Review by Colin Phipps

"Warcade One" is a level in the Doom 2 style, mostly decorated in brick, stone and plaster textures. You start in an area which is some kind of home base, with no monsters, and lots of loot. There are 4 doors from this room - one to start with, then one fo each key. Behind each is a teleport leading to an area to get the next key. With a pile of medikits and mega armours behind me as I left via the first teleport, it looked like it would be an easy level. I may have even been yawning already.

Well the first area certainly woke me up! You emerge from the teleport on one side of a small courtyard, toe to toe with a line of imps, with more imps overlooking the yard from all sides. I spent the first couple of minutes fighting for my life, clearing the courtyard itself of wandering imps and dealing with an overlooking chaingunner, all the while dodging the rain of imp shots from a further ledge, and watching for the extra badies teleporting in.

After you beat the area, you can collect some loot and the key, and teleport back. The next area is quite similar to the first, with wandering close imps as well as long range shooters from both sides - but there are some chaingunners, a hell knight and a revenant overlooking this area, so even though I was less surprised this time, it was still a good fight. Once again, you silence the opposition, then go and collect the loot - there are some good secrets to look for.

The final area is no less frantic. You teleport in to a large area, with 6 revenants on ledges overlooking it from various corners, and loads of demons and imps wandering around. I'm not sure what the tactic was meant to be here - you can try killing them, or try ignoring them, or you can release a caged cyber and get him fighting them. I chose te third option, which proved pretty hazardous (I died quite a few times), but it does cut the numbers down a lot.

After an hour of this level I was glad to finish, it didn't give much chance for a respite. I liked the first two areas especially. The architecture - well you don't get much chance to look at it, but it's quite decent, no serious errors... the structure is quite good, but in places I just felt things looked ugly. Also, using blue lights as step risers on an outside brick staircase seemed odd. Overall though, this level really gets you moving.