Fall of Kingdoms is an adventure map on the shorter side of things. You are some combination of traveller amnesiac warrior (I don't actually remember the exact backstory) but you wake up at the start of a great battle between the good kingdom of snow golems and testificates and the fearsome forces of mobs led by evil pigmen. To get straight to the point, the map abuses the hell out of spawn eggs in some very entertaining and cinematic ways.
Function:
The bug report is short. Beyond the doors doing that detached top and bottom half glitch which has nothing to do with how this map works, the only thing that broke was the ending where a sign said die die die and a structure in front of me had already exploded, triggered by a random mob spawning there. Such is the danger of timing triggers with pressure plates. In general, the timed and triggered mob egg usage worked really nicely, and this map shows off the new technology in great fashion; I'd only suggest that there are some balancing issues with the amount and rate of mob spawning in this map- sometimes the mobs basically kill themselves, while other times there is close to no chance of survival. There are enough contingency plans in case of death, but inevitable death in something you need to complete somewhat kills the fun. The interactive battle is great fun, but the amount of mobs, drops, redstone triggers, and projectiles flying tends to lag up the game excessively and leave you that much less capable of defending yourself against the creepers and blazes in the netherrack room...
7/10
Form:
The map is sort of bland- a lot of generic minecraft stone and wood, followed by generic nether red blocks- but everything is very clean and inoffensive to the eyes. The real aesthetic accomplishments are in the timing. The opening battle sequence is very subtle and brilliantly planned. As far as impressive to watch, it's really the high point of the map. There are also nice funny touches in the way the gameplay is set up, like a zombie birthday party or "hacking" the system. Playing the map does make one quite happy. (I'm taking an extra point off of here to account for the relatively short map duration.)
7/10
Flavor:
The map had a story about epic battles between good and evil (or atleast between good and maliciously selfish), and the map content was epic battles! The evil forces are coming through the gate, and lo and behold the gameplay is mob hoards coming through the gate! The connection between the story and the action itself is tangible at all points, and the story is understandable and self-contained. You know what you're aupposed to do (fight through the mobs) and why (because they're evil) the whole time. If there's any more I could ask for from this flavor-wise, I'd have liked a clear introduction to the identity of the villain before the very end of the map. But I don't think I can dock a point since that could just have been a legitimate stylistic choice.
10/10
Uniqueness:
It seems a little like cheating to abuse a new minecraft mechanic and count it as a new adventure map technique, but this map does use spawn eggs in a very new and very enjoyable manner. I don't think spawn eggs are the death of fpawners in adventure maps by any means, but this map shows of the power of the new technology into how dramatic and controlled mob usage can become in present and future adventure map. I would definitely recommend that people looking to start making adventure maps should check this out, because even in a map with limited combat, the techniques used here are worth understanding.
Overall Score: 24/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I'd recommend playing it, and sooner rather than later, because the content here is very new and best served fresh.
Fall of Kingdoms is an adventure map on the shorter side of things. You are some combination of traveller amnesiac warrior (I don't actually remember the exact backstory) but you wake up at the start of a great battle between the good kingdom of snow golems and testificates and the fearsome forces of mobs led by evil pigmen. To get straight to the point, the map abuses the hell out of spawn eggs in some very entertaining and cinematic ways.
Function:
The bug report is short. Beyond the doors doing that detached top and bottom half glitch which has nothing to do with how this map works, the only thing that broke was the ending where a sign said die die die and a structure in front of me had already exploded, triggered by a random mob spawning there. Such is the danger of timing triggers with pressure plates. In general, the timed and triggered mob egg usage worked really nicely, and this map shows off the new technology in great fashion; I'd only suggest that there are some balancing issues with the amount and rate of mob spawning in this map- sometimes the mobs basically kill themselves, while other times there is close to no chance of survival. There are enough contingency plans in case of death, but inevitable death in something you need to complete somewhat kills the fun. The interactive battle is great fun, but the amount of mobs, drops, redstone triggers, and projectiles flying tends to lag up the game excessively and leave you that much less capable of defending yourself against the creepers and blazes in the netherrack room...
7/10
Form:
The map is sort of bland- a lot of generic minecraft stone and wood, followed by generic nether red blocks- but everything is very clean and inoffensive to the eyes. The real aesthetic accomplishments are in the timing. The opening battle sequence is very subtle and brilliantly planned. As far as impressive to watch, it's really the high point of the map. There are also nice funny touches in the way the gameplay is set up, like a zombie birthday party or "hacking" the system. Playing the map does make one quite happy. (I'm taking an extra point off of here to account for the relatively short map duration.)
7/10
Flavor:
The map had a story about epic battles between good and evil (or atleast between good and maliciously selfish), and the map content was epic battles! The evil forces are coming through the gate, and lo and behold the gameplay is mob hoards coming through the gate! The connection between the story and the action itself is tangible at all points, and the story is understandable and self-contained. You know what you're aupposed to do (fight through the mobs) and why (because they're evil) the whole time. If there's any more I could ask for from this flavor-wise, I'd have liked a clear introduction to the identity of the villain before the very end of the map. But I don't think I can dock a point since that could just have been a legitimate stylistic choice.
10/10
Uniqueness:
It seems a little like cheating to abuse a new minecraft mechanic and count it as a new adventure map technique, but this map does use spawn eggs in a very new and very enjoyable manner. I don't think spawn eggs are the death of fpawners in adventure maps by any means, but this map shows of the power of the new technology into how dramatic and controlled mob usage can become in present and future adventure map. I would definitely recommend that people looking to start making adventure maps should check this out, because even in a map with limited combat, the techniques used here are worth understanding.
