Sp Map Corner: COS : The Final Objective for Quake 2

***NEW!!!***

Level name: Castle of Stroggos : The Final Objective

Author: Brian "Grinreaper" Griffith

Release date: 14 January 1999

Size: 8 239 ko

Number of maps: 6

website: here

download: At 3d Gamers edge

Story:

"Psssst............Marine........." The voices again....whispering, taunting. You flinch, as neural boosters flood your battered system and the automated bio-scan begins it's round of daily pain.
How long now?
How long...... Damn, It's the mind probe again.....won't these beasts leave anything untouched?
Your school........mother........the first contact........Black Tuesday, the day they blasted the crap out of the White house.... the day the President was eaten on national TV............the fightback......basic training....
THE CRASH................
"MOTHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Sharp reality cuts in.......a retreating face.....Urgh, One of those hunched Medic things. It stinks of burnt flesh and fetid damp. Seem's the tests are done.....
Why are they keeping me alive? How did I get here?
"UUUhratah"
You know that call and so you avert your eyes. Feeding time at the zoo, the crunch and slurp of feeding Strogg fill your cramped and stale holding pen. Out there, beyond the forcefield and lasers the deamons recycle the essence of your comrades, small fights breaking out as grunts and gunners squabble over meagre drops of foul fluid...........a few days ago you actually saw one of the gunners mow down four of the grunts. No reason, he just seemed to snap and you had laughed and whooped as crimson sprayed the bulkheads. Then you had vomited as the remaining crew turned upon the fallen and began to gnaw on the remaining flesh...
A ship!
You are on a ship! "Marine.........hey......." The voices are back but ignore them, concentrate.........A ship. You remember planetfall upon Stroggos.........the fire fight.... screams and burning skin. A base, huge gates....Tanks.
Oh yeah, Tanks.....loads of the mothers. Huge stomping hydraulic feet, organic fright masks ripped from the bodys of the fallen. And then a ship........You were captured..... You are in a holding cell.....You may be mad.....
"Marine!"..........oh, go away voices..I'm thinking....
Out there the lights fade and pulse as the ship judders through hyperspace. We hit them bad. This ship could be one of the last assault craft, you've noticed the lack of supplys, the increasing tension amongst the bio-mechanical freaks and the failing consoles and sparking wires. "We you next eat".....you jump as one of the grunts leers through the forcefield. The rough English, remembered from a pre-Strogg life taunts you. The gutteral laughter drowns out the insistent beep from the corner.... Your field computer! Damn but the freaks left it in here...highlighting once again that It's the flesh they desire, not the technology..... You roll onto your side and cry out, faked pain drowning out the soft beep of updating orders:
"MISSION BRIEFING: (Soldier 59666-1)
"Updated Mission Brief: Get yourself free from that cell. The blueprints show a control panel just above your head in a duct. You have to find some way to deactivate the force fields from that switch!
"Your location is almost the dead-center of the ship. From our readings, you should be close to one of the secoundary cryogenics bays.
"Navigate the cryodecks, and find your way to the main weapons bays... from there you have to deactivate the ship's defense systems...blow the crap out of the two large anti-spacecraft guns found on that level,that should effectively fry the ship's entire grid of defensive guns. We can't get our ships close to that thing until you do.
"There is a massive impenetrable Steedium powered forcefield surrounding the ship. The generator powering the forcefield is on the main deck. Be warned that Strogg security will be highest there. You MUST deactivate the field before our attack on the ship can commence.
"After the field is deactivated, get your ass into an escape pod. Our strike will hit the ship 60 secounds after you lower the field..you wont have much time before the ship's hull collapses.
"Save the world, marine, we're counting on you!
"END BRIEFING"
Damn yes..........the ship. The huge ship flying earthward on a mission of destruction and assimilation. Now you remember..........you remember it all!!!!!
"Marine....up here....."
Upwards......above your head.........and now you can see him. Crouched and bleeding, another Human. Battered and bleeding but a human... And he's pointing to a panel........... Damn you're not mad!!!! You're not alone! You're a marine Goddamit and you've got a new mission...........
Carry it out...........

Review :

This sixth maps unit is the thirdand certainly last release from the author after Castle of Stroggos and COS2 : Stroggship. Even if I prefer the first one to the second this last part it has nothing to do with previous release in termes of conceptual grandness*

The final objective take place on the stroggship you left in COS 2.

Architecture is really impressive creating some unique area with the best lightings effect i have seen for a Q2 release. Travelling through those great areas is always a interesting surprise that increase with you progression, some place make look a little bit not enough polish or to repetitive but this is only showing up after passing through top notch places (the cannon area, the interconnectivity through the hard of the vessel, all those elevators,...). Choice of texture to create stuff needed also a lot of time and even if one time more it may not always look perfect, most of the time you could really see the time amount that have been put to create 'the best'.Even if all the experience is mostly indoor the spaceview is sometimes fantastic and let you without breath reaching is perfectness through the end cutscene.

The gameplay is laso well put together, it's not a simple escape mission it's an organized qwest to save the world from distroying piece after piece the whole ship inluding their leaders. Enemies placement is always a 'good' surpsise they are not simply awaiting you they are readdy to give their best resistance and this will even if the amount of eney isn't that high a quite intense battle. This is another explanation why it took so much time to be release and complete...

All in all a bunch of effort have been put in this one to be mostly perfect. I won't really complaining about minor issue regarding some not so great designed area, less textured places or the final (3) Makron boss fight. It's really a great work that really deserved proudness...

In conclusion: One of the best release out here every player should try...It's mostly perfect especially in relation with the conception of it.