Great reviews, excellently done! I'll be coming here every time I'm searching for a new map to play!
I'll not comment on the irony of reading my reviews of everything a map does wrong before playing it. Instead, I'll cross my fingers that someday you'll be inspired and end up back here with a map for me to play.
Parkour Thief non-surprisingly is a parkour map. (Go figure!) While in my reviews I will use the term "parkour" frequently as the accepted term for jumping puzzles, I will admit right now that I am squarely in the camp of people who are annoyed that the Minecraft community decided to rename "platforming" puzzles after decades as the accepted terminology. It'd be like renaming "fighting" games something like "MMA" games. Or it's like when kids go out and play "manhunt" in the woods because to them it sounds cooler than "cops and robbers" even though the rules are the same. Anyway, parkour thief earns its parkour label because the theme is really parkour. You are a thief that is climbing through ceilings, scaling walls, and leaping off of rooftops to get a stolen diamond back to your boss. It takes you through various cityscapes moving through and over every building around to complete the task.
Function:
The map worked very nicely. Nothing it it was too hard and little was too easy. There were even some parts where, despite parkour being the only challenge, it made you think to solve the room in a "hole-in-the-wall" sort of way ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_in_the_Wall_(U.S._game_show) ). I didn't like the timed jumping. It was very fast-paced, and I got there during rain, so the lag ate my jumping skills away. Not to mention, they were in a tunnel supposedly dug with a sppon, I don't see why there would be pistons there anyway. When I got to the last city, I was not as sure as I had been the rest of the time with where I was supposed to go; I knew where to start, but after that it became unclear and I just explored any building I could get in until I eventually (and quite suddenly) found the right way to go. And the testificates opening and closing iron doors freely can mess things up, like letting you in doors you shouldn't be able to get in or closing checkpoints you've already opened. On the positive side, the jumping puzzles that were the real function of the map were intricate, well-balanced, often original, and very fun to play.
As a neutral comment, I just want you to know that by a certain point, I was slaughtering every living thing in the map on sight for annoying me while I was jumping. (including the blue sheep and the dog.)
8/10
Form:
The urban areas are very nicely built and have some nice details. Almost everything is built in a specifically stylized way, and every city has it's own decorative theme. The addition of record players gave the map a more enjoyable atmosphere. The story maps were a bit plain, but they did their job. The choice of texture pack seemed a little bit arbitrary though. Overall, it was a pleasant place to spend an hour or two in minecraft.
7/10
Flavor:
The flavor of the map, a thief moving through cities with a stolen jewel, fits very nicely with the challenge, jumping through buildings. What I don't like is the lack of reason for the rediculous routes taken. I think the map would be better made if instead of telling the player where to start the jumping puzzles and guiding them to the finish, you could tell the player the objective and let them reverse engineer a way to meet the goal. It makes more sense to have a thief know where they're going to end up and have to figure out how to get there than it does to put them at the start of a guided jumping chain and say go. I've already addressed the moving platforms in the tunnel that don't really make sense. Mostly, the map doesn't really try and get the player involved in the process of stealing and escaping, and rather focuses entirely on having the player involved in the parkour through the cities, and that misses most of half the flavor of the map. It's very parkour and not so much thief.
6/10
Uniqueness:
There have been other maps that try to push the setting into jumping puzzles and make "parkour" into real parkour, so it's not super unique for that, but I do think this map does that pretty nicely and is overall its own experience in the world of custom maps.
Overall Score: 21 and
Would I recommend it?
- I know this is not the highest percentage of Minecrafters, but I'd recommend this map just to people who like parkour.
Thanks for the review. I have been totally rewriting the story lately because I know it isn't the best right now. I improved the story by giving the player "notes" from his boss that tell him which direction to go and why he has to go that way. This make everything seem less pointless.
I also have removed the piston parkour since everyone seems to hate it.
The newest update will be out in the next few days. :smile.gif:
I feel the best way for me to introduce this map is a brief narrative of my experience with it. I downloaded the map, stuck on the playlist (awww yeeaah!), went in, read the rules, followed along with the map until the sign "meet you at hallowed grounds." My response to that sign was "well where the hell is that supposed to be?" Within about 15 minutes I was completely lost and finally found another NPC sign, but this one was a different character telling me to help in her plot to murder the one that talked to me before. At this point I determined that I should probably start over.
So the next day, I redownloaded the map, stuck on the playlist (awww yeeaah!), went in, breezed past what I had already seen, and started looking for hallowed grounds. It took me about 15 minutes to find the hole into there, but once I did I finally knew what was going on in the map. 2 hours later I had 5 music discs and enough ore to decorate a jewelry shop. At that point I decided I didn't feel like giving this the 8 hours it seemed like it would take to finish, so I cheated and flipped over to creative mode. In the next hour, I got 3 more music discs and ended up back at that murder plot sign I had found on my first attempt. I figured that even though I still hadn't found where this NPC introduces this murder plot in the first place, I would follow along with it. Somehow from there I ended up at a destroyed pathway leading to a room full of pixel art and signs telling me the map was over. I figured even though I hadn't completed the monument, I was thoroughly confused and mentally drained enough to call it quits.
Function:
I honestly don't know if this functions or not. I see what this is trying to do (a story based CTM map), and I completely encourage it, but when I can get lost right away and start finding signs that depend on signs I haven't read to make sense, the story becomes more of a burden than an asset. And how can I find the ending without completing the monument? This map utterly confused me, and that's not good. The music disc defense areas were good. Ender pass, bad dreams, these places terrified the crap out of me and that's spectacular. And the color-coded chests were very nice, functional organization. But the map wasn't functionally organized to go with it. Perhaps in the future, the introductions should all come before the player is let free to explore and the ending elements should be blocked off until after they finish exploring. The complete the monument elements worked, the story elements didn't quite get there, and finding the end before finishing the map is not really acceptable.
4/10
Form:
Don't worry, it's all praise in this section. The map is beautiful. The map (in game item) even caught my attention. The way it frames in the map area is awesome. The background music playlist adds wonderfully to the experience. The pixel art is very well made. The sheer cliffs with forest on top makes a very nice backdrop for the map. The caverns are caverns, there's not much you can do with that, but the places with chests were unique and pleasant to view. I do think the music disc chests could have a little more of a pedestal to them though; some are floating prominently over lava while others are just sort of sitting in the corner. In the end, the map just comes across as very professional when you look at it.
