Review: Colony LV-7117: Hard Crash

The June 1999 release of Colony LV-7117 Hard Crash by Matt Parra was supposed to be the first of many releases, however to this date it is his only surviving work as the follow-ups were simply never made. Sadly, this fate was shared by many projects of which only first maps were ever published. Since it's a first map of an unreleased many, all we can do is see how it fares as a standalone level.

The player is a Terran colonist en route to the titular LV-7117 planet that has an operational human colony relying on mining operations to get by. Unfortunately, the colonist's ship is shot down and instead of landing in the city, he ends up on the colony's outskirts with his head full of questions: who shot him down, why that happened and what is going on inside the city. To do this, our colonist needs to investigate the mining outpost first for clues. Unarmed, he enters the mine and gets attacked by several Skaarj pupae. After exploring a bit, finding some clues and unlocking the way forward, the player goes through the entrance to the sewers and his adventure ends.

You may notice that I refer to the player character as male. That is not a mistake - the player is voiced (all the way back in 1999!) and he makes several comments regarding various things such as the map display or a sudden corpse prior to the pupae ambush. As such, he is a bit better defined than most protagonists of Unreal custom levels and thus feels a bit more like an actual person. That however has one drawback - those of the players that are more used to a Freemanesque silent character that can be just about anybody, may enjoy the level just a tad less.

The visuals of the level are surprisingly well thought out. The desert-like outdoors are bathed in the rays of a blinding sun and are admittedly a bit difficult to navigate, however the blinding light subsides once the player reaches the mines or the security outpost. These areas, while more simple in construction are just enough realistic to work: the security guard's room has all the equipment it needs such as a computer at a desk and prior to the sewers we see employees' changing room complete with a set of lockers. As for the soundscape: there is an occasional Crater.umx playing, albeit not entirely consistently (but its action section sees some action at least!) and there is occasional ambience such as howling wind outdoors. And, of course, the voice acting. It won't win any awards but it doesn't feel cheesy either so that's a plus. As far as errors go, the release notes mention some miniscule issues, I however didn't stumble upon them - perhaps I was just lucky. What's worse though is that the level may be a problem to run on current Unreal installations because of a problematic NoWeapon.u gametype - an easy fix is to borrow the one from Strange World's archive and the level will play as intended.

The gameplay consists of exploration of the area in order to find the switch to open the latter half of the level. During this, the player will come across his only weapon - the automag. Even careful picking off the pupae that ambush you isn't guaranteed to leave the player enough ammo to kill the Skaarj and Gasbag that are present in the changing room which means that there is a chance you'll be forced to miss out on one translator message while dashing through to the exit door. Not a good choice. Just one, perhaps two more ammo boxes would suffice and give the player the comfort of tackling everyone instead of choosing whether to kill the pupae or risk running past to conserve some ammo for the final room.