: Now, although there is a definite resemblance between Schmackle and BQ, the
: overall feel of the level is quite different and the feeling of building
: toward a climax is completely gone. Making up for this, however, is one of
: the coolest 5D tricks ever seen. This is a lava texture map, but the
: addition of water textures gives this level an unique feel not seen in any
: other Marathon scenario.
Also, with the completely different textures, the Blaspheme feel is almost entirely gone, and in the context of the scenario it doesn't really feel right. Why is the Mystic installation so similar to the old Marathon level? In addition, the precision of the homage brings with it some minor annoyances from the original level, such as having to wait for the central lift. There are also some minor changes after passing through the 5D portal: The health charger mutates into a 2x charger, the central elevator is now activated by the switch on the *other* side of the entrance, and the terminal has been magically repaired if you smashed it before.
I'm not sure what to think of the 5D trick... It's a very cool effect, and I have to respect the Herculean effort it must have taken to place the two copies of the initial area precisely on top of each other without running into bugs in Forge (the only way I can think of is for the two copies to be initially constructed with a slight offset from each other and then nudged into position by hand. Are there any Chisel plugins that could have moved the polygon set en mass?). But, what does it add to the level? It's quite confusing; the first time I went through this level, I think I went back through the lava and then got hopelessly lost before realizing that the 2 sides of the pillar were not identical. Of course, it's equally confusing to keep exploring after the transition and find things are not as you left them. Overall, the trick does not really add that much to the level besides the momentary awe of realizing what's going on.
This level has other problems as well. The tiny amounts of health and the lack of pattern buffers are frustrating on any difficulty (except maybe kindergarten) and the critical secret door is a major no-no.
One other peculiarity of this level is the presence of a Pfhor staff at the beginning. While it's most likely this was left as a favor to vidmasters (I'd have no trouble believing the level is absolutely impossible to vid without it), it also doesn't make much sense in the story context. One other possibility is that it was left so that two co-op players could have a staff, which leads us to the question of what's going on with Evil's co-op support in the first place. Most of the levels have multiple player starts, but they're not consistent:
- The majority have 4 starts: Mangle Him Really, Ten Thousand Spoons, BEER WINE GUNS AMMO PICNIC SUPPLIES, Hackers, Mr. Bill meets Gumby, We Be Ground Pounders, Code 42, Parathymeter, and Life's End.
- For This I Went To College has 3 starts.
- All Dressed Up and No Place To Go has 2 starts.
- Magrathea and A Million Ways to Spend Your Time have just 1 (the only levels for which co-op play could not have been enabled, and of course adding new starts is trivial.)
- Cryo Me To Sleep, Septic Exodus, and Shmackle each have 6.
- The secret level View from the Edge has 8.
Mangle and Cryo are the only levels with co-op enabled in the map file; this was almost certainly meant to limit players to starting the story on those levels. However, I don't know what would happen when the players reached one of the levels with fewer start points than players, and I can't test it because Marathon Infinity won't even try to start a netgame under Classic (I can't bring up the gather or join dialog).