9/10
It's a complete the monument map with a story, I'm obligated to try get in a good flavor score here. I don't know why there were floating gems (maybe that was explained and I just missed that sign), I don't know why I helped kill a character (I'm positive I just missed that sign), and I'm not sure why there are all these lairs underground defending music discs (I doubt there's an explanation for that one). But the story was supposed to be going through caverns finding secret records and that certainly plays out in the action of it. I really can't get over finding the end of a plot that I never found the beginning of, and that being the end of the map.
5/10
Uniqueness:
This map is unique. Story and adventure integrated into completing the monument. The map with a frame around the play area. Background music playlist! (awwww yeeaah!) The ideas here are great and new (at least from what I've played) and there's clearly a future going forward with what this does. This map did not quite execute what it was trying to do, but what it was trying to do is very original and very good, and luckily for us, the maker seems to have a lot more coming in the future.
Overall Score: 18 and
Would I recommend it?
- The map pretty much broke my brain, so I can't say I will recommend this to anyone; but I know there is an audience for brain-breaking maps out there, it just doesn't include me.
I feel the best way for me to introduce this map is a brief narrative of my experience with it. I downloaded the map, stuck on the playlist (awww yeeaah!), went in, read the rules, followed along with the map until the sign "meet you at hallowed grounds." My response to that sign was "well where the hell is that supposed to be?" Within about 15 minutes I was completely lost and finally found another NPC sign, but this one was a different character telling me to help in her plot to murder the one that talked to me before. At this point I determined that I should probably start over.
So the next day, I redownloaded the map, stuck on the playlist (awww yeeaah!), went in, breezed past what I had already seen, and started looking for hallowed grounds. It took me about 15 minutes to find the hole into there, but once I did I finally knew what was going on in the map. 2 hours later I had 5 music discs and enough ore to decorate a jewelry shop. At that point I decided I didn't feel like giving this the 8 hours it seemed like it would take to finish, so I cheated and flipped over to creative mode. In the next hour, I got 3 more music discs and ended up back at that murder plot sign I had found on my first attempt. I figured that even though I still hadn't found where this NPC introduces this murder plot in the first place, I would follow along with it. Somehow from there I ended up at a destroyed pathway leading to a room full of pixel art and signs telling me the map was over. I figured even though I hadn't completed the monument, I was thoroughly confused and mentally drained enough to call it quits.
Function:
I honestly don't know if this functions or not. I see what this is trying to do (a story based CTM map), and I completely encourage it, but when I can get lost right away and start finding signs that depend on signs I haven't read to make sense, the story becomes more of a burden than an asset. And how can I find the ending without completing the monument? This map utterly confused me, and that's not good. The music disc defense areas were good. Ender pass, bad dreams, these places terrified the crap out of me and that's spectacular. And the color-coded chests were very nice, functional organization. But the map wasn't functionally organized to go with it. Perhaps in the future, the introductions should all come before the player is let free to explore and the ending elements should be blocked off until after they finish exploring. The complete the monument elements worked, the story elements didn't quite get there, and finding the end before finishing the map is not really acceptable.
4/10
Form:
Don't worry, it's all praise in this section. The map is beautiful. The map (in game item) even caught my attention. The way it frames in the map area is awesome. The background music playlist adds wonderfully to the experience. The pixel art is very well made. The sheer cliffs with forest on top makes a very nice backdrop for the map. The caverns are caverns, there's not much you can do with that, but the places with chests were unique and pleasant to view. I do think the music disc chests could have a little more of a pedestal to them though; some are floating prominently over lava while others are just sort of sitting in the corner. In the end, the map just comes across as very professional when you look at it.
9/10
It's a complete the monument map with a story, I'm obligated to try get in a good flavor score here. I don't know why there were floating gems (maybe that was explained and I just missed that sign), I don't know why I helped kill a character (I'm positive I just missed that sign), and I'm not sure why there are all these lairs underground defending music discs (I doubt there's an explanation for that one). But the story was supposed to be going through caverns finding secret records and that certainly plays out in the action of it. I really can't get over finding the end of a plot that I never found the beginning of, and that being the end of the map.
5/10
Uniqueness:
This map is unique. Story and adventure integrated into completing the monument. The map with a frame around the play area. Background music playlist! (awwww yeeaah!) The ideas here are great and new (at least from what I've played) and there's clearly a future going forward with what this does. This map did not quite execute what it was trying to do, but what it was trying to do is very original and very good, and luckily for us, the maker seems to have a lot more coming in the future.
Overall Score: 18 and
Would I recommend it?
- The map pretty much broke my brain, so I can't say I will recommend this to anyone; but I know there is an audience for brain-breaking maps out there, it just doesn't include me.
I can't argue with a review that's comprehensive and well thought out. Thanks for looking it over. It's the first review to find Green Hill to be so-so, so I'm just wrapping my mind around the details. It seems like the main reason was confusion. I don't know whether you played under a time constraint, but I apologize if the story became more of a distraction for you in the map.
The good news is that all the recommendations you listed have already been placed. The story is only specific in 3 areas. Otherwise, it's basically overlaying generic details. The "ending" is past four-square, which is only unlocked after reaching another area. If you have some left over time, I would play this map slowly on your own time. It may clear things up a bit. It's not a brain-busting map, I just prefer not to hold the player's hand through obstacles.
But like I said in the beginning, I understand reviews can be positive and negative, and I always listen to feedback. I think the story is pretty generic and easy to understand, but I can see if some people can't balance CTM and a story. It's a bummer that you felt confused while playing the map. Maybe there are too many elements at play.
I can't argue with a review that's comprehensive and well thought out. Thanks for looking it over. It's the first review to find Green Hill to be so-so, so I'm just wrapping my mind around the details. It seems like the main reason was confusion. I don't know whether you played under a time constraint, but I apologize if the story became more of a distraction for you in the map.
The good news is that all the recommendations you listed have already been placed. The story is only specific in 3 areas. Otherwise, it's basically overlaying generic details. The "ending" is past four-square, which is only unlocked after reaching another area. If you have some left over time, I would play this map slowly on your own time. It may clear things up a bit. It's not a brain-busting map, I just prefer not to hold the player's hand through obstacles.
