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Edited 3.02 minutes after the original posting.
TL;DR: One of the best maps ever and what a legendary secret it contains!
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This map is an absolute chef-d'œuvre and is for sure one of the best maps that I've ever played! I tend to agree with @Eraesr's review for the most part. Despite being simple in its concept, CITY1's architecture supplemented by an amazing skybox, some truly astounding work on light and high detailedness brings the unique atmosphere which perfectly suits the map's gameplay. I agree with @Alice on the fact that the realism in this map in the combination with the aesthetic night-feeling dark and the illumination makes you want to play this level again and again.
For those who enjoy playing custom Q3 maps with some out-of-the-game music, CITY1 can be ideal for a night-time playlist :) I usually don’t listen to any music while being in a match, except for the in-game wavs, but when I do, this level is among the first ones that are suitable to enjoy with music, which come to mind. Recently, I tried to play it in the central shopping mall hall with Esta Noche Sin Ti by Tony Riparetti. The song seemed to be very suitable, which is quite expectable: it was written for the 1997 movie “Mean guns” (www.imdb.com/title/tt0119642/) where, according to the plot, “100 people, who have betrayed The Syndicate, are gathered in a prison opening the next day. They are given weapons and 6 hours to kill each other. The 3 remaining share $10,000,000.” (quote from IMDb). In other words, this movie is almost entirely about the arena, which is exactly what Quake 3 Arena is about. Moreover, the song itself contains the word “noche” which is the Spanish for “night” -)
Furthermore, the walls of the mall are filled with various film posters, which definitely adds to the movie ambiance. I also appreciate the joke of the jar with the famous coffee becoming Netscapé on one of such posters :-) It’s true that the sounding of these two words, Nescafé and Netscape is quite similar, despite the etymology remaining different.
The ones of them with the cinematographization of George Orwell’s “1984”, as well as the references to the films with such names as “The Matrix” and “Apocalypse now” make this level really actual nowadays 😂 At the same time, the map itself almost perfectly manages to take you on a trip to the dreamlike and unlimited world of Quake ✨
And not the last reason for this is the skybox. You’re literally surrounded by numerous skyscrapers shining in the dark, which makes you understand that you’re not near a lonely shopping mall in the middle of nowhere, but near a shopping mall in a big and dynamic city.
However, the skybox is not the only one aspect that makes this map feel more dynamic: the road near the mall is long enough to even sometimes make you practice strafe jumps :) According to the review, “The street is a wide open play area where any player with a railgun will easily dominate the other players attempting to cross the street. A railing lined with a row of trees does offer some protection and blocks line of sight somewhat.” This is true, and let’s imagine a situation: there’s a player/bot (or several) having their back to the mall and facing the street and a player/bot (or several ones) being on the road. Since the road is a huge open space, there are almost no places to hide. But I think the ones walking down the street could try to apply something that some of KovaaKs’ bots do: strafing left-right + jumping – classic! ;)
I’m also impressed by the graphic quality of the two road signs above the street. If you zoom in, you’ll be able to read: “KFZ und Fußgängertunnel”, which is German for “Car and pedestrian tunnel”. And once you see the scheme with City 2, 3 and 4, you’ll instantly understand why this level is called “CITY1” C: I think the street has the atmosphere of dreariness to some extent. For me it’s similar to the one on The Mucus Flow by B.P.R.D., a Doom 2 map from Community Chest 2 (map 24), hosted by Cadman and Cyber-Menace, or GRUBQ38 by Gareth Evans Mc-Clave & Patrick Evans Mc-Clave from the Half Dead mod. It’s such a feature that can be quite hard to process, but which adds some uniqueness to the map and makes it memorable while giving a desire to keep returning on the level again and again because of the feeling of nostalgia. Anyway, trucks don’t seem to go here too often comparing to KNIGHTMB1-TA by @KnightMB, so you better always have a railgun with you, if you don’t wish to become an easy target =)
Speaking of the railgun, on this level it can be found in the shopping mall on the upper floor inside the secret room, calmly bouncing on the table alongside a box of slugs. The review states: “The map features a few nooks and crannies that do feel a bit out of place and far too cramped to be of any real use. One such area is a room with a skeleton watching The Matrix on a TV. The room holds a Railgun but otherwise serves no real purpose.” This is something that I cannot really agree with. This room can be used as a good and comfortable asylum to avoid attacks on the upper floor, especially considering that there’s a spawning point, where participants of the match can teleport to, in the corner not far from the stairs. And this including the attacks from the lower floor as well, since the upper floor’s fence is a “ghost” — it lets projectiles pass through it (which I think is not very fair towards bots, because they cannot see enemies through this fence C:).
