[Quake] January Jump Jam 2 - jjj2_ish2 "Murder Ball" Nightmare 100%

Описание: A really unique map from ish with an almost intimidating degree of non-linearity combined with very harsh combat and limited resources. There's a start map which isn't included in this video that's quite tricky to navigate with some skill changing terminals - but weirdly there are two skill 1 terminals and one skill 3, where's regular hard mode? The skill 3 terminal requires a cool ramp jump to get to and a couple of cool jumps with air control.

The map starts by crippling the player - down to 75 on skill 1 or 10(!) on skill 2 and 3 and handing them a SSG. Surviving the onslaught of drones and ogres at the start is really rough, as is scrambling between health kits trying to figure out where basic weapons are. Denying the player a standard shotgun is a cruel trick and makes this endeavour even trickier, forcing some pretty aggressive plays against the drones and other sniping nasties. Armour is also at a premium in this map. If you don't find the basic armour secret at the start or the tide-turning red armour hidden deep in the vents, you'll probably not see any for quite some time.

Once you've gotten all of the tools and found a route outside, the combat becomes a lot more simple to manage, but still retains a deadly edge. The objective of the map is to collect the three different cores, find the silver key and complete a timed jumping puzzle. This isn't communicated very well and it's quite easy to get hopelessly lost walking around in circles. This a result of two things - one, there's no obvious landmark or end destination in the map for the player to get drawn towards. The silver key button which controls access to the end of the map is nondescript and in a tiny alcove in the middle of the outside area. Secondly, this map is incredibly dark with quite a few interior areas being almost pitch black. A couple of important doorways and areas are shrouded in shadow. Speaking of, keep an ear out and try not to get insta-killed by numerous spiderbots.

A few of the areas are so tightly designed as to allow for minimal errors while also being kind of vague as to what to do. The secret area with the shamblers and the two trifectas is really panic inducing and killed me relatively quickly the first time I encountered it. Revealing the exit area requires rocket jumping between some floor switches on an incredibly harsh timer. This is something that I really didn't understand while streaming and the timing on skill 2/3 is incredibly tight. So much so that I managed to fuck it up in this demo and waste 30 seconds, oh well!

That being said, there's a lot of creativity to this map. The degree of non-linearity and environmental variety really makes it fun to unravel and attempt to route properly. The different combat set-pieces are also really fun, even if the drones do sometimes mysteriously vanish unexpectedly.

All in all a really fantastic map. Give it a go (don't be ashamed to knock the difficulty down a bit) and don't let the harsh start crush your gamer spirit!

Recorded with vkquake 1.12.2
Download JJJ2 here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qCqg... & the patch for ish's map here https://mega.nz/file/7nI2UTSA#qAFHnME...