But like I said in the beginning, I understand reviews can be positive and negative, and I always listen to feedback. I think the story is pretty generic and easy to understand, but I can see if some people can't balance CTM and a story. It's a bummer that you felt confused while playing the map. Maybe there are too many elements at play.
Well, don't get me wrong, I would never call it so-so. I definitely admire what you've done. I'm trying not to judge by the experience after I started cheating, because that's hardly fair, but that first experience really ruined some things. Without any cheating, without even placing a block I think, I had gotten lost and found one of the signs telling me to kill Tom before finding the place I was supposed to meet him at. That sort of ruined the story element. But conceptually, the map is fantastic, just not my experience with it. I tried to get that sentiment across in the review. I really like the idea of it. That 5 diamonds is the max uniqueness score.
I guess brain-busting was a bad term for what I meant. It didn't break my brain because it was so difficult or confusing. My mind just got tired from being perpetully lost underground, if you know what I mean. I wasn't a mental 100 meter dash, it was a mental 3 hours of walking up stairs.
I might come back and play it again eventually, but I probably won't get back to it for some combinations of reasons: I've already cheated out of the map and seen everything and I'm probably not going to do much map-playing just for my own enjoyment while I have a queue up. I probably will continue to play your maps after this, though.
I thank you for your review! I'm glad that you liked the overhaul. May I ask you what your favorite new puzzle was?
The only thing that I want to say is that when your review was out, I already fixed the bugs that you mentioned. So you played in the wrong version. The new rating has +1 point, if I understand correctly?
Yeah, all maps have bugs when they first come out, I'm definitely not taking away from it for that. When my first map was put up the first time, you could skip almost an entire dungeon just by jumping around a corner. :tongue.gif:
I probably liked the wood bridge over troubled water... I mean lava, if only because I have never seen that puzzle in anything else, so it wasn't just new in your map, it was new for me.
And yes, the new rating is +1, I'm going to leave the old review post the way it was, but I changed the rating in my front post to give it the upgraded +1. 19 --> 20 is a good +1 to have, too.
Quest for Vendria (more appropriately quest in Vendria or quest of Vendria, as Vendria is the location, not the goal) is a small adventure map. The Land of Vendria had previously been assaulted by an evil spirit which got locked away in a tower, and then the three keys to unlock it were hidden in 3 dungeons to make sure anyone who went after them was strong enough to destroy the spirit permanently. You are that hero.
Function:
First, the rules acknowledge only the situation of breaking blocks; they don't tell me if I can place blocks or craft tools and they don't tell me what difficulty to play in. This would be less of a problem had the map thread not specifically mentioned that all important information is in the map before telling me to play on peaceful. I just assumed I shouldn't break blocks and played on normal difficulty, oh well. The block breaking was only related to sidequesting for gold ingots, which made those exceptions not worth the trouble of excepting them. The minigames at the lake (disregarding the fact that they were "look forward and press q or right click respectively) were attached to dispensers that gave buttons, when it would take no more effort to have them just attach to the doors themselves. The challenges to get the keys were almost easy enough that you could be turning on minecraft for the first time and beat this map. AND giving me a bucket of water was a huge mistake, especially when the next puzzle was parkour over lava. "Don't think this jump is impossible and it becomes a lot easier" - MY RESPONSE "You're not kidding!" (uses bucket of water). Although I was thankful for that bucket when I found spots in the map where you could just sidestep into a ditch and be forced to cheat to get out. The ice jumping and slow sand race challenges worked out alright though. And none of the puzzles were bugged. But telling me I need to sleep or I'll spawn outside the map is a bit lazy, especially when you've already said that you used mcedit, and that program moves spawns.
2/10
Form:
The map looked a bit better than it played. The piston machines used to unveil the key chests was a nice touch. The buildings in the snowy hills looked nice, the minecart rides weren't particularly tedious or boring, and building into natural Minecraft landscape always looks ok. On the other hand, the giant tree was just a hollow 6x6 rectangle with some leaves on top, the forest was redundant imagery with the giant tree even though they were very different places; "the forest" is a bad naming choice for what is more acurately described as a canyon in the first place, but when you already have a great tree I don't see why you would choose "forest" on top of that. Near the starting area there is what seems to be the bottom of a scrapped side mission sticking out of a cliff for no reason. There's also what seems to be an unfinished staircase near there on the hillside as well. The tower is unimpressive, and the map is a little too short.
3/10
Flavor:
I'm supposed to save the land from an evil spirit. Why is there nobody there to save? Why doesn't anyone try to stop me from breaking the seal on the spirit? Why does nothing bad happen when I literally expode the sealing tower? Why doesn't the spirit try and stop me from hitting the self-destruct button? And most importantly, how does the hero take up his sword like it specifically says at the end of the map if you never gave the hero a sword in the first place.
2/10
Uniqueness:
Nope. But atleast it didn't rip off enough to get the creeper face.
Overall Score: 7/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I think there's a pattern emerging that we should avoid maps that are "Quest [preposition] [imaginary name]" .... (of Gallell) .... ok, it's not nearly that bad.
I thought that Punishment Parkour was just a cutesy name for a very difficult parkour map. As it turns out, it's actually punishment themed parkour. You are in a mob family, but you snitch or something, so they hunt you down and stick you in a torturous chamber of parkour punishment! It's a nice take on how much the community thinks of jumping puzzles as painful (if that was the intention). Most of the map's jumping is hardly infuriating; it acts like it has no checkpoints but the whole map is segmented frequently which is basically checkpoints, and there are only a few rooms that offer you instant death (the map plays on peaceful). It's a pretty good map for the parkour junkie (those exist?).
Function:
There are a few places I have personally decided are impossible. Most likely not all of these are actually impossible, but some of them definitely are, so I'll make it a comprehensive list: the last room of the first area has a 2 over 1 down jump with a low ceiling, which is barely possible sprinting but sprinting isn't allowed in that section. The key item beneath the theater seems to be in a chest with solid blocks above it so you can't get any. The building in the city block that tells me to check out their book collection seems to want me to jump on top of the bookcase, but there is no ledge high enough to jump up from. The key item in the sewers seems to just be hidden behind a solid wall never to be found (I found it with mcedit). There's a chandelier in the church area that you need to jump off of the fence part to make, but there's no way to get on top of the fence. The gate opening for the timed parkour is impossible to get through since the button is too far away from it. And the 11 minute timer doesn't actually go off because the redstone chain at the end is 18 blocks long.
