29/09/2024 - "Cat and Mouse" by Simon "EZKeel" West-Bulford

[Sat42]

Map Title: Cat and Mouse
Author: Simon "EZKeel" West-Bulford
From: Legacy
Filename: Legacy-1.unr




Video Playthrough:


Synopsis: After Xerania's fall was achieved through the use of time travel, and in the aftermath of the revelations of the Nali scriptures which turned the Krall against the Skaarj, the Earth government discovered that the mastermind behind the Skaarj's most advanced genetic engineering projects was in fact a human traitor. The traitor has been eliminated, but too late. After recovering a hidden DNA sample, the Earth government sent it to a secret research facility on outpost planet Ventar 9 to determine what terrible legacy the traitor had left behind. The first few reports were disturbing and indicated grave danger, and before long, all communications ceased. You are part of the special forces team sent to investigate, and as usual, things do not go well as a passing shower of asteroids collide with your ship. History has a tendency to repeat itself and once again you find yourself hurtling towards the planet below! Darkness falls as you lose consciousness...

Discuss!

[Semfry]

The design here is pretty simple but does still have plenty of unique detail despite the cubic design, and it's more detailed than a lot of Ezkeel's earlier releases at least. There's also a clear Half-Life inspiration in the ways the environment is more interactive, with things like the machines to interact with and the scripted sequences as the Brutes start to break in. Then there's the non-standard way of dealing with the first enemy, as well as nuking the Titans later.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward with the first half being exploration, but a bit of combat comes later after you get your weapon, which, while a bit slow, does destroy the brutes very easily (with the high-damage being the main saving grace of Legacy's otherwise somewhat clunky weapons). The actual Brute crush moment is nicely layered with all the tasks leading up to it (as well as touches like the camera views), but the finish is a bit awkward and seems simplest to do by baiting a melee attack, which normally stops it in place a bit; there could probably be some geometry changes to make it a bit more consistent, or something like a temporary weapon that stuns it for a few seconds. Escaping the ship and watching all the Brutes get nuked is a satifying climax to the map though.

In some ways I guess this is a bit of a remake of the first Decyber Invasion map, given that was also on a Human structure under attack with some scripted events to try and sell that (but less successfully than here).

Edit: Also one of the credits messages in the intro has a black background that's clearly not supposed to be there and isn't for the others, so I wonder if that was always there or is a version (either Legacy or UT itself) bug.

[Sat42]

Another excellent video playthrough, Semfry, and thank you for showing the intro cinematic as well! By the way: this might be the first time that the HD textures mod not only makes things look better but gave me a "wow" moment, with that nebula in the intro a mighty step up from the original texture regarding the one credits message in the intro which has a black background: I can at least confirm this is the case with UT v436 as well, so it's probably an error by the author.

I'd never thought of this map as a kind of remake of Invasion: Xerania's Fall Part II's first map (the latter was explicitly on a spaceship in space) but I can see how that might be the case, especially with how Invasion can feel like a work-in-progress compared to Legacy.

I believe Cat and Mouse to be one of the best maps in Legacy, and while it isn't 1337 build-wise, it has plenty of details as already mentioned and I'd argue that the level design (in terms of how it creates interactive situations or events within the game environment) really does provide an excellent introduction to the campaign. It just works really well, from the way the narrative hooks you with that elaborate intro cutscene, through the long stretch of gameplay without a weapon and the resulting buildup in tension, to the release after you solved the (dangerous) puzzle and can engage in firefights. I remember that Behemoth which you need to outsmart, and I recall finding the whole sequence to be quite unnerving the first time round. Funnily enough, my traditionally cautious approach means I never did draw the Behemoth's attention on purpose, the only way I won this is by allowing it to continue its patrol and activate the crusher at the right time I also remember the delight at getting a new never-before-seen weapon from this! And actually one of the best from Legacy. I agree with Semfry's general statement on the campaign's custom weapons.

And yeah the ending is very satisfying, the schadenfreude peaks at seeing the Brutes all gather round the digital countdown for the facility's self-destruction.

P.S.: only people who are consumed by details may notice this, so I feel like highlighting the fact that the synopsis provided here in the OP is actually based on the campaign's story material available outside the game, which is needed if you want to understand why Legacy has its name as the in-game intro does not, in fact, mention the discovery of a human traitor who was helping the Skaarj develop their most advanced genetic engineering projects like Xerania and... Cyberus, who is not mentioned outside the game but features as a major plot point in the game's intro cutscene.

