We have a large batch of new reviews for you today. First up, UBerserker has gone back to 1998 to review some of the custom mapping efforts from the year of Unreal's release; he has chosen to review Expert Visuals, Rajal Castle and Skaarj City. Mister Prophet, meanwhile, has taken it upon himself to review what was widely considered the unreviewable: he will be tackling each of Zora's Coop-led map packs from a Single Player perspective, starting with Episode 1.

It took me ages to edit all of those reviews! Thanks to sana for doing a great job of editing Prophet's review - hopefully the first of many for the new site team.

Cool Beans

That was one of the more interesting reviews I've done in a while. I've got 3 more Episodes to play and review now.

Yep, and I've just committed you to it in the news story, hehe.

I'm actually looking forward to these. Nice to have something to do for the site again.

holy crap that's a lot of reviews in one day

Random statistics time. Who has the most "current" reviews on the site?

6. Guest reviewers Frieza, sana and TheIronKnuckle, with 1 each
5. Lightning Hunter 5
4. MMAN 12
3. UBerserker 13
2. Mister Prophet 14
1. Hellscrag 41

Hmm. You guys have some catching-up to do after I'm gone.

I read Mr. Prophet review. Long good review is long good. The first time I played Zora 1 I got stuck in the Skaarj Roulette Spiral-down thing because I didn't know what to do. Skaarj Gunners were everywhere.
And wow the mine kart ride sounds about as painful as any section of the Unreality mappack, maybe even worse. I really enjoyed that resume and list of yours.

How many Biterfish Schools were placed in the entire episode?

EDIT: Yesss I'm in the top 3 and I still have many reviews I thought of to do.

I actually don't recall how many, but I think that just about every pool of water had some (except for the flooded part in Musica). I do recall a crap load of devil fish around the island in Lost. Come to think of it, this pack featured a lot of aquatic danger for a pack with so few water areas.

I thought you'd decided to stop?

It's great, though, if you're going to continue.

Aside that in the future I'll probably take TCO (maybe even RD if anything goes right and I'd like to be part of a collab review one day), I have the TentacleHunter Mappack to review and probably all the better old custom maps of Unreal.

Overall, I'd like to ask to the various people here what maps need being reviewed.

Perhaps any thoughts on this could be directed to the suggestion box thread.

"There are fun moments in Episode 1. They just don't happen often enough." ? I think "Expect to learn by dying, and then expect to die without learning a damn thing" is a much more fitting choice.

Other than that, I find the review to be extremely well written and 99.9998% accurate. Not only that, I busted out laughing more than once while reading it (especially the mine cart section). Looking way forward to the other Episode 2,3 and 4 reviews. I really think Zora would be honored at these reviews and I will point them out to her at her site.

I'm happy with how the review came out too. I didn't really know what to expect with these maps, even though I've heard about them so often over the years.

I'm glad the details of the mine map gave you a chuckle Sometimes...you just have to laugh at things I guess. Otherwise you go crazy.

4 new reviews?

I'll read these and play the packs as soon as I can.