As a map reviewer, I do not rage-quit. I finish the map. But I do rage-switch to creative mode. The point that made me switch to creative came after the 6th area. I finished everything up to and including the first 2 gauntlet towers legitimately (except where I thought it was impossible). The reason I raged was the sign that said "Area 7." The reason that I raged was because the previous area sign said "Area 7" and when I saw it at first, I was convinced I had missed 2 keys somehow when I thought I had only missed the sewer, and finding out my dispair was misplaced was the last straw of sorts. I still did all the jumps along the way, I just pretended there were a lot more checkpoints and a lot less death. Also, I didn't realize until very close to the end that the map isn't actually finished. It confuses me that there are advertisements in the thread for better endings after a final boss battle when the version to download doesn't have the boss battle finished yet.
Now, for things closer to my normal commentary: There's a good mixture of changing environments and challenges. It's not just climbing straight up or straight across all the time, and some interesting things are added to make the jumps more entertaining or enfuriating, e.g. sexy computer screens or STUPID PIGS. If I couldn't cheat on some of the sprinting twist jumps near the end, I probably would have rage-quit though. (Side note: I have thoughts sometimes about extending the honor system all the way and just making a map built for creative mode.) I was happy with the lack of overly laggy components until the lava filled gauntlet, which somehow makes more inconvenient lag spikes than a literal room full of pigs, but that's not so bad since it's optional and has large-scale checkpoints. Overall, the map was mostly the right kind of frustrating and seems like it's going to be quite good, but has some definite "work-in-progress" bugs and problems.
5/10
Form:
The map isn't super pretty (solid Lapis castle, anybody?) and the background is just natural nether. The creator seems to understand this as there's specifically a mention of wanting to fix this in the thread. The varience of aesthetics keeps it pretty fresh on your eyes, and thankfully your ears aren't assaulted by the sounds of the natural nether the entire time (meaning I'm glad I didn't have to listen to burning while I played.) Clearly, the whole thing can and will be a lot more aesthetically enjoyable by the time it's done.
5/10
Flavor:
I like that you made constant parkour into a thematic activity. The mafia brothers story is actually really charming, and I wish you had stuck to it more. The snarky signs could have been done more in character (play with the "r"s or something to make it more Boston-y). The parts about one brother trying to help you escape or the thing about witchcraft are unnecessary, cliched, and distracting. If it's still possible, I'd suggest scrapping as much of that as you can and get back to the two trying to pick on you. At the beginning, I imagined it like Cinderella and her evil step-sisters, except instead of girls cleaning and going to balls, it's guys committing murder and more murder. The two simple-minded bratty bully dynamic helped make it fun.
5/10
Uniqueness:
One for giving me a new experience, two for giving a good theme to parkour, and three for seeming to mock the minecraft community's hatred for parkour. Now fix everything and finish the map.
Overall Score: 15/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I don't recommend a WIP. I recommend finished maps. So finish the map and we'll talk.
Did you by chance play an old version of the map? A lot of the bugs and impossible sections you mention are fixed in the newest version (0.5.6)
Also, thanks for the review. I know I'm hitting my target demographic. (Parkour junkies...I can't be alone.)
The story is still sort of under WIP, I just tried to go with that, but yeah, it does seem sort of unnecessary. I still value a good story in a map, though, so I may end up simply tweaking the story instead of dumbing it down to an Escapecraft-ish story.
Yeah, I may make hard jumps, but lava is just cheap in my mind. So, naturally, I stuck all the lava I could into one section and put almost none anywhere else. Just be lucky you didn't have to parkour across the lava lake instead of going in the UGLEEE castle.
I love mocking people. :3
My mindset going into this map (also my first) was to make a nearly impossible map. I've done well.
Aesthetics will probably be the veeeeery last thing I do.
I'll tone down the pig spawners a bit.
Oh, the redstone's too long? Silly stuff, it worked in testing.
I may have left that chest in there when I redid the sewer parkour (you'd be surprised how many revisions it went through) and forgot to replace it.
Nearly everything you listed is just tossed in there to mess with people. It's hard, but it's possible. I may have to end up writing a walkthrough for those infuriating jumps.
On an unrelated note: I'm surprised at how many Youtubers lp'd this map. It's only a matter of time until Husky gets his raeg on. :3
About the story, clearly you should do what you want with it, but the "one character helping you escape while the other tries to kill you" thing has been like 3 maps a week since portal 2 came out, and I personally don't like when a map goes out of its way to try and make sense of the minecraft mechanics they used. Sometimes writing magical interdimensional portals into a story is more harmful to it than just leaving it unexplained. I actually just criticized Levi's Nightmare for trying to wedge nether portals into the story just so that he could use hell as a setting, when just having them go through without explaining why would have worked just as well without all the fuss.
I really enjoyed the pig spawners. They were enfuriating, but in a way tht made me laugh at the absurdity.
I don't know, are you glad that many people are playing the pre-released version on youtube? I personally wouldn't want so much publicity on an unfinished product... then again, considering how rushed we did Deja Vu, it's pretty much an unfinished product and I LOVE watching people play it.
Yeah, sometimes I think people will get a bad impression of the map (Seamus played a horrible version of the map) before it's released, but I actually got mostly positive feedback who downloaded it thanks to Seamus.
Absurdity and insanity. Things I strive for.
Because too many pigs aren't enough.
Strange Island Survival is a survival island. It is a very nice little island with some amazing underground features. I was so impressed with the maps natural structures that I decided to try the seed out for myself, and found all the good parts of the map in their entirety: the quaint island, the huge cavern system, the ravine intersecting with an abandoned mineshaft were all there in their full glory. The "strange" part of this survival island is how much everything the creator added detracts from the natural quality of the map. With the exception of the original island not having a tree, I would prefer just opening the seed to playing this map in every way.
