properly. Your focus on strategic, spread out encounters is excellent. Great logical flow to the levels in general. Please keep doing that. Murder mobs have a place but I'm glad it's not here. Spreading out the enemies throughout the level even amplifies the sense of exploration.
• Distinct areas within levels. Great job. Even though levels were linear, there was always a straight path forward, Switches were indicated very well. At no time was I wandering around looking for dumb progression gating nonsense.
• Overall aesthetic, underwater sections, geometry, layout. Beautiful use of textures. Very straighforward (in a "correct" way) and nothing over the top. It could have been used in DOPA. Of course there is room for improvement and expansion of levels, but every single moment I felt that Quake flow we all know and love. Great levels, and I'm hoping to see what comes next!

PS: I tested all levels with Arcane Dimensions, and for me it bumped up the fun even more!

I'll leave a written review just on this one to not spam (I will score the rest) etc. but this is a really lovely old school vanilla mini episode with small to medium sized maps. Vibe is nailed really well in maps 3 and 4 (nothing wrong with the tech bases in map 1 and 2 at all, I just prefer swampy and castle-y places). Cool idea for the secret map too (and the way to access it!), I wish it was longer if anything. Is / was there supposed to be a "Colony 5"? When you finish map 4 and the secret map the console says "colony 5 bsp was not found". Also like the other reviewer said, a slight shame that this was not uploaded together, otherwise it worked just fine, just put all the maps in the same folder.
PS: Bonus points on the slow / quiet / atmospheric start on map 4. Also the guacamole in map 3 is great lol.