Overall Score: 24/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I'd recommend playing it, and sooner rather than later, because the content here is very new and best served fresh.
Thanks for your review :smile.gif:
you were very fair in your review. Thx again...
BTW S.H.R.O.U.D. means Self. Home. Relocating. Operation. Unit. Device.
The Beginning of the End is a nice, big adventure map. It is clear that a lot of work went into making the map. For it's morbid story of an unstoppable robot destroying the nice pumpkin people, it's pretty light-hearted and extremely interwebz. It is, at least to some extent, one of those "trapped, gotta escape and defeat the villain" maps. And with a title that says both beginning and end, it strangely starts in media res, ends pretty inconclusively, and doesn't feature "The End" at all. The ending doesn't even say "the end," it says "thanks for playing." Sorry about the rant, on to the review.
- Form:
I'm going to pick on a lot of details. There were 2 chests (one for minecarts at a middle-ish checkpoint room and one for boats before the water maze) that were left empty. Speaking of the water maze, if you're confident the player won't like something, probably don't add it but definitely don't tell them ahead of time that it's bad or evil or they'll just cheat. The checkpoint system is almost a great checkpoint system, but the locked door should be on the level side rather than the hub side so that the player doesn't need to ride the minecart to activate the checkpoint each time. And after all that riding, if you don't pay attention on the way back out, you get sent back to the hub because you used levers instead of buttons. The giants didn't spawn at all even though I hung out in that room for a couple minutes. The not lazy walking direction when the path splits seems to be impossible to get through. Starting off the map with about a half hour of maze and cave exploration is extermely unexciting. AND the map, especially the Pixel Art Minecraft Sign room, seems designed to cause gratuitous lag. These are all symptoms of the size of the map. You put a lot in, had a lot of different content, and that is good, but it leaves a lot of openings for bugs and issues to arise. I'm sure you'll be on better alert for such things when you put together the sequel you promised. If there's one thing I can credit you for, you managed to have inconsistent rules on breaking and placing blocks without me thinking about what the rules are, and everything worked. That's good player manipulation.
6/10
-Form:
The map looked pretty nice and had the texture pack to go with it (which from what I saw primary just made the glowstone bearable). The settings varied so that the player doesn't get bored of looking at it, and it all seemed very ordered and stylized except for the bombed town section. The pixel art was random, but it was a nice little touch.
7/10
- Flavor:
As stated, the title is hardly related to the map, but I don't blame you because the story is a little unrelated to itself. You started off trying to escape from GLaDOS knock-off 1200 (which you could have just gotten out of the minecart after the first room and said "hey, I escaped!") and by half-way through the map, S.H.R.O.U.D. (I'll give you 3 points if you can tell me what that stands for and have it make sense) is uninvolved and is just repeatedly mentioned by each NPC as you organize the pumpkin family reunion picnic. Somewhere in there, you decide you need to destroy the robot, so you go to the nether to say hi to pumpkin Dad who tells you to forget about that and go build a house in a quaint village for fun. And inbetween you do a bunch of puzzles that just happen to be there. When people are saying the story is confusing, it's for good reason. For your next map, try and have clearer player motivation.
2/10
Uniqueness:
Almost no uniqueness at all. Even the fun little pixel art was screaming out with referential humor. It's not as though you were shamelessly trying to rip off something successful, but it also didn't manage to do anything new. Not to mention it starts off as portal and ends with "Still Alive." Therefore -
Side comment: If you have any interest at all in making a serious project with a story, do not troll the player. Things like "should you break this white wool" or the big pixel art trollface may seem cute and humorous, but it makes you seem intentionally irritating and makes issues like the checkpoints that send you back if your not paying attention seem intentional. Those things are perfectly appropriate for certain maps, but not a long, serious, story-driven adventure.
Overall Score- 15/30 and (that's 5/10 for your thread list. Completely middle of the road.)
Would I recommend it?
- Not really. It's an impressive build that I'm sure took a lot of effort, but it's not any more fun than many other maps, and for it's long time duration, it doesn't give too much sense of accomplishment.
The Beginning of the End is a nice, big adventure map. It is clear that a lot of work went into making the map. For it's morbid story of an unstoppable robot destroying the nice pumpkin people, it's pretty light-hearted and extremely interwebz. It is, at least to some extent, one of those "trapped, gotta escape and defeat the villain" maps. And with a title that says both beginning and end, it strangely starts in media res, ends pretty inconclusively, and doesn't feature "The End" at all. The ending doesn't even say "the end," it says "thanks for playing." Sorry about the rant, on to the review.
- Function:
I'm going to pick on a lot of details. There were 2 chests (one for minecarts at a middle-ish checkpoint room and one for boats before the water maze) that were left empty. Speaking of the water maze, if you're confident the player won't like something, probably don't add it but definitely don't tell them ahead of time that it's bad or evil or they'll just cheat. The checkpoint system is almost a great checkpoint system, but the locked door should be on the level side rather than the hub side so that the player doesn't need to ride the minecart to activate the checkpoint each time. And after all that riding, if you don't pay attention on the way back out, you get sent back to the hub because you used levers instead of buttons. The giants didn't spawn at all even though I hung out in that room for a couple minutes. The not lazy walking direction when the path splits seems to be impossible to get through. Starting off the map with about a half hour of maze and cave exploration is extermely unexciting. AND the map, especially the Pixel Art Minecraft Sign room, seems designed to cause gratuitous lag. These are all symptoms of the size of the map. You put a lot in, had a lot of different content, and that is good, but it leaves a lot of openings for bugs and issues to arise. I'm sure you'll be on better alert for such things when you put together the sequel you promised. If there's one thing I can credit you for, you managed to have inconsistent rules on breaking and placing blocks without me thinking about what the rules are, and everything worked. That's good player manipulation.
