The Nullspace

Very enjoyable overall. I'm generally just glad to see the minimalist brutalist style across Quake, as you can still manage to get a lot of variety even with constraints of building on grid 64 and keeping things super minimal.

This feels like a culmination of ZetaByte's general run-and-gun style with lots of low-tier enemies and combat focusing on the SNG for blasting through them, while having to handle tricky high-tier enemies placed strategically. You can really feel the care and attention put into arranging combat in clever, challenging, and puzzle-y ways. Another staple of ZetaByt's style is loads of ogres/grenades raining down on the player, a slow escalation of knights/hellknights to fiends, then shamblers, with vores and enforcers up above. Really good stuff!

Some downsides to the episode:
- I personally didn't enjoy the thick fog. I think turning the fog down to .02 or .03 (down from the default .08) lets the player see the world around them, and it looks great! I don't see the reason to hide the awesome abstract structures floating around in void. I found the experience much more epic and moody when I played through it a second time with fog density .025.
- A few battles felt a bit annoying, as ZetaByt uses vores and enforcers and super annoying grunts on high places in the distance, while dealing with small hordes on the ground. I think with a few less projectile enemies that you just can't see (especially because of the fog!), the combat would still feel hard and puzzley, but less annoying. The last battle especially suffers from this, on top of the fact that it's a pretty basic Cthon fight (shoot the dude until he dies). Grunts off in the distance up high in the fog hitscanning you while you're handling the fun stuff down below is... a bit frustrating.
Another note on the art: I think it would have been nice to have some aesthetc variety across maps - maybe a change in fog color and concrete color per map? I made it a point to have my own brutalist episode have a sense of progression which the sunlight, fog, and concrete, and even liquids match. Just so that it doesn't feel like one big map, rather than disaparate maps in an episode.

Still, I don't want the downsides to overshadow the goodness that is this episode. I love the simplicity of the combat-focused encounters, the way the whole thing feels cohesive and solid. More than anything, it's really really fun!

Awesome work ZetaByt!

I had a good time with this mod, encounters are fun and difficulty is very well balanced. I also do love some abstract brutalist landscape, but I feel that this abstractness could have been a bit more bold in terms of level design. Anyway, give this a go, it won't disappoint you!

Don't really see the super thick foggy aesthetic much in Quake, generally see it in Entsoy maps that focus on delivering nice silhouettes. It is however prevalent in anything related to Brutalism I find, very Half Life 2 and Portal especially though here it really is just nicely shaved / carved monoliths, no sign of life (outside of the enemies Ranger rudely wakes up lol). Very cozy. I really dug jumping around and minding my footwork, progression was good and at times quite challenging. Also hurray for coagula.

I don't really like bunnyhopping maps.
But this map pack is definitely in the better end.

Skillful handling of a consistent, single theme. Appropiate lighting and monster population; very good! And very playable!

....But i still hate bunnyhopping...

Thanks for your work, and thanks for sharing!

At the beginning of the campaign I thought that the theme would get boring over 5 maps, but I was proven wrong. Again and again, exciting battles alternated with thrilling architecture so that it never got dull. Even though the theme is of course very dark, I had a lot of fun. Thank you very much.

Wonderful choices of music and beautiful simplicity in its presentation. The start map is a treat with its hidden gems. I went out of my way to explore and found the Nightmare skill before downgrading the difficulty again (I'm too weak for NM). There are too many teleporting enemies in map IV for my taste, but overall, a great map set. Highly recommend checking it out.

I never played a map with such a lot of floating concrete cubes. It's the complete brutalist minimalism overkill.

The beauty of total reduction to the essential. Only grey, white, and all shadings between. No plants, windows, water. Just as it's in real life The Brutalist Volumes were spring colors, compared to this maps.

I would have awarded only 4 stars, because I really don't like hordes of monsters (IV) and boss fights, may it be Chthons or whatever else (V).

Also I will never understand why knights and dead knights mess around in such a technical environment. But maybe they were beamed there from some medieval ages and feel a little bit lonely.

But it's not my taste that counts here.

Afair, my first floating structures were the coagula maps. I never would have dreamed of what would become of that.

Nightmare in concrete. Good.