Review: Camelot: In Memory of Guinevere

As Project Zephon's case has showed us, multiplayer arenas if constructed properly may translate to single player quite efficiently. Camelot: In Memory of Guinevere, originally a deathmatch map from 1999, revisited nine years later by the author and two individuals by the names of Stalker 3000 & DJ_Skaarj, just might be one such map. Is it?

Wey's original design technique certainly helps in that regard. As the author himself acknowledges in the release notes, he aimed not for a typical fragfest arena, but for a setting and this, just as in the case of Konosus, made it easier to turn the level into a single player endeavor which turned out quite neat.

Camelot is a large, several stories tall castle dedicated to the memory of Queen Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur - or so the story goes. While it can be seen that this is the author's first map, subsequent revisions have upgraded the visuals to a decent level. While oldschool and somewhat simplistic, the construction is proper and varied. The castle makes actual sense, there's a storage compartment, a small crypt, a courtyard, a drawbridge... all the characteristics are there and they work well to ensure the level feels authentic. The area isn't just about indoors either: the rock formation the castle is built on is surrounded by water and further rock formations that can be explored once the opposition's been dealt with. The impression can be somewhat spoiled by the occasional visual glitches, especially the skybox in one spot, but they aren't plentiful, nor big.

As far as the audio layer is concerned, there are certain flaws. While the use of ambience is scarce, it is proper and the environment feels more lively with all those chirps, running water and other SFX out and about - but the music while initially fitting the map (Nali Chant track) grows tiring in time, especially given the level takes a lot of time to complete. The action section of the track is left unused despite many situations warranting its use.

The gameplay factor is the toughest part to pull off when dealing with MP-to-SP porting, as I already mentioned with Konosus. As a solo adventure usually revolves around searching for a way to unlock the next portion of a location by doing something in the previous area, leaving too many routes open might prove problematic. Luckily Camelot manages to avoid that fate. The level is fairly linear: your task is to reach the top of the castle and unlock the large sewage system on the other side of the level. How you do it, it's up to you... theoretically. I've found three five ways into the castle, but three converge into one so they can be counted as such and the remaining two are defended heavily enough for the players to skip them outright. Especially the frontal assault is utter idiocy, with the almost immortal titan wraith around. The game essentially forces the player to improvise. Storming the main gate with just a dispersion pistol, when there's two snipers on the ledges above, several krall, a Skaarj and the aforementioned titan on the drawbridge - that sounds like suicide and it essentially is. The only way is from below and even that is dangerous enough to make the approach hard. Almost gruelling. Things improve once the player finds the dispersion pistol power-ups and grabs the first weapons located on the lower levels. There's just about enough health and armor to keep the player going... if they know what they're doing and they're not rushing into the unexplored areas like a mad bull. Trust me: if you're a mad bull type, there's more than enough toreadors in there that are perfectly capable of putting you down. Play it safe.

Lack of any translator messages is a waste of potential, but the level's setting and release notes do introduce a feel of exploring an ancient castle taken by the enemy. While this isn't much, it can't be written off as nothing at all. This isn't a big problem though: with such a setting and inventive gameplay, the level's already pretty good.