: Evil is one of the only two scenarios I'm aware of (the other is the MI
: version of EMR) that uses an intro movie, a feature that the Infinity
: engine has always supported but was never used by Bungie. I'm not sure why
: Bungie added that ability without using it (and why it's an intro movie
: instead of an endgame movie, which would be more of a reward), but it's
: pretty clear why scenarios don't: The heyday of Marathon development was
: still back when 33.6 modems were the norm, and adding an extra megabyte
: onto a download was very difficult to justify. Here, it was probably done
: to cement Evil's position as the greatest scenario ever released (which it
: was at the time).
: The Evil story gets off to a running start, which is understandable as it's
: meant to be a sequel, but I actually played it before playing SONK (the
: first time). Fortunately, there's nothing really critical that you'd miss
: out on: You're in a ship, bad things are happening, get out.
: The level design is very nice, done by FM himself in the Pfhor texture set.
: It's very curvy, although I wouldn't say it's "organic". A neat
: trick which goody-two-shoes like myself would rarely encounter is the
: ship's internal security system: Kill too many Bobs and you'll be fired on
: by fusion turrets lining the corridors. I'm not completely sure how this
: is done, but I'm guessing that the Tiny Yetis (gun turrets) have their
: monster class set to Bob, so that when all the Bobs on the level become
: hostile to the player the Yetis do to. There's some other fun stuff hidden
: around the level, like a teasing "weapons gallery" and graffiti.
This level can by no way compare to the rest of the game. The first few levels felt like they were just another third party scenario and not the grand romp this is. Here we have some nice eye candy, but still very square feeling. Some textures are not fully alined. There are a couple of vacbobs standing on the wing. Other then that it is really quite good looking and is a lot of fun to combat in.
All of the info levels are done in the pfhor set, but this is big problem as we are treated to some human ship/stations done in the Jjarro set latter. As well as the alien facility we visit next is done in the Jjarro set. This shows a slip in planning. The altered textures are nice, but don't feel all that human.
: The terminal on the bridge has some interesting story information. Continuing
: the cliffhanger at the end of SONK, the ship and the Pfhor ship Hellraiser
: have been dragged across space by some sort of warp, leaving them hanging
: over the mysterious planet Mi'Karr and with the weapon systems going
: haywire. The ship is said to have been dragged from Tau Ceti, which is a
: detail that I don't believe was ever mentioned in SONK.
: The last trick on this level is a squadron of Bobs that teleports down to the
: planet ahead of you. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be possible to have them
: use the same teleporter as the player, since the polygon cannot be marked
: as both Goal (to get the monsters to stand on it before leaving) and
: Automatic Exit (to have the player leave the level).
: Since I ended up writing quite a lot here, Ten Thousand Spoons can wait for
: next time...
