Through the Glass Darkly is an M.C. Escher drawing in which to frag your friends. The surrealistic geometry of the map architecture is visually interesting but it doesn't hold its link to reality as well as another map by dONKEY, All of Me (dk_aom4), which has similar simple brush textures and an almost elegant design. Instead, it may make your head swim navigating the map.

dONKEY says this map is "partly an experiment in cell shading". I did notice an almost extra layer of black outline on many brushes. Given that, and the overall simplicity to the look of the textures and map geometry, it sometimes felt like I was running through a cartoon world.

Since a bot file is included, playing from the Q3A menu is preferred and the bots play fairly well. They continually snagged the Quad Damage power-up and I even saw one go after the Mega-Health at the bottom of the map and head right for the teleporter. The map is large enough for a game against six other players, bot or human. The quantity of weapons, armor, health and ammo are evenly distributed throughout to make this map a challenging one.

Review by J f Z