Review by Colin Phipps

Having just recently added a lot of MBF enhancements to LxDoom, and needing to test them, I remembered the Artica series. The level depicts a small hell base built up against a number of ice caves. Most of the base is decorated with marble textures, while some new snow and ice textures are imported for those areas. There's also a crate storage area. The styles are strangely mixed.

There's a lot of use of Boom ice effects, particularly at the end of the level. There's one icy pond just for show, but after that the ice is used strategically to catch you out in various fights - one fight has a large block of ice right before a doorway, so if you're not careful you find youself sliding defenseless under fire. Other effects are used too, including a narrow walkway surrounded by deep water which you have to balance round.

The opposition are sparse but tough, Cyb's normal style. I normally stick with the single shotgun, but at this level the enemy are all big enough to need a double barrel throughout. You do have to go a while with only the chaingun which was interesting, particularly when you fight the archville. There's some nasty tricks and traps. There's also a puzzle that you are warned about in the text file, which can be pretty tricky to work out - it's clever perhaps but not very convincing, but I'd better not spoil it for you.

The walkway over water I mentioned above comes with a cyberdemon perched overlooking it - interesting idea, but pinned in place, and the marine having plenty of rockets, means it's easy to just kill him off. The spiderdemon fight in the next area is excellent though; the whole area is icy, so you can't just poke out of cover to blast him, it takes more care.

Overall, a strange level that showcases a selection of Boom and MBF tricks. There's some good tricks, but the level didn't feel very.. coherent to me. Finally, there's a serious bug in the final area; a mistake with the tag numbers means the exit area is messed up, when the exit door opens you just get HOM.