Reviews - Darkon711

Ultimate Apocalypse is a fantastic mod, but I say that only from the screens and vids I've seen of it, not first-hand experience. I'd actually have to first get it working in order to play it myself, which looks increasingly unlikely.

Simply put, this is one of the most broken mods I've ever struggled to use, and all because the devs apparently think it's too hard to consolidate ALL of the files necessary to run it into one existing installer.

Things like added races all require separate downloads, and while that's not a big deal in itself, the links the devs provide you are either outright broken(people still use forums for hosting dowenloads?) or they lead to seemingly incompatible, out-of-date content. This inability to acquire necessary files renders their mod totally unplayable from the outset, and any attempt on their part to provide assistance with these problems is like swapping deck chairs on the Titanic; everything they tell you to do leads to the same exact problems.

And as is usually expected from makers of large, successful mods like this, these same devs get all snot-nosed when you make even the slightest suggestion that user input is not solely to blame for these problems. Take Lord Cylarne for example. The guy won't even answer questions regarding the kind of problems that users in my situation have been having. These people want to enjoy the same prestige as professional game developers, but they don't have the attitude for any kind of criticism. That's what separates the crack professionals from the amateur modders who have to rely on the financial charity of others just to keep going.

I don't doubt that I sound like an unreasonable *** with this review, but it's incredibly frustrating to know the only thing keeping me from enjoying an incredible mod for an already fantastic 40K game, is the fact that a bunch of skilled and talented people somehow can't keep all of their work in tidy order. This has been a big problem for the last 3-4 years when I first decided to give UA a try, and it hasn't gotten any better since then.

If the modders get their act together and release a complete installer featuring EVERYTHING UA needs to run from the start, I won't hesitate to delete this review and write up a glowing recommendation in its place. Big if.

False Dawn is an excellent, if brief user-made campaign! Both the hub-based level design and the locational weapon system should've been part-and-parcel of Quake IV when it was released, though I'm glad somebody finally got around to implementing these features. The end result is a game that plays not entirely unlike Quake II, and I don't need to remind anybody about what a great game THAT was.

If False Dawn has a flaw, it's the Sikkmod graphics suite. Its options do a fairly poor job of concealing Quake IV's aged textures, and the fact that they suck up way too much GPU memory in the process only makes things worse. Call me spoiled, but I don't much care for the idea of playing a nine-year-old game with anything less than 60+ fps the whole way through. Unless your machine can handle the strain that Sikkmod puts on it, you'll save yourself a lot of headaches if you just all of its features off; you'll be left with a game that's graphically identical to base Quake IV, which still looks decent even in 2014.