Paradise by Chris Wilson

Paradise is a huge ground only level set in the tropical world. There is no story line but it is the best player created level yet in my opinion.

Right, the review. My first impressions of the level was not too great, I appeared in the middle of nowhere and was immediately attacked by a couple of orcs and the rather low frame rate made it quite difficult to kill them. However I managed to kill them in the end and I set off up the slope to the left meeting a few more orcs on the way. The frame rate dropped to 3fps and at this point I had to turn the cheat on, as it was unplayable. My impressions soon changed however when I reached the top of the hill and looked down into the valley. The scene below was incredibly detailed and well done, obviously a lot of time and effort went into this. Graphically it is on par if not better than the surreal levels, a variety of landscapes have been nicely done making sand dunes, rock formations and the like.

Enemy placement was well done but I only managed to find a few health potions so I found it very hard going. I had to keep cheating to get through it but the low frame rate is partly to blame. There is no story line to the level and I never managed to figure out the point of the level, nor did it seem to have an ending but the overall level design in general made up for it. There were a few bugs in the level, which made white text appear down the screen but I would imagine it is very difficult to make something this good without some bugs.

I would only recommend this to players with very fast systems, but if you have a mid range system like mine, it may be worth downloading this just so you can wander round the landscape. You will have to increase the fog though to get a playable frame rate.

The level is probably a beta of the first in a series of levels which explains the lack of a plot / story line. If a series of levels is to be made it should have Arokh in it and the polygon count reduced – I know it would be less detailed but it would run on a wider range of systems. Also more health potions would be nice.

Rating; Architecture / landscape: 9.5  Texturing: 9  Item / enemy placement: 7 

Atmosphere: 6  Coolness / new ideas / enhancements: 6.5  bugs: too slow on most systems -5%