6/10
-Form:
The map looked pretty nice and had the texture pack to go with it (which from what I saw primary just made the glowstone bearable). The settings varied so that the player doesn't get bored of looking at it, and it all seemed very ordered and stylized except for the bombed town section. The pixel art was random, but it was a nice little touch.
7/10
- Flavor:
As stated, the title is hardly related to the map, but I don't blame you because the story is a little unrelated to itself. You started off trying to escape from GLaDOS knock-off 1200 (which you could have just gotten out of the minecart after the first room and said "hey, I escaped!") and by half-way through the map, S.H.R.O.U.D. (I'll give you 3 points if you can tell me what that stands for and have it make sense) is uninvolved and is just repeatedly mentioned by each NPC as you organize the pumpkin family reunion picnic. Somewhere in there, you decide you need to destroy the robot, so you go to the nether to say hi to pumpkin Dad who tells you to forget about that and go build a house in a quaint village for fun. And inbetween you do a bunch of puzzles that just happen to be there. When people are saying the story is confusing, it's for good reason. For your next map, try and have clearer player motivation.
2/10
Uniqueness:
Almost no uniqueness at all. Even the fun little pixel art was screaming out with referential humor. It's not as though you were shamelessly trying to rip off something successful, but it also didn't manage to do anything new. Not to mention it starts off as portal and ends with "Still Alive." Therefore -
Side comment: If you have any interest at all in making a serious project with a story, do not troll the player. Things like "should you break this white wool" or the big pixel art trollface may seem cute and humorous, but it makes you seem intentionally irritating and makes issues like the checkpoints that send you back if your not paying attention seem intentional. Those things are perfectly appropriate for certain maps, but not a long, serious, story-driven adventure.
Overall Score- 15/30 and (that's 5/10 for your thread list. Completely middle of the road.)
Would I recommend it?
- Not really. It's an impressive build that I'm sure took a lot of effort, but it's not any more fun than many other maps, and for it's long time duration, it doesn't give too much sense of accomplishment.
Levels is a puzzle/parkour map. It's not heavily stressed in the map itself, but the gameplay is broken down into 3 levels. It's a very simple naming premise, and I like that. It's concise, memorable, and rolls off the tongue. But I'm not supposed to be talking about the name, I'm supposed to talk about the map itself. This review might be a long one.
Preface: I'm going to rant about challenge and motive a few times here. A puzzle needs both things to be enjoyable; a task that gives the player a challenge to overcome and a reason to do it is fun. A puzzle with challenge but no desire to complete it is just testing. A puzzle with motivation but no challenge is busy work. A puzzle with neither is unplayable.
- Fuction:
The map not only breaks down into levels geometrically, it also breaks down easily in quality. The first level is on the lower end of the good spectrum. It's definitely enjoyable gameplay. With the lava maze and the fire resistance potions, some really good tricks could have be played by swimming through lava and I think that's a missed oppurtunity, and I think the maze should have more landmarks within it to help get one's bearings. The premise was nice, the execution wasn't fantastic, so that was nice. Where the path split two ways, they were both just good puzzles, but there was an outrageous difficulty gap between them. The parkour was the highest difficulty challenge I would allow and the pearl throwing was like walking down a corridor (but more fun).
The second level had the worst parts. The first room of the second level was the worst part. First, it tells you to temporarily change all the rules, which just takes the player right out of the game. I had to recheck the sign a few times to see what was cheating. "Dig around in the hillside until you can craft me a button" suffers heavily from the "no challenge" problem. It's busy work and just takes up time and space. This is the same reason people complain about mazes, which is coincidentally the next challenge. The seperation into quadrants gave the nice "landmark" effect, but now there's not the fun twist the lava had. For the purpose of seperating by quality, I'm pretending the second level cuts there.
The last third was the best of it. The soul sand race was well executed, the frogger room was fun, the wool minecraft jumping was the kind of parkour I like: big jumps from big platforms is less difficult and more cinematic. It was one snappy, fast paced challenge after another, then a nice break exploring the tower, followed by a swift ride through to the end of the map.
I wish the middle third was the same sort of style as the end. As it stands, nothing is broken and the puzzles span from just below averege up to quite nice. I gave you an extra point when I realized that the gameplay area is entirely within rainless biome. I hate rainlag when I'm trying to do timed challenges, so no rain is a great map feature.
7/10
- Form-
The map is another one that has plenty of completely varied environments with pretty much no explanation as to why they are there. There really isn't anything in here that's unpleasant, but the map only really hits stride when the cloth replicas get involved. That is one adorable zombie.
