Review: More Real / Priest in a Puzzle

James Staton Richardson was a pretty active mapper starting from 1998 to the early 2000s, but he focused mostly on multiplayer levels. There's very few of his SP outings and today we're focusing on by far the most surreal-looking one, that being "More Real" a.k.a. "Priest in a Puzzle".

Our protagonist, known only as Doc, is - as described in the release notes - a mercenary having just completed a contract for Inuit Corporation after which he had his memory of it wiped. With only a few credits to his name, he stowed away on a vessel leaving the fringe planet he woke up on and eventually came to accept a contract directly targeting his former employer. However, the following level has no connection to that background story of our character, instead it seems mostly a sidequest involving Doc's research on the Nali. In this case, a Nali priest hunted by the Skaarj has hidden himself in what is described only as a puzzle keep built by Haute's monks (a very welcome reference to the novel "Prophet's Power") and Doc's objective is to get to him before the Skaarj will. A task that will be made all the more difficult thanks to the keep having several lethal traps that are to keep interlopers away.

Unfortunately for Doc, regardless of his intentions… he too is an interloper.

Despite the rich lore in the release notes, the level itself has no text content to speak of, however luckily the build itself, featuring surreal polygonal-shaped large floating islands with doors and buttons connected by walkways. The objective seems fairly simple and even I, being the opponent of puzzles in a shooter game, could handle them so they aren't a problem - and they successfully sell the concept of a "puzzle keep". Occasional Skaarj and Krall are to be dispatched, many of the Skaarj being of various trooper varieties, which helps in refilling the ammunition to the Razorjack and Eightball which will likely be the two weapons of choice to eliminate the opposition. There's more to choose from, such as automag and ASMD but I honestly never had to bother with them. The task is simple: press buttons to unlock doors or move door sets around and proceed to another area to find another button for yet another locked door someplace else. Some doors lead to empty square rooms which are the traps of the level: open one and arrows will be shot at you from three directions at once. Luckily even erroneous opening of such a door leaves the player enough room to maneuver to quickly open other doors in an attempt to find the exit, with minimal damage - as long as the player works fast.

As mentioned, the level's build consists of several areas with large polygonal central figures floating in the middle, connected by walkways and corridors. There's a nice touch with all the water reflecting the clouds above, a rare touch in Unreal mapping. While the shapes are fairly simple, they successfully sell the surreal feeling of a puzzle-focused, Myst-like area the player has to traverse. There's little in terms of ambience but the music is mostly fitting - Nali.umx for the exploration and Warlord.umx for one particular case of a more hectic fight. There's also a Shared Dig occurrence which seems unfitting, but luckily it quickly reverts to Nali.umx for the ending portion of the level. Overall, it seems that the music works instead of the ambience, hence why Shared Dig being there seems so jarring.

Technically, there's only two issues to complain about the level. There's one small visible BSP issue and in the latter portion of the level, as you're leaving the spot with a submerged floating platform area, you may end up getting instakilled by a sudden invisible hole, so save often in that area, as it is passable. Still, that's a problem that shouldn't appear on any level because if you hadn't saved or it's been a while, you end up losing a lot of progress, leading to unnecessary frustration.