Another very useful purpose of this room, in my opinion, is the path to the secret. I remember thinking that somewhere in the huge and wide universe of custom Quake 3 maps someone made a map with such a secret, which requires almost legendary exploring skill to reveal that, and maybe it is even inside another secret. But after many years of playing custom Q3 maps and not finding any confirmation to my thoughts, I told to myself that I was probably “overacting” and imagining almost the impossible…
Everything changed when I looked at the overview of CITY1 by KRAFTWERK2K1 on ..::LvL. It was claiming that the map had 1 BFG weapon and 2 BFG ammo boxes. How? Where? I’ve been playing this map for couple of years and never seen anything related to the 9th weapon here. I went ahead and searched for the BFG around the whole level maybe 4 times, but still found nothing. I have to admit that I only managed to find it in the \devmap mode with the \noclip activated. I soared high up over the map and saw a little light spot in the dark on the top of the very long roof, which attracted my attention. I flew down to the roof and saw the following: BFG9000 with 2 ammunition boxes for it. After I landed, I came to the realization that the weapon was inside something like a shallower pit, which meant that the roof had a lower layer.
So I turned the noclip off, jumped off the roof and started to search for some objects close to the corner of the mall, the one near the “← Cafeteria” pointer. The only object high enough to make a rocket jump off it and get on the top of the building seemed to be one of those trees with a tiny upper area. After several attempts, I managed to get on the roof, and then I approached the further border and rocket jumped over it, which brought me to the BFG. Next time when remembering about that and the battle suit secret, I came up to the conclusion that these two secrets are connected. That’s when I built up the sequence that represented the path needed to get them both in time. I recorded a short video to demonstrate how to do that: youtu.be/3mIN7ctR0ZI.
You should enter the shopping mall building and go up the stairs. Next, turn right two times and continue forward, before you see a door, to the left of the picture with a tractor. This is the only one door on the upper floor that can be opened.
Go through it and turn right to the purple room. Now face the brown flag on the wall, approach it, crouch and go through it. Then continue forward, grab the 5 health medkit and continue moving in the same direction about 3 seconds. Despite the fact that you’re surrounded by the dark from all the sides, try to turn 90° left and keep pressing the forward key. If you see the light, you are moving in the right direction. Crouch again, pass through the window. Once you see the battle suit, jump off the electrical boxes/pipes, or whatever it is, and grab the suit.
Finally, now that you have this temporary power up item activated, you’re protected from the self-damage of the rocket jumps, so don’t waste any time and jump to the grey door — it’s a teleporter. Once you’re spawned, turn right and then turn right around the corner of the building and strafe jump, if you can or at least side jump until you pass the backside of the pointer and reach the tree near the corner of the shopping mall.
Rocket jump to the tree, then rocket jump to the roof, make sure to push off the center of the tree. Then turn to the border in the dark on the left and keep jumping to it, until you reach it. Then rocket jump over the border, quickly grab the BFG and two ammo boxes and rocket jump back. It is important to do all the aforementioned until you run out of your battle suit duration.