7/10
- Flavor-
This map screams of "built first, planned later." The given premise of trials done to stay alive seems tacked on and irrelevant to playing the map. A story needs a conflict, and challenges need motivation, but the motivation doesn't need to be a story, and it really shouldn't be one if it isn't incorporated into that map. The feel of the gameplay was clearly "here's some arbitrary puzzles and challenges, let's see if you can get through them" and that's what I considered while I was playing. Saving my soul didn't contribute anything to that. Having that hint of drama may do more to hook in new players, but it mildly deters from the gameplay itself. Based on that map premise and grading on flavor, I'd be rating this worse, but the sectioned levels helped bring it back. "can you get through the next level?" does more to help the gameplay here than "can you save your soul?"
5/10
Basically, the quality of the puzzles isn't consistent, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the map seems to have been built as a collection of individual puzzles without too much planning for the overall state of the map. There are even unused structures sitting around, like what seems to be an unattached section of enderpearl maze sticking out of the side of the wall. This is not the death of a map by any means, but for future projects keep in mind that the clearer an image of the overall project you start with, the cleaner the final product will be.
Uniqueness:
No offense, but not a lot new here. It's a puzzle/parkour map with mostly used puzzle types. A map does not need to be groundbreaking to be good, and this map was good, but it was not groundbreaking.
Overall Score: 19/30 and
Would I recommend this?
- Not quite the way it is now, but an overhaul of the map is being done. Most of my comments are too much about the overall experience than individual problems that I don't expect them to be addressed, but I still expect the overall quality to improve quite a bit. The creator shows quite a bit of promise, and it will be interesting to see what they can make with a bit more experience.
could you pls review my map :smile.gif:
Title: The Beginning of The End
Genre: Adv/Puzz it has some parkour :/
Creator(s): Romin865
Thread: Link in sig
It's in the queue. If not in the next day, I should definitely get to it in two.
Title: Levels
Genre: Puzzle / parkour
Creator(s): Kinglau3
Thread: The link is in my signature.
Thanks in advance! Enjoy!
P.S. I'm currently in the progress of making an overhaul of the map. Is it possible that, when the update comes out, you take another look at the map? Thanks!
I can definitely do that. But would you like me to post a review now and edit it later, or wait and post the complete review?
@tstorm823
Holy Macaroni, that is one heck of a review. Thank you for the in-depth explanations, now I have an idea of what to do for the inevitable sequel-type thing.
That's the idea. Make other people make better maps for me to play! trollface.png
CUBEception is sort of an escape map on such a huge scale that you can't really call it an escape map. You are the last remaining person inside a giant cube claimed to be the last safehouse of humanity after a cataclysm. And giant is hardly a just description- on normal view distance you can watch the sunrise on the other side of the map because the cube itself is out of render distance and it's just as tall as wide. Of course, size doesn't really matter, it's how you use the space, and this map uses it. The 3 hour run time was spot on for me, and that was only because I stuck the map on creative after 15 minutes so I wouldn't have to die. It is big, and it shows how rediculous maps might become in the near future when we get twice the height to build in. On to the ratings.
- Function:
The map is mostly parkour based, and good parkour at that. Beyond that, most of the challenge was finding the appropriate levers to continue. It this respect, it was pretty simple; it set up a successful gameplay formula and stuck to it. If I had any complaints about the actual challenges, I'd say that swimming up waterfalls gets a little tedious after doing it so many times, and a sort of learning curve section at the beginning would be nice for people like me who forgot you could do the "jump on a hatch open, then jump on it closed" trick. As far as bugs, I didn't find anything that didn't work as of 1.1, but I have one of the snapshots so climbable vines broke everything and anyone playing this way is held to the honor system. My condolences to the mapmakers if they intend to update this. (But if you do, make sure to get the vines near the end. A real troll piston is the one that you can't avoid because climbable vines reduce your speed when you jump through them. Of course, jumping across the title sequence made up for it.)
9/10
- Form:
This map is just fun to look at. Having that much open space inside a structure in minecraft is just a mindblowing effect. The actual puzzle buildings were all stylized to their stated purpose. I did not notice any instances where there was exposed redstone wiring and shouldn't have been. The map has great gadgets that rearrange hallways or build bridges for the player. And the comment about ladders on glowstone was completely appreciated, but I still didn't notice some of them for a while. Putting objects on blocks they blend in with is a mistake we are all guilty of, but still a mistake. The player spending 10 minutes stuck in a room because they didn't see the button on the cobblestone block is a shame. But those are just being nitpicky, the map is still generally an art piece. And it has an exquisite trailer
9/10
- Flavor:
The story in this map is not just a "forever alone" narrative. It is every "forever alone" narrative at once. You escape a prison alone, in an underground facility alone, following a trail of journals by a mysterious man alone, going through laboratories with old notes from scientists alone. The plot is fairly predictable and only tangentially related to the challenges for the middle 2/3 of the map, but it is shown to the player throughout the map at well placed intervals and is plenty enjoyable. I'm not normally a fan of being given an internal monologue by the mapmaker, but I think this map could have used that. Instead of following the breadcrumbs of the great survivor that's going to save humanity from imprisonment, I'd rather be that great survivor and save humanity myself, and I hope the suggested sequel takes that approach and lets the player be the main actor. Overall, the feel of this map was incredibly well executed, and the time I spent playing, my motive was to escape the cube, not just finish the map.
(I do think putting in SOPA vs ANONYMOUS jokes is tacky, though.)
9/10
- Uniqueness:
I don't quite know what to say here. I've never played a map that did everything quite like this. The combination of both secret rooms and scoring system is nice, and all the challenges feel fresh. But at the same time, 90% of this map is built off of cliches. All the forever alone aspects, the referential names, the internal society that made me feel like reading The Time Machine again. I wanna give it an exact average rating on this scale, but I'll round up because it came out 6 months ago and I may have been more excited about it had I played it then.