Function:
It's extremely easy to succeed in this map except for the tree. The amount of every resource except wood is huge. The added melon means that I pretty much get infinite food as soon as I kill a skeleton, which was easy to find once I tunnelled through 4 blocks deep to open up the entire underground system. You could have made me subsist off of apples and rotton flesh until I got a good wheat farm going. The lava trap with the stone pressure plates didn't actually work. When I read the sign about how there isn't any iron around I already had a bucket and an iron sword. The mob room in the nether isn't a real challenge because pigmen aren't aggressive, magma cubes aren't threatening, and blazes spawn half as often in a 2 block tall opening. And by the time I got there I had assembled close to full diamond enchanted combat gear and was practically invincible to mobs. The activation block in the nether room may as well say "use a lever" since it's the only device that performs the correct function in that scenario. Once you are in that mob room, it locks you in so that you need to break out to get back to the survival island. Not to mention that the "the end" sign is a bit discouraging towards doing so. The nether treasure was actually less impressive than what I had already assembled on my own from your trail of diamond ore. By the end, the only frustrating or difficult task the entire time was waiting for the first few trees to grow. I didn't end up making the village, the smooth stone house, or the SOS signal since I had access to the resources and finishing them would just be an excercise in tedium. Also, some of the challenges are vague on their own. "Expand the island"- I moved a dirt block, does that count? "Build a village with a population of 100" - What constitutes a village, and how is it a challenge to hit 100 when you give me 3400 villager spawn eggs? The map suffers a bit of a misbalance when conquering the nether and assembling a grand island village are easier than growing trees. Either everything else should require the same effort and irritation, or nothing should.
2/10
Form:
The natural map is beautiful, but I can't give credit to that unless it is used well. The island is nice in the seed, and it changed from there and covered the hole to the underground which is good, but did so in such a lazy and unthorough way. The dip in the ground was clearly noticable from the surface still, and there were grass blocks buried underground. I shouldn't dig up a dirt block and find grass underneath, that's just wrong. The ravine and mineshaft are very cool, but the map's story practically guides you away from them on purpose. If all the player does is follow the placed path, they avoid those features entirely and never see them. The dungeons you put in are no more decorative than natural dungeons, but at the same time are obviously not natural since you put mossy cobblestone in the walls as well as the floor. So that's the worst of both worlds, both unnatural and unattractive. Speaking of unattractive, the little dock and flag, while being a nice source of wool and wood, were just ugly as poop. Your nether structures were solid obsidian on all sides which is painful to look at. Everything that was added to this map just looks bad. The points here are coming entirely from the minecraft generated features.
2/10
Flavor:
Why was there a prospector on a remote island? Why does a buried cavern on a remote island have a name? How did the prospector know of the nether treasure- especially one so unimpressive that he's better off just mining the caves nearby? Why was there a port on the island at all? How does the player character know that zombie-pigmen come from the nether? The story to this map is simply to claim a story and doesn't actually add anything at all to the map but unanswered questions. But it does manage to distract entirely from the survival aspect. If the creator wanted to make it more immersive and real, why contrast the story aspect to the silly, unexplained floating chest full of people eggs? Why is that the chest of "repopulation" when there's little indication the island ever had a real population to regain? With the clashing of survival challenges against in game story goals and the relative ease of accomplishing both those tasks, I found no motivation to play this map other than writing this review.
1/10
Uniqueness:
It's a survival island, with almost the same characteristics as other survival islands. Basically, it's a fantastic seed with so little added that the map could be reconstructed (and probably improved on) in a single sitting, for which the creator is taking credit for making a survival map. I didn't want to use this, but
Overall Score: 5/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- Nooooo, but the seed is -546877940
Unfortunately I am playing everything in 1.2. I miss exploring maps with mcedit.
Thanks for replying so quickly, oh and a few notices, please read all the rules on the forums before playing the map, its a little difficult, so please, do cheat if you want. Thank you once again for agreeing to review it, hope to see a review soon
Oh, quick side note, please play the music while doing the corresponding stages, it is in a separate folder in the download, thanks bro
I'll not comment on the irony of reading my reviews of everything a map does wrong before playing it. Instead, I'll cross my fingers that someday you'll be inspired and end up back here with a map for me to play.
Beat you to it. :3
Thanks for the review. I have been totally rewriting the story lately because I know it isn't the best right now. I improved the story by giving the player "notes" from his boss that tell him which direction to go and why he has to go that way. This make everything seem less pointless.
I also have removed the piston parkour since everyone seems to hate it.
The newest update will be out in the next few days. :smile.gif:
Genre: Adventure/Parkour
Creator: BickerCraft
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1028110-wip-advparkpuz-abstergo-the-last-subject-30-downloads/
by Kerblah
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/828869-
I feel the best way for me to introduce this map is a brief narrative of my experience with it. I downloaded the map, stuck on the playlist (awww yeeaah!), went in, read the rules, followed along with the map until the sign "meet you at hallowed grounds." My response to that sign was "well where the hell is that supposed to be?" Within about 15 minutes I was completely lost and finally found another NPC sign, but this one was a different character telling me to help in her plot to murder the one that talked to me before. At this point I determined that I should probably start over.
So the next day, I redownloaded the map, stuck on the playlist (awww yeeaah!), went in, breezed past what I had already seen, and started looking for hallowed grounds. It took me about 15 minutes to find the hole into there, but once I did I finally knew what was going on in the map. 2 hours later I had 5 music discs and enough ore to decorate a jewelry shop. At that point I decided I didn't feel like giving this the 8 hours it seemed like it would take to finish, so I cheated and flipped over to creative mode. In the next hour, I got 3 more music discs and ended up back at that murder plot sign I had found on my first attempt. I figured that even though I still hadn't found where this NPC introduces this murder plot in the first place, I would follow along with it. Somehow from there I ended up at a destroyed pathway leading to a room full of pixel art and signs telling me the map was over. I figured even though I hadn't completed the monument, I was thoroughly confused and mentally drained enough to call it quits.
Function:
I honestly don't know if this functions or not. I see what this is trying to do (a story based CTM map), and I completely encourage it, but when I can get lost right away and start finding signs that depend on signs I haven't read to make sense, the story becomes more of a burden than an asset. And how can I find the ending without completing the monument? This map utterly confused me, and that's not good. The music disc defense areas were good. Ender pass, bad dreams, these places terrified the crap out of me and that's spectacular. And the color-coded chests were very nice, functional organization. But the map wasn't functionally organized to go with it. Perhaps in the future, the introductions should all come before the player is let free to explore and the ending elements should be blocked off until after they finish exploring. The complete the monument elements worked, the story elements didn't quite get there, and finding the end before finishing the map is not really acceptable.
