Review: Apocalypse Threat

Apocalypse Threat is the second mappack from "Crescent Moon Software". Its storyline is born from the mission of the player to stop the Mercenaries from firing 3 rockets which had the power to destroy the galaxy. The player's mission fails and he finds himself on a travel through Na Pali and many different locations, like a mercenary base, a Nali temple located on a mountain, watery underground caves and more.

Architecture could be described as little above minimum. The most rooms are empty, with nearly no details (They're mostly "cube rooms"), sometimes there appear some pillars and such, but mostly there is totally no detail. The maps lack actor decorations (Saw 2 nali lamps in the whole pack, which didn't fit to the maps they were placed in what is described below), the movers are totally undetailed (The author didn't bother to use the 2D Shape editor or vertex editing to make the doors actually fit their textures), and since the skybox was made by the usual method, it doesn't look too realistic if combined with a mountain scene where you can look down the cliff you're on, but won't see any geometry which could block the sight on the bottom of the skybox.

A really awful thing kept through the pack is the use of textures and decorations in locations where they weren't meant to be. At the start of the pack the player wakes up in a room made of metal (which means the same metal texture on walls, floor and ceiling), on a bed of metal with a table of metal and a nali lamp.... standing in the corner. Assuming that the map was supposed to be some kind of human base, it was rather stupid to add that particular lamp to the room.

The second map is described as "Mercenary Base". After the player leaves the first map with a little transporter, he starts in the corner of a castle themed wall maze with a few big.. buildings or what they were supposed to be (see screenshot above). There is completely nothing in the map that reminds one of Mercenaries.

While proceeding through the pack, I got in a few usual Nali themed corridors, which lead to doors, similar to some in the Terraniux, which is quite strange, since the authors failed to explain that the area was occupated by the Mercenaries and turned into an outpost.

I could continue with that list of wrongly used of textures in the pack, wood textures in Mercenary bases, Skaarj runes in Nali temples etc etc etc, you know enough.

The lighting in Apocalypse Threat is too simple, there maybe are around 3 different light colors in every map, which isn't too great.

The pack features lots of custom music, which itself is cool, but in most cases doesn't fit the map setting and location. There hardly are any music changes through the maps, and a few maps don't even use any music at all.

Regarding technics you should know that Apocalypse Threat includes a few custom pawn types, like a slightly modified Slith with a bad chosen texture (You know what I mean if you saw the Unreal 1 mod "Aura"), and a few recolored normal pawns with probably no great code changes. The maps hardly have any scripted sequences with the exception of a scene where a Skaarj slaughters 2 Nali right under the player's nose while he is running down the stairs to kill him.

Gameplay-wise there is not much. The most appearing enemy in the pack was the Mercenary, a few maps also feature other pawns, which don't seem to be used after the maps, but after their function, like Krall being enemies for mass attacks, Brutes being big baddies, even when being on a pure Mercenary ship. In the first couple of maps you get to jump around on platforms hanging in the air pretty much, what isn't quite logical in a large underground Mercenary base. I don't think the Mercenaries would waste their time building pointless platforms to make movement through their base difficult. Sometimes there were overpowered hordes of enemies - like if for example you trigger a alarm, around 12 Krall surround you, while you barely have ammo. Talking about the ammo, in the maps at the beginning you get enough ammo for both your weapons (AutoMag and Stinger), later in the pack you won't find too much, even after getting additional weapons.