[Aspide]

Legacy is one of the most ambitious campaigns made for UT99, especially considering when it was made and that the majority of the project was done by one person, EZKeel. He is a mapper that made many levels for Unreal, UT99 and even UT2003 (I remember a Doctor Who themed DM map for UT2003 that was made by EZKeel, awesome ). Legacy is the third chapter of the Xerania trilogy and this is definitely the biggest and most ambitious one, with new cinematics, weapons, music, items, enemies and even a fully functional HUB system (something that the original Unreal tried to do ). This campaign is very flawed, probably the biggest issue is how unpolished the whole experience feels, the new weapons are a hit and miss (some are very unreliable while others are too OP), the new enemies aren't as deadly or smart as the originals and the levels, while they have some pretty cool concepts, they have some odd level design decisions which can annoy players. The story is very simple but there are plenty of messages to expand on the lore of the story, however a big issue that everyone brings up is the way the story handles religious themes, which is done very poorly. The ultimate irony is that EZKeel was a very religious person when he made all his SP content, but he quitted that religion in the future, so if he ever replays Legacy, he will feel the same way that most players feel when encountering those religious references in his work, oops

Cat and Mouse is the first playable map of Legacy, there is an intro cutscene before that sets the story pretty well. I like that intro however I'm always a little worried because at the end of the cutscene you can die unexpectedly because of rocks . Cat and Mouse is a huge departure if you have played custom SP maps for Unreal/UT, because this is basically a puzzle map, you have to kill an enemy by using a crusher, get weapons and then escape, sounds pretty simple but the problem is that the first time you play this map you will be caught off guard by the unorthodox way of dealing with the first enemy, after that the map becomes a regular SP map where you kill enemies with weapons and find a way to escape. The level has decent level geometry, sure it doesn't compare to other maps that were being made at the time like the levels from ONP or Xidia but it looks good enough so you can enjoy the adventure, EZKeel has truly evolved as a mapper especially when you see the original Xerania where the terrain was made with cones . The lighting of the map is decent as well, there are some good uses of the fan lights and this map (just like the rest) use plenty of fog, however this map doesn't use Ambient Lighting so dark areas look extremely dark, which can cause issues like players getting stuck like in the area where you activate the missiles to kill the Titans.

Sound design is a highlight of the map, this level really benefits from new computer voice lines provided by EZKeel's wife (she appears everywhere in those portraits) and sounds are used very effectively for all scripted sequences and movers. Music is good as well, the map uses Crater from Unreal and it fits the map very well, that song works so well in maps where everything is empty with a sense of dread and mystery as to what is actually happening. The map also uses a new custom song that was made by EZKeel himself, out of all the custom tracks that he did in Legacy this is my favorite, shame that it's only used in this map. There's many translator messages to explore the story of the campaign, maybe a little too many for my taste but that's just a nitpick. One cool detail of this map is that it uses Warp Zones to create the illusion of cameras all over the facility, I would have added an extra layer to the Warp Zone to create a video camera look by adding a texture to add visual glitches. Decorations are used very well, the suit from the ISV-Kran appears everywhere, this map also uses some decorations from UT like the pipes and lightboxes.

Issues I found :
-An issue of Legacy in general is that OldSkool doesn't replace the carcasses properly, so this campaign won't have permanent carcasses and chunks.
-Another general issue of Legacy is that there isn't a dispersion pistol equivalent (until much later in the campaign), so if you aren't careful you will run out of ammo and you will have no way to fight back.
-In the first room you have to touch the door of the vent so it falls to the floor, however if you are very unlucky you can get stuck inside that door.
-Also in the apartments you will see a vent door on the roof, this door causes a HOM effect because EZKeel used a solid brush instead of a semi-solid, what was he smoking.....
-Some of the apartments have a window to the skybox, which geometrically doesn't make any sense if you pay attention at the level.
-This map has plenty of places that either kill you instantly or hurt you severely, a little too brutal for the first map of the campaign.
-The first Brute is suppose to die by the crusher, however the crusher deals a small amount of damage, this means that if you are playing with mutators or the 227 new difficulties, the brute might survive the crusher, but that Brute must have an insane amount of health.
-Similar to the previous issue, the Titans might survive the Redeemer explosions, this has happened to me before but it happens extremely rarely.
-There are some texture alignment issues with cylinder brushes like the tube you use in the slime area, however I don't blame EZKeel for this since the original UT99 editor doesn't have an option to align cylinder textures. Also the texture alignment in the terrain section is very poor, some of the textures look very ugly because of the way they are scaled.
-The level isn't fully pathnoded, also the connections in the Brute-Crusher sections are very poor, which explains why the Brute has a hard time following you to the trap.
-This map has AlarmPoints and PatrolPoints but they are used very poorly.
-There are two Tree9 decorations in this map, this decoration is invisible because it doesn't have a mesh attach to it. This causes collision issues near the trees in the Brute-Crusher section.
-After killing the first Brute, the computer message gets cut off by the change of music, this only happens if you are using an old version of UT with the Galaxy audio driver, which was the standard when Legacy was released.
-The good old Female corpse texture issue appears in this level.
-The zones of this map are a mess, there are zones with more than one ZoneInfo, zones with no ZoneInfos, the final water area has FOUR water zones and there are plenty of other zones caused by those poorly used solid brushes on the rooftop of the apartments.
-If you use the Frag Cannon on the area where the brutes appear at the end of the map, you can easily go out of bounds.
-The map ends with a cutscene, however the music doesn't work very well depending on the audio driver you are using, the song plays with the wrong tempo.

[ebd]

Not too long or too hard to navigate. Pathing seemed a bit dodgy and the brute didn't seem to want to step onto the crusher from one of the three sides. Most of the translator messages are exposition dump which was pretty standard MO for the time and there are a lot of them.

I played Legacy a long, long time ago, but remember little of it aside from the custom weapons having some issues and very heavy handed religious themes.