4/10
Form:
Don't worry, it's all praise in this section. The map is beautiful. The map (in game item) even caught my attention. The way it frames in the map area is awesome. The background music playlist adds wonderfully to the experience. The pixel art is very well made. The sheer cliffs with forest on top makes a very nice backdrop for the map. The caverns are caverns, there's not much you can do with that, but the places with chests were unique and pleasant to view. I do think the music disc chests could have a little more of a pedestal to them though; some are floating prominently over lava while others are just sort of sitting in the corner. In the end, the map just comes across as very professional when you look at it.
9/10
It's a complete the monument map with a story, I'm obligated to try get in a good flavor score here. I don't know why there were floating gems (maybe that was explained and I just missed that sign), I don't know why I helped kill a character (I'm positive I just missed that sign), and I'm not sure why there are all these lairs underground defending music discs (I doubt there's an explanation for that one). But the story was supposed to be going through caverns finding secret records and that certainly plays out in the action of it. I really can't get over finding the end of a plot that I never found the beginning of, and that being the end of the map.
5/10
Uniqueness:
This map is unique. Story and adventure integrated into completing the monument. The map with a frame around the play area. Background music playlist! (awwww yeeaah!) The ideas here are great and new (at least from what I've played) and there's clearly a future going forward with what this does. This map did not quite execute what it was trying to do, but what it was trying to do is very original and very good, and luckily for us, the maker seems to have a lot more coming in the future.
Overall Score: 18 and
Would I recommend it?
- The map pretty much broke my brain, so I can't say I will recommend this to anyone; but I know there is an audience for brain-breaking maps out there, it just doesn't include me.
I can't argue with a review that's comprehensive and well thought out. Thanks for looking it over. It's the first review to find Green Hill to be so-so, so I'm just wrapping my mind around the details. It seems like the main reason was confusion. I don't know whether you played under a time constraint, but I apologize if the story became more of a distraction for you in the map.
The good news is that all the recommendations you listed have already been placed. The story is only specific in 3 areas. Otherwise, it's basically overlaying generic details. The "ending" is past four-square, which is only unlocked after reaching another area. If you have some left over time, I would play this map slowly on your own time. It may clear things up a bit. It's not a brain-busting map, I just prefer not to hold the player's hand through obstacles.
But like I said in the beginning, I understand reviews can be positive and negative, and I always listen to feedback. I think the story is pretty generic and easy to understand, but I can see if some people can't balance CTM and a story. It's a bummer that you felt confused while playing the map. Maybe there are too many elements at play.
Well, don't get me wrong, I would never call it so-so. I definitely admire what you've done. I'm trying not to judge by the experience after I started cheating, because that's hardly fair, but that first experience really ruined some things. Without any cheating, without even placing a block I think, I had gotten lost and found one of the signs telling me to kill Tom before finding the place I was supposed to meet him at. That sort of ruined the story element. But conceptually, the map is fantastic, just not my experience with it. I tried to get that sentiment across in the review. I really like the idea of it. That 5 diamonds is the max uniqueness score.
I guess brain-busting was a bad term for what I meant. It didn't break my brain because it was so difficult or confusing. My mind just got tired from being perpetully lost underground, if you know what I mean. I wasn't a mental 100 meter dash, it was a mental 3 hours of walking up stairs.
I might come back and play it again eventually, but I probably won't get back to it for some combinations of reasons: I've already cheated out of the map and seen everything and I'm probably not going to do much map-playing just for my own enjoyment while I have a queue up. I probably will continue to play your maps after this, though.
Yeah, all maps have bugs when they first come out, I'm definitely not taking away from it for that. When my first map was put up the first time, you could skip almost an entire dungeon just by jumping around a corner. :tongue.gif:
I probably liked the wood bridge over troubled water... I mean lava, if only because I have never seen that puzzle in anything else, so it wasn't just new in your map, it was new for me.
And yes, the new rating is +1, I'm going to leave the old review post the way it was, but I changed the rating in my front post to give it the upgraded +1. 19 --> 20 is a good +1 to have, too.
by: TJ the DJ Drummer
Tech Ninjaa
Sammo75
Robo_Chiz
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1040802-
Quest for Vendria (more appropriately quest in Vendria or quest of Vendria, as Vendria is the location, not the goal) is a small adventure map. The Land of Vendria had previously been assaulted by an evil spirit which got locked away in a tower, and then the three keys to unlock it were hidden in 3 dungeons to make sure anyone who went after them was strong enough to destroy the spirit permanently. You are that hero.
Function:
First, the rules acknowledge only the situation of breaking blocks; they don't tell me if I can place blocks or craft tools and they don't tell me what difficulty to play in. This would be less of a problem had the map thread not specifically mentioned that all important information is in the map before telling me to play on peaceful. I just assumed I shouldn't break blocks and played on normal difficulty, oh well. The block breaking was only related to sidequesting for gold ingots, which made those exceptions not worth the trouble of excepting them. The minigames at the lake (disregarding the fact that they were "look forward and press q or right click respectively) were attached to dispensers that gave buttons, when it would take no more effort to have them just attach to the doors themselves. The challenges to get the keys were almost easy enough that you could be turning on minecraft for the first time and beat this map. AND giving me a bucket of water was a huge mistake, especially when the next puzzle was parkour over lava. "Don't think this jump is impossible and it becomes a lot easier" - MY RESPONSE "You're not kidding!" (uses bucket of water). Although I was thankful for that bucket when I found spots in the map where you could just sidestep into a ditch and be forced to cheat to get out. The ice jumping and slow sand race challenges worked out alright though. And none of the puzzles were bugged. But telling me I need to sleep or I'll spawn outside the map is a bit lazy, especially when you've already said that you used mcedit, and that program moves spawns.
2/10
Form:
The map looked a bit better than it played. The piston machines used to unveil the key chests was a nice touch. The buildings in the snowy hills looked nice, the minecart rides weren't particularly tedious or boring, and building into natural Minecraft landscape always looks ok. On the other hand, the giant tree was just a hollow 6x6 rectangle with some leaves on top, the forest was redundant imagery with the giant tree even though they were very different places; "the forest" is a bad naming choice for what is more acurately described as a canyon in the first place, but when you already have a great tree I don't see why you would choose "forest" on top of that. Near the starting area there is what seems to be the bottom of a scrapped side mission sticking out of a cliff for no reason. There's also what seems to be an unfinished staircase near there on the hillside as well. The tower is unimpressive, and the map is a little too short.
