I don't really like Unreal (the game), but I imagine this must be how Unreal feels to Unreal-likers. Vast environments with internal consistency, storytelling through infrequent text logs, lots of neat brushwork details, and a nice chill pace with occasional confused backtracking. There's a sort of pulp-y adventure charm to the setting, which sees you descending through a 19th-century sea fort (and the warren of tunnels beneath it) where a crew of pirates built an extremely Jules-Verne-ass submarine in secrecy. Also there's time travel.
A lot of these sorts of maps suffer from 'where do I go now?'-itis and this one is no exception, but I found myself getting stuck relatively few times. The environments are distinctive enough that you almost always know when you've been somewhere before, and it's usually not too hard to blunder back onto the critical path.
Like a lot of large-scale Quake maps, I don't find the fights to be much to write home about—they exist to provide friction and not much else—but I think it reflects well on the map's compelling construction that I can remain motivated to keep going after chewing through several hundred monsters (and almost an hour and a half of play). I also quite enjoyed the occasional secret, many of which have their own little bespoke identity or flavour text. Not sure that a Revenge of the Sith reference is exactly timely, but I'll take it over another fanfare-less megahealth.