Overall Score: 27/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- Definitely, and will certainly be playing the sequel.
0
by rrgg
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1018613-
Fall of Kingdoms is an adventure map on the shorter side of things. You are some combination of traveller amnesiac warrior (I don't actually remember the exact backstory) but you wake up at the start of a great battle between the good kingdom of snow golems and testificates and the fearsome forces of mobs led by evil pigmen. To get straight to the point, the map abuses the hell out of spawn eggs in some very entertaining and cinematic ways.
Function:
The bug report is short. Beyond the doors doing that detached top and bottom half glitch which has nothing to do with how this map works, the only thing that broke was the ending where a sign said die die die and a structure in front of me had already exploded, triggered by a random mob spawning there. Such is the danger of timing triggers with pressure plates. In general, the timed and triggered mob egg usage worked really nicely, and this map shows off the new technology in great fashion; I'd only suggest that there are some balancing issues with the amount and rate of mob spawning in this map- sometimes the mobs basically kill themselves, while other times there is close to no chance of survival. There are enough contingency plans in case of death, but inevitable death in something you need to complete somewhat kills the fun. The interactive battle is great fun, but the amount of mobs, drops, redstone triggers, and projectiles flying tends to lag up the game excessively and leave you that much less capable of defending yourself against the creepers and blazes in the netherrack room...
7/10
Form:
The map is sort of bland- a lot of generic minecraft stone and wood, followed by generic nether red blocks- but everything is very clean and inoffensive to the eyes. The real aesthetic accomplishments are in the timing. The opening battle sequence is very subtle and brilliantly planned. As far as impressive to watch, it's really the high point of the map. There are also nice funny touches in the way the gameplay is set up, like a zombie birthday party or "hacking" the system. Playing the map does make one quite happy. (I'm taking an extra point off of here to account for the relatively short map duration.)
7/10
Flavor:
The map had a story about epic battles between good and evil (or atleast between good and maliciously selfish), and the map content was epic battles! The evil forces are coming through the gate, and lo and behold the gameplay is mob hoards coming through the gate! The connection between the story and the action itself is tangible at all points, and the story is understandable and self-contained. You know what you're aupposed to do (fight through the mobs) and why (because they're evil) the whole time. If there's any more I could ask for from this flavor-wise, I'd have liked a clear introduction to the identity of the villain before the very end of the map. But I don't think I can dock a point since that could just have been a legitimate stylistic choice.
10/10
Uniqueness:
It seems a little like cheating to abuse a new minecraft mechanic and count it as a new adventure map technique, but this map does use spawn eggs in a very new and very enjoyable manner. I don't think spawn eggs are the death of fpawners in adventure maps by any means, but this map shows of the power of the new technology into how dramatic and controlled mob usage can become in present and future adventure map. I would definitely recommend that people looking to start making adventure maps should check this out, because even in a map with limited combat, the techniques used here are worth understanding.
Overall Score: 24/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I'd recommend playing it, and sooner rather than later, because the content here is very new and best served fresh.
0
by rrgg
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1018613-
Fall of Kingdoms is an adventure map on the shorter side of things. You are some combination of traveller amnesiac warrior (I don't actually remember the exact backstory) but you wake up at the start of a great battle between the good kingdom of snow golems and testificates and the fearsome forces of mobs led by evil pigmen. To get straight to the point, the map abuses the hell out of spawn eggs in some very entertaining and cinematic ways.
Function:
The bug report is short. Beyond the doors doing that detached top and bottom half glitch which has nothing to do with how this map works, the only thing that broke was the ending where a sign said die die die and a structure in front of me had already exploded, triggered by a random mob spawning there. Such is the danger of timing triggers with pressure plates. In general, the timed and triggered mob egg usage worked really nicely, and this map shows off the new technology in great fashion; I'd only suggest that there are some balancing issues with the amount and rate of mob spawning in this map- sometimes the mobs basically kill themselves, while other times there is close to no chance of survival. There are enough contingency plans in case of death, but inevitable death in something you need to complete somewhat kills the fun. The interactive battle is great fun, but the amount of mobs, drops, redstone triggers, and projectiles flying tends to lag up the game excessively and leave you that much less capable of defending yourself against the creepers and blazes in the netherrack room...
7/10
Form:
The map is sort of bland- a lot of generic minecraft stone and wood, followed by generic nether red blocks- but everything is very clean and inoffensive to the eyes. The real aesthetic accomplishments are in the timing. The opening battle sequence is very subtle and brilliantly planned. As far as impressive to watch, it's really the high point of the map. There are also nice funny touches in the way the gameplay is set up, like a zombie birthday party or "hacking" the system. Playing the map does make one quite happy. (I'm taking an extra point off of here to account for the relatively short map duration.)
7/10
Flavor:
The map had a story about epic battles between good and evil (or atleast between good and maliciously selfish), and the map content was epic battles! The evil forces are coming through the gate, and lo and behold the gameplay is mob hoards coming through the gate! The connection between the story and the action itself is tangible at all points, and the story is understandable and self-contained. You know what you're aupposed to do (fight through the mobs) and why (because they're evil) the whole time. If there's any more I could ask for from this flavor-wise, I'd have liked a clear introduction to the identity of the villain before the very end of the map. But I don't think I can dock a point since that could just have been a legitimate stylistic choice.