3/10
Flavor:
I'm supposed to save the land from an evil spirit. Why is there nobody there to save? Why doesn't anyone try to stop me from breaking the seal on the spirit? Why does nothing bad happen when I literally expode the sealing tower? Why doesn't the spirit try and stop me from hitting the self-destruct button? And most importantly, how does the hero take up his sword like it specifically says at the end of the map if you never gave the hero a sword in the first place.
2/10
Uniqueness:
Nope. But atleast it didn't rip off enough to get the creeper face.
Overall Score: 7/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I think there's a pattern emerging that we should avoid maps that are "Quest [preposition] [imaginary name]" .... (of Gallell) .... ok, it's not nearly that bad.
by Dochavoc2
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/677282-
I thought that Punishment Parkour was just a cutesy name for a very difficult parkour map. As it turns out, it's actually punishment themed parkour. You are in a mob family, but you snitch or something, so they hunt you down and stick you in a torturous chamber of parkour punishment! It's a nice take on how much the community thinks of jumping puzzles as painful (if that was the intention). Most of the map's jumping is hardly infuriating; it acts like it has no checkpoints but the whole map is segmented frequently which is basically checkpoints, and there are only a few rooms that offer you instant death (the map plays on peaceful). It's a pretty good map for the parkour junkie (those exist?).
Function:
There are a few places I have personally decided are impossible. Most likely not all of these are actually impossible, but some of them definitely are, so I'll make it a comprehensive list: the last room of the first area has a 2 over 1 down jump with a low ceiling, which is barely possible sprinting but sprinting isn't allowed in that section. The key item beneath the theater seems to be in a chest with solid blocks above it so you can't get any. The building in the city block that tells me to check out their book collection seems to want me to jump on top of the bookcase, but there is no ledge high enough to jump up from. The key item in the sewers seems to just be hidden behind a solid wall never to be found (I found it with mcedit). There's a chandelier in the church area that you need to jump off of the fence part to make, but there's no way to get on top of the fence. The gate opening for the timed parkour is impossible to get through since the button is too far away from it. And the 11 minute timer doesn't actually go off because the redstone chain at the end is 18 blocks long.
As a map reviewer, I do not rage-quit. I finish the map. But I do rage-switch to creative mode. The point that made me switch to creative came after the 6th area. I finished everything up to and including the first 2 gauntlet towers legitimately (except where I thought it was impossible). The reason I raged was the sign that said "Area 7." The reason that I raged was because the previous area sign said "Area 7" and when I saw it at first, I was convinced I had missed 2 keys somehow when I thought I had only missed the sewer, and finding out my dispair was misplaced was the last straw of sorts. I still did all the jumps along the way, I just pretended there were a lot more checkpoints and a lot less death. Also, I didn't realize until very close to the end that the map isn't actually finished. It confuses me that there are advertisements in the thread for better endings after a final boss battle when the version to download doesn't have the boss battle finished yet.
Now, for things closer to my normal commentary: There's a good mixture of changing environments and challenges. It's not just climbing straight up or straight across all the time, and some interesting things are added to make the jumps more entertaining or enfuriating, e.g. sexy computer screens or STUPID PIGS. If I couldn't cheat on some of the sprinting twist jumps near the end, I probably would have rage-quit though. (Side note: I have thoughts sometimes about extending the honor system all the way and just making a map built for creative mode.) I was happy with the lack of overly laggy components until the lava filled gauntlet, which somehow makes more inconvenient lag spikes than a literal room full of pigs, but that's not so bad since it's optional and has large-scale checkpoints. Overall, the map was mostly the right kind of frustrating and seems like it's going to be quite good, but has some definite "work-in-progress" bugs and problems.
5/10
Form:
The map isn't super pretty (solid Lapis castle, anybody?) and the background is just natural nether. The creator seems to understand this as there's specifically a mention of wanting to fix this in the thread. The varience of aesthetics keeps it pretty fresh on your eyes, and thankfully your ears aren't assaulted by the sounds of the natural nether the entire time (meaning I'm glad I didn't have to listen to burning while I played.) Clearly, the whole thing can and will be a lot more aesthetically enjoyable by the time it's done.
5/10
Flavor:
I like that you made constant parkour into a thematic activity. The mafia brothers story is actually really charming, and I wish you had stuck to it more. The snarky signs could have been done more in character (play with the "r"s or something to make it more Boston-y). The parts about one brother trying to help you escape or the thing about witchcraft are unnecessary, cliched, and distracting. If it's still possible, I'd suggest scrapping as much of that as you can and get back to the two trying to pick on you. At the beginning, I imagined it like Cinderella and her evil step-sisters, except instead of girls cleaning and going to balls, it's guys committing murder and more murder. The two simple-minded bratty bully dynamic helped make it fun.
5/10
Uniqueness:
One for giving me a new experience, two for giving a good theme to parkour, and three for seeming to mock the minecraft community's hatred for parkour. Now fix everything and finish the map.
Overall Score: 15/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I don't recommend a WIP. I recommend finished maps. So finish the map and we'll talk.
Also, thanks for the review. I know I'm hitting my target demographic. (Parkour junkies...I can't be alone.)
The story is still sort of under WIP, I just tried to go with that, but yeah, it does seem sort of unnecessary. I still value a good story in a map, though, so I may end up simply tweaking the story instead of dumbing it down to an Escapecraft-ish story.
Yeah, I may make hard jumps, but lava is just cheap in my mind. So, naturally, I stuck all the lava I could into one section and put almost none anywhere else. Just be lucky you didn't have to parkour across the lava lake instead of going in the UGLEEE castle.
I love mocking people. :3
My mindset going into this map (also my first) was to make a nearly impossible map. I've done well.
Aesthetics will probably be the veeeeery last thing I do.
I'll tone down the pig spawners a bit.
Oh, the redstone's too long? Silly stuff, it worked in testing.
I may have left that chest in there when I redid the sewer parkour (you'd be surprised how many revisions it went through) and forgot to replace it.
Nearly everything you listed is just tossed in there to mess with people. It's hard, but it's possible. I may have to end up writing a walkthrough for those infuriating jumps.
