002 Dark7 Mission Pack 1

[FATAL]

Dark7 Mission Pack1 by bryant robinson
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/pc/games/idga...f/dark7mpk.zip
Port: ZDoom 2.0.63a or higher
PRIMARY GAMEPLAY: SP, CO-OP
May 2002
Reviewed by AlysiumX using Zdoom 2.0.96
Score: 7


Dark 7 is a set of levels by Brian Robinson. The game has very good layouts and follows its quake 2 theme nicely. Indoor layouts keep you interested as well as outdoor detail. It has nice music, but can have some part where it becomes repetitive. Gameplay is fun, but overpowering weapons make the game not very challenging. The game has some very original points to it in dealing with a new story, new sounds, and fun puzzles. Overall, Dark 7 has some really fun moments, its environments will keep you coming back, and playing
some more.


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Layout - 8
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Traveling around indoors on dark 7 gives you that constant quake 2 feeling in a brownish tech texture theme and it pulls that theme off very nicely. As you advance you see more and more things that will complement this theme, which really can keep you interest on what your surrounding are. You will catch occasional slope around, near, and in the bases that really help with detail. As you travel through complex after complex you will also travel outdoors. Outdoors has its own excitements as well, often dealing with large areas. The detail put into outdoors is very apparent. Slopes outdoors, are incredible pieces making the outside a cool place to explore.

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Music - 6
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The music fit this theme perfectly, however it seemed that sometime the music was either too low or didn't have very much music to it, leaving the song repeating the same little tune over and over.

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Gameplay - 5
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Dark 7 went for the quake 2 mission approach, in that respect the game succeeded. The puzzles are pretty quake 2 themed, dealing a lot with missions like : Shut down this generator and open that door. The constant hitting of two switches becomes apparent in the later game. The author has also included a new weapons set that give the game a new feel. Yet a problem comes with these new weapons, they seem to be a bit too overpowering, the ssg has been replace with a new shotgun which becomes the only weapon you really need to dispose of all that stand in your way. It becomes later replace by the new plasma gun which you can pretty much stand in a new room, hold the trigger and destroy everything in sight with little difficulty. The ammo doesn't seem to be very highly tested either making your way through the game with your shotgun never really coming close to running out of ammo. I believe giving the monsters more power would defiantly balanced this game out more, but the game still has its moments and has some very awesome tricks that I haven't really seen in other wads, so dark 7 is still very fun to play. The final boss of dark 7 was also kind of a disappointment, in fact, with the weapons being so powerful, you really only needed to hit the boss once before completely annihilating it.


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Originality - 6
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You are a hired mercenary, you are hired by the U.A.C. on a clean up mission dealing with 7 different bases. With each new base you get a different objective or set of objectives. Your basic mission... Survive. Dark 7 comes with this theme as well as a whole set of sounds and different weapons. Dark 7 definitely make good use of zdoom resources, seemingly using a lot of acs scripting to put the player into some fun situations. It also uses various sources of sounds ranging from doom 64 to unreal tournament. The ambient sound were also placed really well giving more realism to the game. Slope used outside are pretty original in that you will see shapes that you may have never seen.


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Overall - 7 - Dark 7 is a definite play, you may find yourself coming back to replay it some more.
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+ Story is original
+ Nice Theme fit without it feeling like a completely different game.
+ Quake 2 mission approach was well done.
+ Incredible structures in layout.

- Weapons are overpowering.
- Final Boss is no contest.