10/10
Uniqueness:
It seems a little like cheating to abuse a new minecraft mechanic and count it as a new adventure map technique, but this map does use spawn eggs in a very new and very enjoyable manner. I don't think spawn eggs are the death of fpawners in adventure maps by any means, but this map shows of the power of the new technology into how dramatic and controlled mob usage can become in present and future adventure map. I would definitely recommend that people looking to start making adventure maps should check this out, because even in a map with limited combat, the techniques used here are worth understanding.
Overall Score: 24/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I'd recommend playing it, and sooner rather than later, because the content here is very new and best served fresh.
0
Take the 3 flavor points, good sir.
0
by Romin865
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/860920-
The Beginning of the End is a nice, big adventure map. It is clear that a lot of work went into making the map. For it's morbid story of an unstoppable robot destroying the nice pumpkin people, it's pretty light-hearted and extremely interwebz. It is, at least to some extent, one of those "trapped, gotta escape and defeat the villain" maps. And with a title that says both beginning and end, it strangely starts in media res, ends pretty inconclusively, and doesn't feature "The End" at all. The ending doesn't even say "the end," it says "thanks for playing." Sorry about the rant, on to the review.
- Form:
I'm going to pick on a lot of details. There were 2 chests (one for minecarts at a middle-ish checkpoint room and one for boats before the water maze) that were left empty. Speaking of the water maze, if you're confident the player won't like something, probably don't add it but definitely don't tell them ahead of time that it's bad or evil or they'll just cheat. The checkpoint system is almost a great checkpoint system, but the locked door should be on the level side rather than the hub side so that the player doesn't need to ride the minecart to activate the checkpoint each time. And after all that riding, if you don't pay attention on the way back out, you get sent back to the hub because you used levers instead of buttons. The giants didn't spawn at all even though I hung out in that room for a couple minutes. The not lazy walking direction when the path splits seems to be impossible to get through. Starting off the map with about a half hour of maze and cave exploration is extermely unexciting. AND the map, especially the Pixel Art Minecraft Sign room, seems designed to cause gratuitous lag. These are all symptoms of the size of the map. You put a lot in, had a lot of different content, and that is good, but it leaves a lot of openings for bugs and issues to arise. I'm sure you'll be on better alert for such things when you put together the sequel you promised. If there's one thing I can credit you for, you managed to have inconsistent rules on breaking and placing blocks without me thinking about what the rules are, and everything worked. That's good player manipulation.
6/10
-Form:
The map looked pretty nice and had the texture pack to go with it (which from what I saw primary just made the glowstone bearable). The settings varied so that the player doesn't get bored of looking at it, and it all seemed very ordered and stylized except for the bombed town section. The pixel art was random, but it was a nice little touch.
7/10
- Flavor:
As stated, the title is hardly related to the map, but I don't blame you because the story is a little unrelated to itself. You started off trying to escape from GLaDOS knock-off 1200 (which you could have just gotten out of the minecart after the first room and said "hey, I escaped!") and by half-way through the map, S.H.R.O.U.D. (I'll give you 3 points if you can tell me what that stands for and have it make sense) is uninvolved and is just repeatedly mentioned by each NPC as you organize the pumpkin family reunion picnic. Somewhere in there, you decide you need to destroy the robot, so you go to the nether to say hi to pumpkin Dad who tells you to forget about that and go build a house in a quaint village for fun. And inbetween you do a bunch of puzzles that just happen to be there. When people are saying the story is confusing, it's for good reason. For your next map, try and have clearer player motivation.
2/10
Uniqueness:
Almost no uniqueness at all. Even the fun little pixel art was screaming out with referential humor. It's not as though you were shamelessly trying to rip off something successful, but it also didn't manage to do anything new. Not to mention it starts off as portal and ends with "Still Alive." Therefore -
Side comment: If you have any interest at all in making a serious project with a story, do not troll the player. Things like "should you break this white wool" or the big pixel art trollface may seem cute and humorous, but it makes you seem intentionally irritating and makes issues like the checkpoints that send you back if your not paying attention seem intentional. Those things are perfectly appropriate for certain maps, but not a long, serious, story-driven adventure.
Overall Score- 15/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- Not really. It's an impressive build that I'm sure took a lot of effort, but it's not any more fun than many other maps, and for it's long time duration, it doesn't give too much sense of accomplishment.
0
by Romin865
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/860920-
The Beginning of the End is a nice, big adventure map. It is clear that a lot of work went into making the map. For it's morbid story of an unstoppable robot destroying the nice pumpkin people, it's pretty light-hearted and extremely interwebz. It is, at least to some extent, one of those "trapped, gotta escape and defeat the villain" maps. And with a title that says both beginning and end, it strangely starts in media res, ends pretty inconclusively, and doesn't feature "The End" at all. The ending doesn't even say "the end," it says "thanks for playing." Sorry about the rant, on to the review.
