I just want to make an initial point: Install. Programs. Suck. Don't use them. I had to fiddle with some files to get it to work as I don't use the default (extremely large) directory structure MotS likes. I was tempted to deduct 20% from the score for that but then realized TACC doesn't allow scores in the negative. Ahem. Oh, and some alert readers might note the level contest (for which this level was an entry) was a while ago. Various galactic forces have been working against me, meaning I only just recently had time to spend writing this. Another reason is that I got 3D acceleration back after doing a review in 2D, so this review will have points that I noticed in 2D...but enough excuses, onto the review!

Architecturally, this level was a bit of an oddity. While the outdoor areas were rather poor and repetitive, the indoor areas were really quite nice with buttresses, stairs, railings, wall details, etc. A minor point was that most ground was on the exact same xy plane as the water, meaning the water stopped and the ground started without any embankments. This really looks odd. The outdoor architecture, however, was better than the author's last level, as was the indoor architecture. Hopefully in his next level the author can have truly awesome outdoor architecture as well as indoor architecture. The outdoor areas also suffered from having textures repeating over, and over, and over. The texturing inside, however, was appropriate, and the rooms weren't large enough to suffer from texture repeating. The author should either make the exterior areas smaller or scale the textures up for these large areas.

There were far too many enemies and far too few powerups. Combined with the new (and only) weapon (see below) this meant the level was extremely challenging, and not in a good way, as it took only a few hits to be killed. The player was supplied with only a knife, and a problem with it was the detection for it wasn't very good so it took many more hits than it should to kill something, plus you had to get up close enough to it in the first place. The other enhancements were good, though. There was a new skin for the player (a noghri), the aforementioned weapon, various new enemies, skins, etc. There was a particularly interesting puzzle involving keys, switches and forcefields. Cutscenes were included too, although the introduction HOMed badly in 2D. Although it's impossible to make it not HOM while keeping the scroll aesthetic, and given most people have 3D accelerated systems these days, the author can be (partially) forgiven. But I'm just making a note of it. The introduction cutscene was rather long and boring, however the level did feature some new BMs (for the player's viewing pleasure).

The lighting was fairly good, but the amount of coloured lighting was quite excessive, and unrealistic. Purples, blues, yellows, everywhere. There were quite a few watery sounds around water for ambience, but not much more, really. The framerate really suffered at some points, and I mean suffered. I got 0.15 FPS at a point near the waterfall...this was in 2D of course, though 3D was only marginally better. This can probably be attributed to sloppy cleaving. Even when my graphics card fulfilled its given purpose, the level was unplayable at this point. I had to jump off backwards to keep the framerate up... At least there were no other problems like HOM (except in the intro), crashes, or unplayable things except for a set of spiral stairs that had to be jumped up. Apart from those one or two things, this area category of the level was quite good.

This level's most outstanding feature is that it requires different skills to JK's own and most user levels; you have to try and be stealthy. But with JK's limited AI system, this isn't quite pulled off. But still, it's a worthy effort, and worth playing if only for the novelty value.