Great Maps. Created 18 years ago2006-01-29 13:49:49 UTC by G_KID

I am pretty bored, so I thought I'd try to spark some interesting conversation.

I don't care if anything like this has been before, so if you are only going to say something like 'old' or something equally useless, don't.

*POSSIBLE SPOILERS TO GAMES IN THIS THREAD*

Anyway, what has made a map great in your opinion? Whether it be a huge setpiece, a innovative idea, or simply the level of detail in a particular area.

For me, one of the greatest maps is the last level of xbox release, Halo, when you have to try and escape a ship reaching meltdown in a basically a jeep, when there are 3 other warring factions on the ship with you, stopping you from escaping, and then when you think you are free, the dropship gets destroyed. And then the final 500m sprint to a dropship, as the timer gets close to zero. Insane.

And also AVP2, the marine campaign, the last level, where you have to run to a dropship, away from the alien hive, superb.

And lastly, off the top of my head, Goldeneye on the n64, the Cradle, where you have to hunt Alec Trevelyan (sp) around this metal monstrosity above the ground.

Yours?

I think Unreal II had some of the best designed levels I have ever seen. There's also good variety in themes (desert planets, snow, inside a gigantic organic alien, in an alien city etc) Strangely, the gameplay was very average, so It makes you wonder if great mapping makes great gameplay. Visually pleasing, but... where was the fun?

I must say some of the levels in the first Tomb Raider were awesome (Obelisk of Kahmoon, Sanctuary of the Scion etc) They are huge levels and they were the first 3d levels I played after Doom I and II. One wonders how a 33mhz Playstation is capable of moving so many polygons...

I agree with Kasperg on Unreal II. The night-time level in the alient forest was amazing, especially with the sound effects. The level where you had to protect your ship from invading female warriors (a meadow-looking place with huge boulders) was wonderful too.

However, Ravenholm and the underbelly of the steel bridge in Half-Life 2 were also groundbreaking.

I love the map under the bridge! Fun!

hmmm..

Jedi Knight : Dark Forces II
one of the multiplayer maps was the bit on cloud city with the carbonite chamber, but also the round window and the endless fall down the shaft.... absolutely unbelievable for such an old game. loved it

Another great level, this time from Jedi Academy, is "Sith Crypts" in planet Korriban. The level design in Jedi Academy wasnt anything we hadnt seen, but the addictive gameplay made it a great game, maybe too short. At least I liked it much more than the repetitive Jedi Outcast.

Sanctuary of the Scion from TR1
Alien Planet Unreal II

That is a good point Kasperg, Unreal II looked incredible, but it just wasn't that great fun to play.
There where some fun bits, but nothing compared to say HL2.

I don't think I ever played Tomb Raider, or any of the sequels, properly anyway, I played the first level, got bored/stuck and gave up.

@Hunter - Wasn't it Jedi Knight : Dark Forces II that had you running through a ship that was crashing to earth or something? And the level kept rotating and blowing up etc. as you where playing?
If it was, that was an awesome level.

And also, just though of another great moment, in Star Craft, where you are the Terran, and you are defending against Zerg for 30mins, and it is fairly easy, but in the last 60 seconds, it all goes to hell, and there is an unstoppable wave of zerg.
I remember beating it, because the Terran have the abillity to lift their buildings off the ground with jets or something, and then the Zerg couldn't destroy the last of my buildings, since it wasn't on the ground.

lol, ok my fave levels have to be...

hmm I dont know... ah, Freespace 1 and 2 had the best levels. so many great peices... trying to attack a hammer of light battleship, and then suddenly a H.U.G.E. shivan battleship drops in from subspace and blows the living fuck out of it, your whole mission has just gone down the drain, your wings are being slaughtered, and then 2 Terran battleships warp in and things get even more crazy.

also, in FFVII, your captured by Shinra, an uber evil corperation and your being held in their building in the center of midgar. you wake up and your cell doors open and in a 80 floor building EVERYONE is dead. theres creepy music and a trail of blood leading upstairs, not to mention a top secret relic missing and the sword of the greatest most insane supersoldier suck throught he chest of the companys president. the following levels turn the game on its head. very cool.

personally, i didn't really enjoy the map under the HL2 bridge, pretty boring. - however, i did like Ravenholm, shit scary, but some serious good mapping!! i love little puzzles in games... so for that, I liked some of the challenges in HL2 using the airboat, ie, seesaw.

on other games, well, i don't really play any other FPS, although i remember getting quite excited after completing the 'hard' levels on lemmings 2!!!

...oh, the good 'ole days!

