I gave this a shot earlier this week, but haven't completed enough to give a proper review yet. So far, the grappling hook is a real high point for me, and I loved how it worked out in the encounter at the end of the Ziggurat Vertigo map. The UI marker for the grappling hook is a great touch. I also love the ambition of the mod over all, and hope we continue to see experiments like this moving forward
The trampoline and ladders are a bit more mixed for me. With Quake's weird air-control (particularly the way that tapping backpedal zeros your forward velocity), I find it hard to control the trampoline bouncing. I frequently would overshoot and bonk my head against some art geo. Or I would tap backpedal and find my velocity zeroed, so I'd have to rebuild it with air-strafes until I eventually could get to the intended ledge. In a couple maps, I found that each failed trampoline jump required me to backtrack loop around before I tried again. Instead of providing an acceleration of quake's vanilla gameplay, the trampolines introduced some major pace killers for me.
The ladder combat, I'm a bit more confused by. Having high mobility during combat is part of what I love about Quake. Fighting on a ladder, where I found it's quite easy to accidentally jump off at the wrong time, meant fighting while stationary. Or, more often, I would fight from the ground, and then use the ladders, and then fight again, and not even bother trying to fight while on the ladders. This worked neatly as a soft-gate, but it doesn't feel like this was the intent.
I also found that the new movement mechanics made it much harder for me to infer where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do. I repeatedly got lost, only to realize there was a grapple tile high up out of view, or that the vine floor was actually a trampoline. I think I would've preferred something more linear, with clearer goals and clearer visual messaging, but then that probably wouldn't feel particularly Quake.
One rebuttal to my criticisms might be "skill issue", and, sure. I was definitely struggling with the mechanics. Due to the hub-map structure of the episode, I have no idea if I was playing levels that matched my skill level. I would have loved a gradual escalation of challenges across an episode, or at the very least a longer ramp up of tutorials. As it was, my struggles with the new mechanics meant I did them
after combat instead of integrated
as part of combat.
Hope that feedback is useful. Thanks for all the work putting the mod together!