Battle, by 
Black Ninja uploaded something. Its been a while.
As Black Ninja described the meaning of the title, this level should have vertical gameplay, the level size is 80×80 which is a perfect square shape; However once I got to play it I noticed the way the layout was designed it made you play by moving in vertical directions most of the time. Although this is true most people won’t notice as you still move in horizontal directions quite a bit. Fort Oblivion does a much better job of providing vertical gameplay than this level, and it doesn’t even have a title to try to emphasize it.
Furthermore I am not too fond of the layout as it doesn’t appear to have a design, or at least a very good one. There are questionable parts such as rooms that could qualify as dead ends – I don’t mind them too much though. The room at the top right contains a blaster powerup, some ammo and a coin, the fact that it has a powerup might help justify it some extent. It isn’t another platformy battle level which is good, except I think that a platformy layout with greatly-designed platforms would look better than what was designed here, mainly because the floors are mostly long and unvaried, little use of slopes except for the top area, or maybe the layout is varied enough and I am just picking at the wrong thing, maybe it’s just the lack eyecandy that I find so unappealing about this level. Too many springs were used and some weren’t placed well, the area 67,21 (JCS pos) has a carelessly placed red spring, it may not seem like much, but if I am trying to out run someone who is chasing me and I don’t want to enter the room at the top right which is guarunteed to be a deathzone if your enemy is carrying seekers, I’m toast. So you might be thinking “well then avoid it!” but that’s not always the case when you’re rushed and have little knowledge of the level, especialy if I touch it going from the left side. Another spring that bothers me is by 69,39 – It is placed near the middle and would take a little skill for a rushed player to avoid it, if it were moved a tile to the left it would be perfect.
Coins are scattred throughout the level. So there’s a coin warp which apparently sends you to one of three powerups, not by choice but by order each time you enter the warp. First: Toaster, Second: Seeker and lastly Third: RF – No apparent order applied as you would think that RF would come first, then Toaster and finally Seeker, unless Black Ninja has an odd way of thinking about the power of each powerup. Ammo placement seems alright although they don’t have appealing designs and aren’t placed strategicly. You can see the powerups, in fact Black Ninja really wanted you to see them, even at the sacrifice of adding weird wind events and invisible bomb sceneries just to prevent you from touching them without entering the coin warp. I’ve found two +1 carrots, one at the top middle, the other near the bottom middle – that should all work out nicely. I think I’ve covered everything here.
The eyecandy is, well, unacceptable. The tileset is mostly to blame, basic typical brown colored dirt, basic- looking snow, amatuerishly drawn christmas trees, I like the gingerbreadman though, he looks adorable, really. The background is just weird, it consists of moving candy canes, they must be alive, kinda creepy. A plain untextured background, I hate it. Black Ninja, however did a good job with the lighting. I like the beams of light especialy the one that appears to be coming through the large crack near the candy canes.
I can’t quite recommend this, but host it as I have a feeling it’ll be the only christmas battle level we’ll have this year and the gameplay mostly works.
-fs