My sincere gratitude goes to Kraftwerk for bringing to life such a smart concept that I thought only was in my dreams. Bravo! And then, of course, a player who’s skillful enough can just rocket jump onto the electrical boxes from the extern room, but still, I think this concept is truly genius. Thus, the map has almost all the basic weapons, excluding the grenade launcher and including the BFG, which is very beneficial for a map of a larger size like this one, in my opinion.
And as for the nooks, I think the dark space behind the teleporter near the rocket launcher which you spawn near to after teleporting from the battle suite area is worthy of mention. It can serve as certain kind of a camping zone and reminds me a little bit of the dark space on COLDWARCTF by Sedric down there on the bottom floor on the right of the shotgun and this large glass wall. The two very side alcoves near the road that are close to the tunnels also can play a role in partial protection , as you can hide behind one of the walls to prevent enemies’ attacks. It can be quite a good camping point if you have the railgun in your arsenal, which can let you apply some pick-a-boo shooting using the right wall in the very left alcove and the left wall in the very right alcove appropriately.
Another thing to notice is that I wasn’t only pleasantly surprised by some of the dark corners that let gain a bit of tactical advantage, but also by the astonishing work on light on this level! Both the inside and the outside projectors on this map perfectly complete its atmosphere! Especially, I’m impressed by the long “alley” projector lines which remind me of those decorative lights embellishing various fountains and hedges IRL.
Speaking of real life, surprisingly enough to me, I have some associations with almost all the photos hanging on the upper floor of the mall from somewhere I’ve been to, or at least from some movies :-)
And then, there are some pictures of burgers only, if we take a look inside the cafeteria :) The review states: “The side entrance brings you into a burger joint where the only employee appears to be a dead skeleton. No burgers are served here anymore, but the ammo boxes on the table are much more useful than burgers.” Haha, that’s true, why would you want to get a burger when you can get a chance to enjoy the fulfillment of your stack with six different types of such useful ammunition?) But still, this cafeteria seems somewhat similar to me in its concept to MikeDonalds on the Doom 2 map Doom Center by Doorhenge. I’ve already written about this on the forum in this thread: lvlworld.com/thread/493/0. Both levels have a skeleton as the only employee, and both those skeletons are supposed to serve burgers 😅 It's probably just a coincidence, but still, I find very cool the fact that Classic Doom and Quake 3 mappers have spiritually similar ideas, it shows the unity in the way of thinking in our communities, even if it's unintentional. I also like the placement of the invisibility in this area — the concept: “If you want to be barely noticeable, then find the barely noticeable invisibility item.”
To balance the gameplay for other players, the map provides two buttons in the spectator room which let lure players passing through the room with the quad damage into a trap by pressing at least one of the two buttons. Those who are fast and skillful enough may be able to pass before the rockets shoot.
When it comes to catching, this is not the hardest task on the map, yet. Catching the chicken in the Catch the Chicken mod (lvlworld.com/mod/id:5) might be very complicated in the toilet cabins 😅 The player willing to take the chicken out of the toilet cabin should do a rocket jump to get in, throw the chicken over the door and then do another rocket jump to get back out, which without the battle suit costs quite a lot of hp :) But mods are mods, this is a part of the fun, after all ;)
Anyway, this map is one of the best maps I’ve ever played, and with so far the most legendary secret that I’ve seen, so congratulations to Kraftwerk, and I definitely recommend this map to everyone!
The gameplay… its affected by the huge outdoor area and the endless street. But this area fits to the map. In vanillaQ3 these huge areas become often slow and boring. I would suggest the excessive plus mod here. With the plusN config you get a LOT of speed in this map.
The best effect was to shot a fusillade of rockets or bfg ammo in the teleporter tunnel-ends of the street and to see what happens…
;-)
Edited 23 seconds after the original posting.
Edited 46 seconds after the original posting.
I think RG should be limited here. There is nothing funny with being railed from 1 km away.
A very fine map. I love it.
The map is good, though I think it could be spiced up some more rooms to go into as well as moving cars like in KnightMB's All Your Base are belong to us.
