Massacre the natives? Y/N news

We keep goin', we keep pushin'! Four new mods today, although two of them should be perhaps treated as a kind of extra on top of the main two releases. Miguel Faria appears to be the star man today, as he conceived three out of these four works, but arguably the remaining mod (authorship sadly unknown) offers even more artistic creativity, so to speak, along with a touch of mystery. Why not examine it first then?

JungleStein gives us five maps for the First Encounter, strongly enhanced with a bunch of new textures and static object sprites. Its uniqueness lies within the setting said assets create, which is a jungle-like area as you would expect looking at the mod title. Some classic Wolfenstein texturing remains, but just enough to complement a mixture of forests, rough stone walls, wooden buildings and shabby huts. Gates made of rough-hewn planks hang unsurely on loose hinges, creaking in the wind. Some doors have native symbolism on them. You can even find Moai head lookalikes, slightly overgrown with moss. Are we actually on the Easter Island? What are we doing there? More to the point, what is Mecha-Hitler of all people doing there? Looking for ancient aliens or hoping to harness olde magics? Or maybe it's just an unfinished total conversion and the Nazis were meant to be replaced with other enemies at some point in the future?

Sadly, reality is harsh: the only piece of documentation attached to this mod is Clubey's plea for any information available. We don't know the author, the storyline, any specifics; nothing at all. I bet we'll never find out either.

Moving on to happier thoughts, there's another mod waiting for us and we actually know stuff about it. East Tower by Miguel Faria is six Third Encounter maps including some graphics borrowed from Barneystein and Castle Wolfenstein 5.0, all done in a week. Storyline: you infiltrate a Nazi tower, that's it. The most important aspect of a mod like this is mapping though, and what can I say? Cramped surroundings, lots of guards, but also plenty of pickups and decoration on some maps. Long, difficult, tricksy fights abound. If this makes you scream in disgust, before you ragequit I'd just like to mention that map 4 at least deserves to be seen with your own eyes, regardless of what you think of usual Mac gameplay exemplified in these floors. Good fun, have luck.

On another note, the above mod comes with a number of extras. These include: the Wolf FKEY application and a Wolfenstein 3D saved game editor (neither included here because duh), several screenshots (included), the infamous Day of the Barney fanfiction (included!), and...

Battle Arena 2000. Yes, one of the extras is a mod in itself. Or should I rather call it a single-level scenario (Third Encounter)? It even comes with its own (broken) episode thumbnail. It's a simple deal a map-wide arena with a huge group of enemies to kill, a few corners and buildings to hide behind, guns, ammo, health... Try it, see it.

But as long as we're talking about this, why not take care of Battle Arena 2001 while we're at it? It's not actually an extra of any sort, rather one of those scenarios distributed by Clubey after the author (still Miguel Faria) sent it directly to him. 2001 is rather late in the overall Mac modding scene activity cycle... But I digress. You get just what it says: another map-wide arena, but this time enemies surround you from all directions and you'll have to try pretty hard to find the right approach and survive. The readme warns of technical issues because the map is too big for Mac and suggests not running as much (???), but you can imagine this is not an issue in this day and age. Get them, kill them.