On an unrelated note: I'm surprised at how many Youtubers lp'd this map. It's only a matter of time until Husky gets his raeg on. :3
Hopefully on a much better version.
Genre: Adventure/Parkour
Creator(s): Skully068
Thread: Link in sig
About the story, clearly you should do what you want with it, but the "one character helping you escape while the other tries to kill you" thing has been like 3 maps a week since portal 2 came out, and I personally don't like when a map goes out of its way to try and make sense of the minecraft mechanics they used. Sometimes writing magical interdimensional portals into a story is more harmful to it than just leaving it unexplained. I actually just criticized Levi's Nightmare for trying to wedge nether portals into the story just so that he could use hell as a setting, when just having them go through without explaining why would have worked just as well without all the fuss.
I really enjoyed the pig spawners. They were enfuriating, but in a way tht made me laugh at the absurdity.
I don't know, are you glad that many people are playing the pre-released version on youtube? I personally wouldn't want so much publicity on an unfinished product... then again, considering how rushed we did Deja Vu, it's pretty much an unfinished product and I LOVE watching people play it.
Absurdity and insanity. Things I strive for.
Because too many pigs aren't enough.
by Zephyron0210
Thread: http://www.minecraft...t/topic/981871-
Strange Island Survival is a survival island. It is a very nice little island with some amazing underground features. I was so impressed with the maps natural structures that I decided to try the seed out for myself, and found all the good parts of the map in their entirety: the quaint island, the huge cavern system, the ravine intersecting with an abandoned mineshaft were all there in their full glory. The "strange" part of this survival island is how much everything the creator added detracts from the natural quality of the map. With the exception of the original island not having a tree, I would prefer just opening the seed to playing this map in every way.
Function:
It's extremely easy to succeed in this map except for the tree. The amount of every resource except wood is huge. The added melon means that I pretty much get infinite food as soon as I kill a skeleton, which was easy to find once I tunnelled through 4 blocks deep to open up the entire underground system. You could have made me subsist off of apples and rotton flesh until I got a good wheat farm going. The lava trap with the stone pressure plates didn't actually work. When I read the sign about how there isn't any iron around I already had a bucket and an iron sword. The mob room in the nether isn't a real challenge because pigmen aren't aggressive, magma cubes aren't threatening, and blazes spawn half as often in a 2 block tall opening. And by the time I got there I had assembled close to full diamond enchanted combat gear and was practically invincible to mobs. The activation block in the nether room may as well say "use a lever" since it's the only device that performs the correct function in that scenario. Once you are in that mob room, it locks you in so that you need to break out to get back to the survival island. Not to mention that the "the end" sign is a bit discouraging towards doing so. The nether treasure was actually less impressive than what I had already assembled on my own from your trail of diamond ore. By the end, the only frustrating or difficult task the entire time was waiting for the first few trees to grow. I didn't end up making the village, the smooth stone house, or the SOS signal since I had access to the resources and finishing them would just be an excercise in tedium. Also, some of the challenges are vague on their own. "Expand the island"- I moved a dirt block, does that count? "Build a village with a population of 100" - What constitutes a village, and how is it a challenge to hit 100 when you give me 3400 villager spawn eggs? The map suffers a bit of a misbalance when conquering the nether and assembling a grand island village are easier than growing trees. Either everything else should require the same effort and irritation, or nothing should.
2/10
Form:
The natural map is beautiful, but I can't give credit to that unless it is used well. The island is nice in the seed, and it changed from there and covered the hole to the underground which is good, but did so in such a lazy and unthorough way. The dip in the ground was clearly noticable from the surface still, and there were grass blocks buried underground. I shouldn't dig up a dirt block and find grass underneath, that's just wrong. The ravine and mineshaft are very cool, but the map's story practically guides you away from them on purpose. If all the player does is follow the placed path, they avoid those features entirely and never see them. The dungeons you put in are no more decorative than natural dungeons, but at the same time are obviously not natural since you put mossy cobblestone in the walls as well as the floor. So that's the worst of both worlds, both unnatural and unattractive. Speaking of unattractive, the little dock and flag, while being a nice source of wool and wood, were just ugly as poop. Your nether structures were solid obsidian on all sides which is painful to look at. Everything that was added to this map just looks bad. The points here are coming entirely from the minecraft generated features.
2/10
Flavor:
Why was there a prospector on a remote island? Why does a buried cavern on a remote island have a name? How did the prospector know of the nether treasure- especially one so unimpressive that he's better off just mining the caves nearby? Why was there a port on the island at all? How does the player character know that zombie-pigmen come from the nether? The story to this map is simply to claim a story and doesn't actually add anything at all to the map but unanswered questions. But it does manage to distract entirely from the survival aspect. If the creator wanted to make it more immersive and real, why contrast the story aspect to the silly, unexplained floating chest full of people eggs? Why is that the chest of "repopulation" when there's little indication the island ever had a real population to regain? With the clashing of survival challenges against in game story goals and the relative ease of accomplishing both those tasks, I found no motivation to play this map other than writing this review.
1/10
Uniqueness:
It's a survival island, with almost the same characteristics as other survival islands. Basically, it's a fantastic seed with so little added that the map could be reconstructed (and probably improved on) in a single sitting, for which the creator is taking credit for making a survival map. I didn't want to use this, but
Overall Score: 5/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- Nooooo, but the seed is -546877940
Genre: Parkour
Creator(s): SlySlasher
Thread:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/895113-park-slyslashers-parkour-facility-v12/#entry11420883
Just a quick note, please play in 1.2 since it is out, there are some bugged ladders in 1.1
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1104369-125adv-castlevania-blood-moon-v13-adrenalin-pumping-combat-map-2100-downloads/
Unfortunately I am playing everything in 1.2. I miss exploring maps with mcedit.
Oh, quick side note, please play the music while doing the corresponding stages, it is in a separate folder in the download, thanks bro
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1104369-125adv-castlevania-blood-moon-v13-adrenalin-pumping-combat-map-2100-downloads/
Genre: Parkour, with some coordinates-finding puzzle.
Creator(s): barteke22
Thread: My signature, or: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/906924-parkpuz-assassins-craft-the-secret-of-altairs-library-123-1900-downloads/
If I helped you or if you like something I made, press the WHITE arrow inside of a GREEN 'square' at the bottom right!