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Map review of Keen Halloween
by J1MB0 | November 13, 2022 | 2916 characters
This map series is one of Keens(et al.) biggest, most comprehensive, partially collaborative works. It's a Halloween-themed series with many horror elements, inspired by horror movies and sci-fi television series such as Star Trek. Its story puts the players into a rescue team on the 'Halloween Planet' with the mission to collect alien artifacts, rescue scientists, defeat aliens, all with the help of trans-dimensional soldiers, as well as Keen himself! At the end of the adventure, the true most evil enemy stands before you, revealing a mind-blowing twist to the story! Without spoiling more, see for yourself…
The difficulty for most players come from figuring out the puzzles as well as figuring out where to go next. Sometimes resulting in voting to skip the map or even the series.
The visuals of these maps remind me of Keens other works, a bit held back. The style does not collide with the horror-aesthetic and blend together pretty well, creating a truly unique feel. A lot of the textures, models and sounds were taken from other series and maps, most prominently They Hunger.
The spawn-locations usually have a boombox that plays a section of Deus Ex' 'Synapse' and for the boss-fight a cover is being played. Some mod-music can also be heard, for example during the second wave of aliens in kh4. Outside of music from other games, there is some voice-acting to be heard from CryoKeen and Nih, which I found to be a nice surprise and is appreciated.
The monsters are all reskinned,buffed by giving them more of health or speed, in rare cases hit-boxes were also modified. Pit-drones in particular are annoyingly fast, but at least not so numerous/strong as in many horde-maps.
Teamwork is not an important factor, in fact, only a few doors require two players to be opened. Some pickups (most prominently Picard-coins) can't be reached by one player alone, but using a push from an attack by a conveniently placed alien may help.
Picard-coins can be collected. There are normal, silver and gold coins that unlock different weapons, found near the spawn areas.
Some bugs are also present, for example see-through-terrain and get-stuck-inside-terrain glitches on kh6fix2, and the only game-breaking bug I found was the gates not opening after defeating gonomes in the caverns of the same map. It did work when playing this as a team of two on a listen server.
All in all it's a very enjoyable, unique series with horror, humor and good gameplay. I give it a 9/10 because it's a bit long for me personally.
Pros:
- Long series with long maps
- Optimized for its size
- Voice acting and voice-clips
Cons:
- Long series with long maps
- A few rare bugs that may hinder or halt progress
Review originally from *
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