Gunrunners on Nar Shaddaa was a rather dissappointing level. There are several reasons, but read on to find out the specifics...

The architecture in "Gunrunners" was somewhat decent. I saw a few pipes and pillars, as well as a few ramps and a little cubic building. Overall however, I was disappointed with the massive size of the areas; there were huge boxy rooms with virtually no details in them, making the level a little boring to look at, and a hassle to run all the way from one side of the level to another. To greatly increase the quality of a level, I advise the author to keep his areas much smaller. That way, they will be easier to fill with details. On that note, I think it would also be beneficial to add more architectural details like pillars, beams, and what not. I liked the niches in the wall with the neon signs, but it seemed that the sides of sector were crooked in a few cases. I really liked the window in the beginning - it was quite excellent, but there were not enough interesting features such as this in the level. In addition, there were some bad mistakes such as steps that you could not walk up, and areas where you got stuck because you could not jump out. These problems are fairly easy to fix, and even easier to avoid when creating and testing the level, so they probably shouldn't have been found in a released version. Some of the ramps around the level were also a bit steep - try walking up a surface sloped at 45 degrees to see what I mean. The texturing throughout was generally poor. As I played the level, I found abundant misalignments. This is completely unacceptable due to the ease of texture stitching with the JED editor. The misalignments really made the level look shoddy, but if they were stitched up, I'm sure things would look a lot better. On the other hand, I felt that the texture selection was quite good, resembling Nar Shaddaa very well. Most of the textures in each area matched the others pretty well, so that helped maintain a consistent look. Unfortunately, I found a large number of faces that had the textures drawn on them despite the fact that they were adjoined. These errors are simple to fix: unadjoin, then readjoin. Lastly, to my dismay, I saw the default texture in a few places. Overall, level design was below average. While some areas showed a great deal of promise, the carelessness of the stitching really brought down the quality.

Enemy placement was pretty decent. There was not a huge number of enemies, and they were in groups of relatively low numbers for a nice difficulty level. In addition, sometimes they were hiding around corners or up on catwalks, giving them a little advantage over you. Item placement was also fairly good, but nothing spectacular. There was a decent amount of power ups, but by the end of the level I was wishing for a few more. I saw some bottles that had those special repulsorlifts installed so they could hover over the table in the bar too. In other words, floating items are not good. These kind of errors should be weeded out by through testing and never appear in the final release. The enhancements of Gunrunners were only fair. There were some new people items, but they were like cardboard standups and did not move any extremities of their bodies. They did make funny noises though! There were a few key doors and secret areas, but no substantial enhancements. There were no goals to accomplish as you proceed through the level, and no cutscenes either. These things would have helped to make the level more enjoyable and draw the player into the story. Overall, level dynamics as a whole were fair in quality.

The atmosphere was pretty good, feeling a lot like Nar Shaddaa. The lighting, which was rather dull, needed to utilize better shadowing and changes in the light level between different areas. The gameplay, oh man. It was a key hunt, no doubt. It wouldn't have been so bad if you didn't have to constantly run across the whole level to find the next door to run through, but you did. Unfortunately, there weren't really any interesting features to the level, such as crawling through vents, finding alternative routes, and other puzzles to keep the level exciting and eventful. There was tons of HOM in the numerous doorways, but that can be avoided by cutting the sector right next to the door on both sides.

Gunrunners on Nar Shaddaa was a good start for the author, and I wish him luck in his future endeavors. Parts of Gunnrunners showed a lot of promise (like the best areas featured in the screenshots above), so hopefully the author will improve his skills and dazzle us with his next release! Be sure to tune in next time.