Grand Jedi Skills: Inner City Stories

Description
Where to start, where to start...this map is just plain huge. [/lieutenant obvious] If you like a nice, big map with tons of stuff to do, start downloading while you read this, or you'll be missing out on some play time. If you don't want to play it, the source files are included, so this can help you with your own projects.

So, here's my story. I spawned on a rooftop and had a look around. All I saw was a basketball court, a cool-looking water fountain, a fence, a bunch of surrounding buildings, the rest of the building above me, some other objects of interest and...a door. Once that door opened, there was no going back to it. I went down. And I went down. And I went down some more. Finally, I figured I'd just take the elevator. I took one look down the elevator shaft...and I my lower jaw crashed on the surface miles below. That's exaggerating it a lot, but that's certainly what it felt like, seeing it for the first time. By the way, this map is huge.

There's a lot to explore here. There's a game room, a cafeteria, a bar, a pool, a shopping strip, a box shredder, a storage room and more...about the only thing I didn't see was bedrooms. Now, since all the spawns are on the rooftop, it takes a while to get to the lobby on the ground floor. But in a sense, that's a good thing because it makes the map [i]much[/i] less confusing...you don't get spawned in random areas and have to find your way around. On a map this scale, that would be quite irritating. Did I mention the map is huge?

Boddo is really good at shaders. From this map alone, I've seen shaders that impress me more than any other. The water shaders are the most impressive ones. The grass/fur shader is also really neat. One of the truly unique shaders is a clock that shows you how long you've been in the map. Neat idea.

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell ya, the map is...loaded with stuff to do! Ha, you thought I was going to say huge...well, it's huge, too. And there's also stuff to do everywhere. There are several unlockable areas throughout the building, and if you make it down to the lobby, there's a bunch of unlockables there as well. Good luck...you'll need that and force jump 3, and in some cases, you'll also need force heal and a really fast forceregentime.

The FPS was good for the most part. A few areas were semi-choppy, specifically in one of the bonus areas. I forget which one...it could have been my video card, though.

SCRIPTS! This map has scripts in it! A true rarity, although they're picking up of late. Boddo has added a bunch of scripts that enable the secret areas, and make sure they function correctly. I probably missed a bunch of other scripts, but I was impressed with what I saw in the secrets alone. The best secret is the awesome ice slope. There are four snowboarders you can hop onto and have a fun race to the bottom with your friends...if you can unlock it.

There's also a remote control helicopter that will be available if you unlock everything. Now, I didn't have the pleasure of operating it, but I'm sure it's a lot of fun to use. I can only imagine all the mischief I could get into with that thing... >:]

There are also several new weapons included. Check the screenshots - they look pretty sweet. I think I like the plunger and the mop. And the bats...aw, forget picking favorites, I like them all!

Now, as always, improvements...I can't be too critical, honestly. Some of the textures were somewhat stretched on the walls, and a few areas were a tad empty. There is also no music, but really, those are petty downsides, and that's the worst I could dig up. Maybe some minor VIS tweaking here and there couldn't hurt, either, but all in all, this is well refined and tested.

So, this review covers...probably about half of the map's features. If you like what you see so far, download it and discover the rest for yourself - this one's a beast!

Oh, and for a 90 MB map, it loads up [i]very[/i] quickly. I'm impressed.

New textures: Yes
New sounds: Yes
New music: No
New models: Yes
New scripts: Yes!

~Dretzel