I agree Fearian, that level of FF7 was superb - really sent chills through me the first time I played the game through.

Ravenholm was also superb, especially when you hear the howls and see the fast zombies jumping from roof to roof against you - pretty nervwrecking.
The citadel in HL2 was also quite amazing with the capsules flying everywhere.

In other games, hmm, it's quite hard to remember...
The part in Quake 4 when you become a Strogg was awesome, but that's the only thing I can think of.

I recently played Oni. It has some striking similarities to Halo as far as level-design goes: grande environments, with some small details placed now and then, that looked cloned most of the time. The nice things about both these games are their grander settings, the macrostructure of the levels. While detail is barren, overall those levels still leave the impression of the things they represented.

So far about Oni's levels, the gameplay was much fun, so even though it didn't look that impressive, not directly, it was a great fun game to play.

In contrast, Unreal II had the usual Unreal plasticy detail and style, and while it looked good, the gameplay killed it for me. It was way too shallow. While some levels definitely looked fine, others looked too overdone to me. I'm no fan of the Unreal plastic spaceship style. The mining level was good, because technical stuff was kept more subtle and the buildings felt more real, more solid. Most other settings were metal-only, with a few nice exceptions (living planet, wow... but not used too effective if you ask me, if all you can do there is run in, get artifact, run out - even though the running out part was cool).
I also think this game overdid theme variations. It gave so little consistency to the game, while the story was already meager...

As for great levels or moments, I particularly liked the view from the Citadel over City17, the first time. Just awesome. Too bad it's only the first time you see something like that that it's impressive.

Zelda had some pretty awesome level design especially the Hyrule Field.
I only really started to notice the amazing work of levels when I played HL2...

Please don't laugh, but in terms of playablilty for a MP shooter, My favs are:

1.dod_flash
2.cs_assault

Both of these maps I've played over and over, and over again, and never get tired of them! Due to my limited experience of fps gaming, it's a short list as you can see!

Some Battlefront and Battlefront II maps are suprisingly nice as well... Some pretty pwn texturing in that game in places.

<rowleybob trys to find a copy of Unreal II upon everyone's recommendations on how pretty it was>

Whoa whoa whoa, RB, Unreal II really isn't worth the purchase in my opinion, it is only pretty, nothing more, there is no real gameplay to speak of. Or fun gameplay anyway.

And I agree with CP on Halo.
It may not be hugely detailed in some areas, but it is a lot of fun to play some of the levels, and it is highly polished, without relying on grahics fully, thought the graphics are actually quite good really, for a console.

hear the howls and see the fast zombies jumping from roof to roof against you - pretty nervwrecking.

For some reason, even though the gunship or the strider is probably a lot more dangerous than a fastzombie, those fleshed-out things scared me more than any other enemies. Perhaps it's because they just look crazy, and they jump all over the place. They also swarm in hordes, and that makes them very hard to shoot.

But I liked Unreal II more than NOLF 2. NOLF 2 just felt very repetitive after a while, and I gave up after running around in those Russian bunkers for so long.

Hmm, I enjoyed NOLF 2.

Unreal II on the other hand...

And I agree about the fast zombies, but the carrier thing was also pretty nasty really, I hated them more than anything else, because they took so damn much to kill and then threw poisonous headcrabs at you aswell...

the carrier thing was also pretty nasty really

Yeah, I refer them as "zombies with emphysema" because they're always wheezing.

I don't mind the poisonous headcrabs though, because they're so slow. The fast headcrabs I hate. You can spray bullets all over the room with your SMG and not hit one of them because they're just everywhere.

Remember that one closet full of them in City 17? Nasty shit.

Yeh...gah...

Yeah the bit where you first get your crowbar in HL2, and the sirens from the tower echo out. barny tells you how hes never seen it lit up like that, and the birst all flyu out as the tower opens up...

Its so epic and... alive, its like, your in this real world...

Its so epic and... alive, its like, your in this real world...

...except that you suddenly get this music that starts playing in your head for no apparent reason.

I liked NOLF more than NOLF II. Though NOLF II looked better, at some point it looked too good. Compared to it's gameplay, probably.

See, if something looks more real, you expect it to behave more real as well, naturally. You expect the whole game to play better and be more fun, somehow. And while NOLF II was fun, I felt NOLF did better. That goes beyond the level design somewhat.

Well right now ive gotten a bit rimrook crazy so i have to say poison garden...

Tombraider one, the lost vally level was pretty scary, hell, i died the first time and didnt dare to go in again.

When you drop down from the clif in a lush vally you hear a heavy drum coming through the earth, suddenly a giant dinosuar jumps out of nothing on you!