i love the varying layouts of these maps, and their decent color. your big issue is weapon layout. everywhere you have spare ammo laying, so should you have matching guns laying there too. once you fixed all that, these maps will be good enough i believe...

After last time, I'll try to keep this one short. After a quick gloss over in solo-mode, I found the aesthetics rather lacking. There are some very inspired uses of detail here, but on the whole these maps aren't too pretty. Actually gameplay, however, more than makes up for the fact. There's a great variety in gameplay here, there's oldschool rocket carnage (Shower of Quanta) and some really modern feeling bullet play (Before the Beasts, Neural Reroute.). Before the Beasts in particular stood out because of how AR centric the gameplay was. Not even PD brought the weapon to the fore like this. Another cool thing the mapmaker did was limit certain types of ammo on the maps to balance out the differences in strength between weapons. A good example is Neural Reroute, where this is used to keep the shotgun from overshadowing the SMG and AR. Powerup use was generally good, though the 2X on Before The Beasts was unreachable, and there was an invincibility on Haberman Hoedown. Definitely worth downloading, Cranchwire is a Magnanimoussely Amy-able map pack.

Immediately after downloading the pack I played through the majority of the maps on the metaserver. I liked this pack when I first reviewed it, and I like it more now.

As far as I can tell all the issues with ammo/weapons were fixed, although the majority of the games I played were duels so I'm not sure if there is enough ammo for larger groups. The script you used to start each player with an AR and SMG, which helps.

None of the maps are overly detailed, but where they do use more detail they use it very well. Almost all the maps are able to maintain visual interest for me through the general geometry and good use of shading and texturing. The one map I still find relatively bland is Lotus Blossoms & Water Lilies, though there is also a specific section in Wildest Hour of Tragedy which is a bit of an eyesore. For the most part each of the texture sets was used just how it should be, though you are notably stronger with the jjaro set.

I have never encountered any problems with the flow, and enjoyed playing through each of the maps. Where detail is used it is kept out of the way of the player, and at no point did any of the maps feel cluttered.

My only problem with the pack now is that there isn't quite enough variation in the maps. Although some are stronger than others, many feel like variations of the same map.

Finally, I'd like to thank you for the update, it is appreciated.

All the prior reviews really capture most of what I have to say about this net pack. However, I do feel that the shapes patch on Haberman Hoedown is dangerously unnecessary. The recharger just doesn't look like a recharger, more a switch. I applaud you for using a shapes patch, though. Also, the two 1x rechargers on The Up-And-Out just seemed ridiculously unnecessary.

However, I would've given this pack a 3.5 (had I been able to) if not for the map Shower of Quanta. If one reading this review would take the time to play the Apotheosis netmap Call It Death? I mean, they do look awfully similar, now don't they? I guess the fact that you've revamped and added to it is a saving grace.

In short: good. Nice and classic (it seems that people like that sort of thing now, and I even tend to agree), but not good when it comes to plagiarism. The rest of the pack is amiable and I applaud you for putting such effort in.

The other reviews capture how I feel about the flaws in this pack. Otherwise, I think it's a really neat collection unlike most of what we have today. It's a reminder of simpler times, maybe. For the kinds of games I play now (very casual), the lack of weapons isn't so bad.

I also agree with Treellama; pare it down do the maps you think are essential and then work on those.

I agree with ryoko's review. The texturing is a bit bland, but otherwise decent--nice attention to detail. Differential shading and lighting are generally excellent.

Flow is mostly good but then there are weird things like deep water, lava pits, water cannons, dead-end rooms, peculiar shaped elevators, etc.

The 21 maps all have a similar feel, so what you could do is thin them out a little, get rid of some of the not-as-good-looking ones, fix up little flow annoyances, add some weapons, and this would be a solid pack.

Two things: * All of these maps need more guns, without exception. * The architecture between each level is fairly repetitive, with no real differences between them.

Some of them do actually look nice, and although there are some real oddities with flow in some places, this pack actually has several near-winners. They just need some fine-tuning.