Project Zephon might be one of the most beautiful looking campaigns, every mapper is at the top of their game, everything when it comes to level geometry is well made, complex rooms, great terrain and good texture alignment (for the most part), however this campaign is tainted by the awful first impression that it had when it was first released, that version of Zephon was only balanced for Coop, poor little souls that tried to play Zephon in SP were met with an incredible unbalanced campaign that made Unreality Episode 1 look like a cakewalk. Thankfully the team realized their big mistake and released a patch that fixed many things, the more important fixes were allowing the game to be played in other difficulties because the intro had a glitch that resets the difficulty to normal and the other important fix was balancing the campaign for SP.
This mappack was definitely inspired by the map "Genome Warriors" from Xidia Gold by Hourences, the ice textures, the way decorations are used, the level of detail in the level geometry, the fact that both Genome Warriors and the first map of Zephon used QueenSong for the music and there's even a corpse that uses the same ice texture skin from Xidia. Funny that the insane difficulty that the original Zephon had feels like another thing that the mappack has in common with Genome Warriors since that map has pretty dangerous enemies and not a single health pack, Hourences shows no mercy once again
. It's almost like Zephon is taking that map from Xidia and expanding it to a whole campaign. Also this mappack has an interesting relationship with SP2D after all they were made by some of the people that made Zephon. SP2D feels like a spiritual successor to Zephon.
UMS-Sakura Crash-site is a great introduction to this campaign, there's cold everywhere and you have to find a gun and find a way to escape, the story is pretty simple but there's many translator messages to flesh out the plot, with many logs telling stories of what happened in the facility before you arrived. The map has plenty of scripted sequences and they are amazing, especially the ones that have to do with the ships flying all over the place, very good job with the design of those ships. Probably the most impressive brush is the tank that appears multiple times through the level and also special mention to that turret that appears halfway through the map. An issue I have with this map is that there aren't that many enemies and difficulty filtering seems to work backwards (removing enemies the higher difficulty you play), I know that Zephon was facing a lot of criticism for the original release but this is not how you do difficulty filtering. The enemies of this map are pretty standard, however I like the fact that all brutes use the Behemoth's skin, it fits perfectly with the cold theme that this campaign is going for, the Skaarj are well used, I like the recreation of the first fight with the Skaarj from the original Unreal, CliffyB would be proud
, the map also has pupae but they are pretty rare, however I noticed that locating pupae inside vents might be another nod to Xidia since that campaign was the pioneer of using pupae in vents.
This map doesn't have that many secrets but there's a hidden ASMD, good luck in finding it
Issues I found :
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This map sometimes uses the oldskool versions of the Unreal weapons, this causes problems with mutators (for example activate the OldSkool option to replace the Stinger with the Pulse Gun and play this map and find the first Stinger). (I recently realized that I made this mistake because I modified the level, my bad
)
-The skybox looks great however the clouds don't move. Also the skybox is supposed to have fog but the zones where you see the skybox have fog turn off.
-If you pay close attention, you will notice that the mountains in the skybox are transparent.
-This map has pathnodes, but they are incomplete. Also the map uses LiftExits without a LiftCenter
-Ironically even though Zephon was made with Coop in mind, none of the maps have checkpoints.
-If you miss the Stinger at the start of the map, you are going to be in a lot of trouble. There's a second one but it's in a secret area.
-This map uses plenty of tree meshes, however they disappear out of nowhere when you start to look away, unfortunately this is an engine limitation.
-The corpses that have translator messages can be destroyed, rookie mistake
.
-There's an ice pool that you can walk over, however the surface's height is lower than the collision, weird
.
-This map is very unforgiving to players that make mistakes since there's only 8 health packs in the entire map. This map's difficulty feels the most similar to Zephon's original release.
-Some of the terrain textures are misaligned.
-The security fences kill you instantly, a little too brutal if you ask me, especially considering that this is the first map of the campaign.
-There's a door near the end of the map that has strange collision issues on the floor.
-The lift before the section where you fight the first Skaarj has a funny oddity, if you activate the lift, go outside and wait for the lift to reach its destination, you will notice that the pillar that supports the lift is floating, oops
.
-A little nitpick, I wished this map had a music event at the end to stop the music so the transition from this map to the next one is more seamless.
All of this issues are tolerable but the one issue I can't forgive is that the author DELETED THE BRUSHES OF THE MAP
, this is something that I simply cannot forgive and that alone makes me respect this map much less. The only other map in Zephon that does this is map 10 by WhirlWindWabbit, both mappers committed the worst cardinal sin in mapping.
Somewhere in Nevada...
(and I did find it funny how the ultrawide resolution, which works fine during the space scene, sorta breaks the illusion during the crash scene 
also, the new HD texture for the mountains in the skybox actually gives off a noticeably altered vibe with the difference in hue)
.