- Function:
I'm going to pick on a lot of details. There were 2 chests (one for minecarts at a middle-ish checkpoint room and one for boats before the water maze) that were left empty. Speaking of the water maze, if you're confident the player won't like something, probably don't add it but definitely don't tell them ahead of time that it's bad or evil or they'll just cheat. The checkpoint system is almost a great checkpoint system, but the locked door should be on the level side rather than the hub side so that the player doesn't need to ride the minecart to activate the checkpoint each time. And after all that riding, if you don't pay attention on the way back out, you get sent back to the hub because you used levers instead of buttons. The giants didn't spawn at all even though I hung out in that room for a couple minutes. The not lazy walking direction when the path splits seems to be impossible to get through. Starting off the map with about a half hour of maze and cave exploration is extermely unexciting. AND the map, especially the Pixel Art Minecraft Sign room, seems designed to cause gratuitous lag. These are all symptoms of the size of the map. You put a lot in, had a lot of different content, and that is good, but it leaves a lot of openings for bugs and issues to arise. I'm sure you'll be on better alert for such things when you put together the sequel you promised. If there's one thing I can credit you for, you managed to have inconsistent rules on breaking and placing blocks without me thinking about what the rules are, and everything worked. That's good player manipulation.
6/10
-Form:
The map looked pretty nice and had the texture pack to go with it (which from what I saw primary just made the glowstone bearable). The settings varied so that the player doesn't get bored of looking at it, and it all seemed very ordered and stylized except for the bombed town section. The pixel art was random, but it was a nice little touch.
7/10
- Flavor:
As stated, the title is hardly related to the map, but I don't blame you because the story is a little unrelated to itself. You started off trying to escape from GLaDOS knock-off 1200 (which you could have just gotten out of the minecart after the first room and said "hey, I escaped!") and by half-way through the map, S.H.R.O.U.D. (I'll give you 3 points if you can tell me what that stands for and have it make sense) is uninvolved and is just repeatedly mentioned by each NPC as you organize the pumpkin family reunion picnic. Somewhere in there, you decide you need to destroy the robot, so you go to the nether to say hi to pumpkin Dad who tells you to forget about that and go build a house in a quaint village for fun. And inbetween you do a bunch of puzzles that just happen to be there. When people are saying the story is confusing, it's for good reason. For your next map, try and have clearer player motivation.
2/10
Uniqueness:
Almost no uniqueness at all. Even the fun little pixel art was screaming out with referential humor. It's not as though you were shamelessly trying to rip off something successful, but it also didn't manage to do anything new. Not to mention it starts off as portal and ends with "Still Alive." Therefore -
Side comment: If you have any interest at all in making a serious project with a story, do not troll the player. Things like "should you break this white wool" or the big pixel art trollface may seem cute and humorous, but it makes you seem intentionally irritating and makes issues like the checkpoints that send you back if your not paying attention seem intentional. Those things are perfectly appropriate for certain maps, but not a long, serious, story-driven adventure.
Overall Score- 15/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- Not really. It's an impressive build that I'm sure took a lot of effort, but it's not any more fun than many other maps, and for it's long time duration, it doesn't give too much sense of accomplishment.
0
0
You have been queued. May the weekend spur me to the end of the list!
0
by Kinglau3
Thread- http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/748105-
Levels is a puzzle/parkour map. It's not heavily stressed in the map itself, but the gameplay is broken down into 3 levels. It's a very simple naming premise, and I like that. It's concise, memorable, and rolls off the tongue. But I'm not supposed to be talking about the name, I'm supposed to talk about the map itself. This review might be a long one.
Preface: I'm going to rant about challenge and motive a few times here. A puzzle needs both things to be enjoyable; a task that gives the player a challenge to overcome and a reason to do it is fun. A puzzle with challenge but no desire to complete it is just testing. A puzzle with motivation but no challenge is busy work. A puzzle with neither is unplayable.
- Fuction:
The map not only breaks down into levels geometrically, it also breaks down easily in quality. The first level is on the lower end of the good spectrum. It's definitely enjoyable gameplay. With the lava maze and the fire resistance potions, some really good tricks could have be played by swimming through lava and I think that's a missed oppurtunity, and I think the maze should have more landmarks within it to help get one's bearings. The premise was nice, the execution wasn't fantastic, so that was nice. Where the path split two ways, they were both just good puzzles, but there was an outrageous difficulty gap between them. The parkour was the highest difficulty challenge I would allow and the pearl throwing was like walking down a corridor (but more fun).
The second level had the worst parts. The first room of the second level was the worst part. First, it tells you to temporarily change all the rules, which just takes the player right out of the game. I had to recheck the sign a few times to see what was cheating. "Dig around in the hillside until you can craft me a button" suffers heavily from the "no challenge" problem. It's busy work and just takes up time and space. This is the same reason people complain about mazes, which is coincidentally the next challenge. The seperation into quadrants gave the nice "landmark" effect, but now there's not the fun twist the lava had. For the purpose of seperating by quality, I'm pretending the second level cuts there.
The last third was the best of it. The soul sand race was well executed, the frogger room was fun, the wool minecraft jumping was the kind of parkour I like: big jumps from big platforms is less difficult and more cinematic. It was one snappy, fast paced challenge after another, then a nice break exploring the tower, followed by a swift ride through to the end of the map.
I wish the middle third was the same sort of style as the end. As it stands, nothing is broken and the puzzles span from just below averege up to quite nice. I gave you an extra point when I realized that the gameplay area is entirely within rainless biome. I hate rainlag when I'm trying to do timed challenges, so no rain is a great map feature.
7/10
- Form-
The map is another one that has plenty of completely varied environments with pretty much no explanation as to why they are there. There really isn't anything in here that's unpleasant, but the map only really hits stride when the cloth replicas get involved. That is one adorable zombie.
