I know I am late to the party on this one (4 years too late) but I have always been a fan of Lunaran's Q3 work, so with my new Q1 exe in hand it is time to try the lucky skill dice on lunsp1.

I want to feel really excited and enthusiastic but for some reason I feel let down. I know lunaran in person so I just hope he does not take what I am about to say to heart. I expected the map to rock with amazing brushwork architecture and glorious textures that melted together to form some new base artform but I did not see anything like this.

I began with skill 0 in a very cool start room and an AI walking away from me. I felt so confident of surprise I decided to whip out the axe and have some fun with hand to hand combat instead of using the gun! It went really well and I was soon on my way through very squarely cut rock borders and some green slime that clashed with everything else around it.

The map had a nice gentle start and I was soon hoping and skipping across rocks on my way towards some mountain base. I dropped down some rock face and then bam! I had some fiend chewing my neck for breakfast. Sure I can appreciate the shock value but that thing nearly killed me and I was not even at the base! grr was not happy with this. :(

Not in a good mood from the fiend encounter I ran around a corner to see the base and felt my heart sink with disappointment. I was expecting some brushwork master piece, but the front of the base was square and rough. So I saved the game, exited Q1 and checked I had the right pak file. It was from Lunaran ... I was playing the right map, so back to Q1 and on with the map.

After a while of ignoring the visuals I found the combat was really good, it felt balanced and the AI felt like they were placed for a reason. I liked the new blue enforcers with dual weapon attacks, the mallet enforcer felt strange because they had no gun and did not feel threating because they moved too slow. The red enforcer was cool, I liked the shield effect but I assume because of my skill level it was toned down. It should of been more deadly because they were the top enforcer.

The layout was damn cool, lots of choices of where to go and loads of vertical stuff and paths which wrapped around on themselves showing new routes I did not see the first time. I never felt lost and I always felt like I did not have to worry about trying to find that last locked door.

Eventually I got to the final boss room and I did not read the above thread on what people had said about it. I assumed when I got into the room there would be something cool to do with the buttons. So I ran around the room looking at everything, worked out a route around the room and collected the YA which started the event.

I could not and still cannot work out what you are suppose to do in that room. I could not spend any time watching what things did because I was constantly in combat trying to avoid death or being knocked into the slime. (which is also death, just a bit slower) Eventually I flipped on god mode and randomly hit buttons until the ceiling things were in the right position to kill the boss.

Overall I enjoyed the skill level combat, I thought the new AI was fun, but due to the way the map ended I dont want to play the map again. Which makes me sad because the middle part of the map really shined and I thought it would be cool to play again. I really don't understand what went wrong and why no beta testers said 'Hey Lun, you should change the end of the map, it is confusing and not fun' :( 

the mallet enforcer

It's a grunt with an axe, honey...