looks good by the screenshots in the review, must download and try this out... 

It does look pretty good - just don't hav a copy of UT. Or much time. 

I'm about halfway through:

Highs:
Great creepy crawler adventure in a huge underground mining complex. It has a similar vibe as the AvP2 marine mission. Lots of tension and atmosphere. Very good layouts and tasks along the way. Lots of detail and scene building with the emphasis on atmosphere rather than mob combat. It doesn't get boring and it draws you in. Very good use of ambient sound other than a loud buzz for flickering lights (just needs the volume tuned down.) A lot of work has been done on this. I'm playing on medium skill since the review at UnrealSP warned of balance problems on Hard.

Lows:
The earlier maps are not well lit in many places - too dark and too dependant on minlight settings. I don't mind spooky dark but minlight dark looks poor especially when fog is present (or perhaps my card doesn't render it well. The lighting gets much better after the first two maps. A few wrong texture choices like chainlink fencing as a walkway floor or the duct texture over a whole ceiling. But these errors are few - most of the texturing is great. The one flickering light function is way too loud compared to other ambient sounds - it's quite grating and turning down the whole volume subtracts from the other sounds.

So I'm about half way through and if the quality stays as it is now - this will satisfy my Unreal appetite and make me anxious for his other missions that are planned. 

havent played it yet but this was a reworking by the author of an earlier release which was not received so well.

Perhaps there was only so much that could be done with the earleir maps without having to rebuild. 

I just wrote a bunch of text and lost it. Arghh... I'll try and say it again.

Highs:
The quality of this episode remains high to the end with the best maps being in the middle. The number of enemies is sparse but the battles tend to be hard. What JazzyB succeeds at is creating a believable, realistic setting with a rich mood of tension and danger - even when you're alone, you feel that the man-made environment is alive and wheezing. Through his skilled use of sound, lighting and details like steam leaks, water drips, fog, items like tool cabinets and vehicles - he takes you into a massive underground mine complex. There is nothing abstract about these maps - each one has a strong theme about it's role within the complex (such as processing, waste handling, etc.) Sure we've been to these places in other games before but I really enjoyed JazzyB's version of these popular archetypes. While his greatest strength is crafting settings, he is also very good at designing progression that is Half-Life in nature. There's tasks to do, stories to unfold, familiar areas to revisit (not excessive), puzzles to solve, enemies to fight and some tricky jumps and climbs to get through. Layouts are complex and very 3D. The story is well integrated into the gameplay and told through translator messages. This 9 map episode felt substantial in size - almost as big as some commercial mission packs. None of the levels felt rushed or thrown in as filler.

Lows:
One of the biggest lows has more to do with Unreal's combat gameplay which consists of trying to wear your enemy down with many shots from weak weapons while the Skaarj do the same to you. Sometimes that's okay but not when you have a limited space to kill 4 Skaarj with no health or armour added to the battle space. Some of the jumping puzzles were a bit much - I guess I never appreciated Mario Brothers as much as I should. But I did the whole thing without cheats so you can as well - but I had to reload many times in some places. The translator messages needed to be cleaned up for grammar. They told what was needed and conveyed emotion well but an English tidy up would make this episode nearly professional.

So if you liked Unreal, Unreal II, Half-Life and perhaps DooM 3, then this is worth installing and playing. I'm looking forward to the next episode in the series. 

looking forward to finding some time to play through it.

I might post over at Unrealsp and direct him to your extensive comments here scragbait. 

Never played UT SP

Is is fun? or is just another slow game? 

UT SP is very similar to Unreal SP but many of the large SP projects are amazing. Such mission packs as Operation NaPali, Xidia, 7 Bullets and this one justify giving it a try. Some of the gameplay is 'slow' meaning not a constant onslaught but there is also map sections where the combat is fierce and challenging. However, if you never liked Unreal but you liked Quake, you won't find UT SP to be much fun. 

Scragbait thanks 

found it quite difficult, not much armor and health around and you're only given low power weapons for the most part.

But build quality is high, puzzles are good and atmosphere is great. 

Installed both mods from the package, but when I try to launch it it says that it can't find SGTech 1. I searched a little and found on the net a sgtech1.utx file (from some bonus ut pack). I downloaded it and copied it to textures folder. Now the mod complains that it cannot find sg tech crates inside the package, so I'm sure it needs a different sgtech1.utx file. But where to get it ???

I really don't understand. In the installation it writes VERY clear :


Requirements
------------

Fully patched Unreal Tournament 99

OldSkoolAmp (included)

That's ALL. I have those installed. But it still doesn't work. I just hate when this happens. Any advices ?

Thanks. 

Ok, it works now. I downloaded and installed ut bonus pack 4 (which included the correct sgtech1.utx file - and maybe other files).

JazzyB, if you can read this : man, CHECK first if your work requires other files, it's not nice to read a file that says :

Requirements
------------

Fully patched Unreal Tournament 99

OldSkoolAmp (included)

and find out that it still doesn't work.

I don't know about you, but in my book Fully patched UT99 is the plain game fresh installed from cd and with latest patch installed, NOTHING more. The Bonus Packs are something different, not everybody has it, you know...

Off to play now, I have read the comments from here and I'm a little sad, it looks like it's going to be hard, I hate that too, I play shooters mostly to admire graphics and environments, not to get frustrated that I die every 6 seconds and to strafe, jump and move the mouse like a mad man, just to survive. I want to look at the game, not ONLY at the monsters :) 

probably an oversight since pretty much everyone who had UT got Bonus Pack 4, a lot of levels use the SGTech textures.

But yes, I agree it should have been clearer.

Oh and theres plenty of time to look around, the action is limited, but when it comes, I found it mostly hard.