7/10
- Flavor-
This map screams of "built first, planned later." The given premise of trials done to stay alive seems tacked on and irrelevant to playing the map. A story needs a conflict, and challenges need motivation, but the motivation doesn't need to be a story, and it really shouldn't be one if it isn't incorporated into that map. The feel of the gameplay was clearly "here's some arbitrary puzzles and challenges, let's see if you can get through them" and that's what I considered while I was playing. Saving my soul didn't contribute anything to that. Having that hint of drama may do more to hook in new players, but it mildly deters from the gameplay itself. Based on that map premise and grading on flavor, I'd be rating this worse, but the sectioned levels helped bring it back. "can you get through the next level?" does more to help the gameplay here than "can you save your soul?"
5/10
Basically, the quality of the puzzles isn't consistent, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the map seems to have been built as a collection of individual puzzles without too much planning for the overall state of the map. There are even unused structures sitting around, like what seems to be an unattached section of enderpearl maze sticking out of the side of the wall. This is not the death of a map by any means, but for future projects keep in mind that the clearer an image of the overall project you start with, the cleaner the final product will be.
Uniqueness:
No offense, but not a lot new here. It's a puzzle/parkour map with mostly used puzzle types. A map does not need to be groundbreaking to be good, and this map was good, but it was not groundbreaking.
Overall Score: 19/30 and
Would I recommend this?
- Not quite the way it is now, but an overhaul of the map is being done. Most of my comments are too much about the overall experience than individual problems that I don't expect them to be addressed, but I still expect the overall quality to improve quite a bit. The creator shows quite a bit of promise, and it will be interesting to see what they can make with a bit more experience.
0
Absolutely.
0
0
It's in the queue. If not in the next day, I should definitely get to it in two.
0
I can definitely do that. But would you like me to post a review now and edit it later, or wait and post the complete review?
0
That's the idea. Make other people make better maps for me to play! trollface.png
1
by Gustavo Team
Thread- http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/535944-
CUBEception is sort of an escape map on such a huge scale that you can't really call it an escape map. You are the last remaining person inside a giant cube claimed to be the last safehouse of humanity after a cataclysm. And giant is hardly a just description- on normal view distance you can watch the sunrise on the other side of the map because the cube itself is out of render distance and it's just as tall as wide. Of course, size doesn't really matter, it's how you use the space, and this map uses it. The 3 hour run time was spot on for me, and that was only because I stuck the map on creative after 15 minutes so I wouldn't have to die. It is big, and it shows how rediculous maps might become in the near future when we get twice the height to build in. On to the ratings.
- Function:
The map is mostly parkour based, and good parkour at that. Beyond that, most of the challenge was finding the appropriate levers to continue. It this respect, it was pretty simple; it set up a successful gameplay formula and stuck to it. If I had any complaints about the actual challenges, I'd say that swimming up waterfalls gets a little tedious after doing it so many times, and a sort of learning curve section at the beginning would be nice for people like me who forgot you could do the "jump on a hatch open, then jump on it closed" trick. As far as bugs, I didn't find anything that didn't work as of 1.1, but I have one of the snapshots so climbable vines broke everything and anyone playing this way is held to the honor system. My condolences to the mapmakers if they intend to update this. (But if you do, make sure to get the vines near the end. A real troll piston is the one that you can't avoid because climbable vines reduce your speed when you jump through them. Of course, jumping across the title sequence made up for it.)
9/10
- Form:
This map is just fun to look at. Having that much open space inside a structure in minecraft is just a mindblowing effect. The actual puzzle buildings were all stylized to their stated purpose. I did not notice any instances where there was exposed redstone wiring and shouldn't have been. The map has great gadgets that rearrange hallways or build bridges for the player. And the comment about ladders on glowstone was completely appreciated, but I still didn't notice some of them for a while. Putting objects on blocks they blend in with is a mistake we are all guilty of, but still a mistake. The player spending 10 minutes stuck in a room because they didn't see the button on the cobblestone block is a shame. But those are just being nitpicky, the map is still generally an art piece. And it has an exquisite trailer
9/10
- Flavor:
The story in this map is not just a "forever alone" narrative. It is every "forever alone" narrative at once. You escape a prison alone, in an underground facility alone, following a trail of journals by a mysterious man alone, going through laboratories with old notes from scientists alone. The plot is fairly predictable and only tangentially related to the challenges for the middle 2/3 of the map, but it is shown to the player throughout the map at well placed intervals and is plenty enjoyable. I'm not normally a fan of being given an internal monologue by the mapmaker, but I think this map could have used that. Instead of following the breadcrumbs of the great survivor that's going to save humanity from imprisonment, I'd rather be that great survivor and save humanity myself, and I hope the suggested sequel takes that approach and lets the player be the main actor. Overall, the feel of this map was incredibly well executed, and the time I spent playing, my motive was to escape the cube, not just finish the map.
(I do think putting in SOPA vs ANONYMOUS jokes is tacky, though.)
9/10
- Uniqueness:
I don't quite know what to say here. I've never played a map that did everything quite like this. The combination of both secret rooms and scoring system is nice, and all the challenges feel fresh. But at the same time, 90% of this map is built off of cliches. All the forever alone aspects, the referential names, the internal society that made me feel like reading The Time Machine again. I wanna give it an exact average rating on this scale, but I'll round up because it came out 6 months ago and I may have been more excited about it had I played it then.
Overall Score: 27/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- Definitely, and will certainly be playing the sequel.
0
In the queue. Should be done within a day.