The screen shots for this map immediately piqued my interest. The contrast of glowing blue against the mainly red tones of the map is something that always catches my eye. I just love interesting blends of light. Then I when I looked closer I realized this was an adaptation of a Quake Champions map and one that I personally find to be one of the more enjoyable maps for that game. I love seeing this sort of thing, especially when its as well done as this map is. While I do agree with some of Geniraul's comments regarding lighting (mainly in the main tiered area with the quad damage) I suspect brightness being so uniform all the way up the structure to the sky box is more on the id tech 3 engine rather than an aesthetic choice by the author. In the more controllable areas I find the lighting to be pretty well done and like I opened with, actually pretty eye catching in spots. Whether its with shaders or colored light sources in the map, the blends of light look pleasing to my eye and do a lot of the heavy work in creating visual interest against the vanilla id software texture sets.

The brush work is great here as well. I was especially impressed with the inclusion of two different versions of the map. I played the original version first and the entire time I'm thinking in my head "I don't know why there is another version, this one plays great"! ...Then I loaded up the scaled version and I really have a hard time deciding which one I prefer. It's really interesting to me how you can have basically the same space but with the dimensions tweaked just a bit it can make such a large difference to how it feels. Both of the included versions of this map are excellent though. The only sort of quirk I noticed was in the skybox and I think I was only able to pick it out due to my choice of source port. In Spearmint Q3 it is possible to notice some clipping where it looks like the author basically bent the skybox around the map to (I assume) force the shader to create the look he wanted for the sky. To see if it was only an issue in Spearmint, I also loaded up the map in Quake 3 Plus and I can confirm that the clipping is less noticeable there, though now that I am looking for the seams, I can definitely see where its been put together. This is a nitpick though and a small piece of an environment that when taken in as a whole looks amazing. The blueish black hole object, the lavafalls against the rockfaces, the skybox that seems to be giving way to some sort of gravitational pull. It all works together to achieve a great effect and I dig it.

Bot gameplay on the Original map was a bit of a mixed bag though. There are times where it feels like they collectively decide to focus on just one area while ignoring the rest. This can be especially true on shorter matches. For whatever reason if you go a bit longer things seem to improve and they tend to spread out and cover ground over the whole map. I suppose its just the odds playing out of where they end up on a long enough timeline. Bot setup in levels is not something I am super familiar with outside trying to entice them with pickups, which are already spread out nicely as they are in the original. So what can be done for this is hard for me to say. Over all though I still enjoyed the bot play here on the original. I'd just suggest going for longer matches or maybe adding a couple of extra bots to fill things out.

So after that experience, bot play against Visor on the scaled map was a surprise. I never felt like it took long to track down my opponent, and likewise the bot seemed to find me without much trouble. It doesn't feel like putting the map at 0.75 scale should change the gameplay this much but it really seemed to and to my surprise I felt like it made for a great 1 on 1 match without feeling bored at any point wondering where my opponent went.

So yeah to close thing thing out, overall I only really have positive impressions and I'd love to see more Quake Champion maps make their way here done in this same vein. I'm super happy to be adding this one into the collection and I'm sure I'll be continuing to load it up.

Truth be told, Molten Falls has never been my favourite Quake Champions map, so I'll try not to be biased about Molten Cliffs.

MyNameIs did an absolutely excellent job in recreating the original Molten Falls' gameplay and transferring it to Quake 3. This is achieved thanks to the very accurate map scale and masterfully adapted to the Q3 norms layout. The level plays freely and consistently (in each specific area), as an open-spaced map should, and just like the original does.

However, I think that the original Quake Champions' Molten Falls lacks the so-needed smoothness in its gameplay which is connected to the fact that most of the areas are both very big and open. To me, the gameplay there feels more like being transported through specific areas via silent teleporters rather than moving around the map as a whole. One would argue that this is something that makes it more dangerous to play on the level, and I think it's a fair point. However, I'd have preferred for the vertical transitions not to be so strict, the same goes for the turns. The fact that players' environment changes so often and so suddenly, be it a change of the floor / vertical level or the next area around the corner, combined with the overall openness of the map may get them into trouble: the visibility is always great, but it often changes instantly to something completely new. Not sure, if I was clear enough with this point, but hopefully I was.

As for the visuals, something that instantly attracted my attention was the giant blue energy sphere — the animation appears to be nearly perfect, very aesthetic! 🔵 The same can be said about the teleporters and their textures, the blue animation galores in this release, just like it does in the original, well recreated!

However, in my opinion, there are some things about the visual side that could be improved on. The brighter lighting with the abundance of brown on Molten Falls is something that I find to be positive about the original release, as it's something that gives it its aesthetic atmosphere and, along with the giant blue sphere, makes the map recognizable. Of course, I don"t necessarily insist on dressing the Quake 3 version the exact same way, but to me, for this release to alternate this strong side, it should undergo some significant lighting tweaking to make it look less.monotonous, and some additional texture work in the RA room, for the same purpose.

Overall, quite a decent release, the item placement is very accurate, both the quad and MH are present where they should be, and the same goes for the placement of weapons.

i rated it 4 due to the fact that design and gameplay is already borrowed from the original map, but otherwise I would have given it 5. As the review states, the translation to q3 and the aesthetics is amazing. it would be great to see that creativity directed towards other maps (originals or remakes).