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Enclave - Northern Watch

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Download: http://www.moddb.com/games/enclave/addons/northern-watch-survival-level

After installation, finish Light Campaign and Northern Watch mission will be unlocked. If Light Campaign is already finished, replay its last mission and complete it.

Despite the fact that the game was released in 2003, this is the only new level for it I could find, and it came out two months ago! I wonder if there are any earlier levels I missed.

Northern Watch is a beautifully designed very hard survival arena for Enclave. Just like on such maps found in original game, you will be fighting against waves of enemies on a small location.

Design and atmosphere are done very well. Watch tower high in the mountains is detailed and stylish, has nice elevation and angle changes. Foggy night lit by torches creates moody atmosphere.

There are welcome additions that make this level look even better than original survival maps. The place we arrive in has small story that's shown in the loading screen, camera animation is different from the usual rotation around the character we're tired of seeing in the original game. Enemies don't appear out of nowhere, but enter the area through doors they lock behind themselves. Doors that we need to go through are opening quickly so they never stand on the way of action.

Due to very hard difficulty, I spent about an hour of trying again and again before I could finally complete it. And that's where an imperfection becomes apparent - there's nothing that would give sense of progression and motivate the player to move forward. You kill enemies, new enemies come, and that's it. No one of them would ever drop a health potion, money or a key.

This lack of any rewards and sense of progression makes the map come across as a place where new enemies would spawn infinitely and if you've seen first few minutes, you've seen everything. The location could have been more interesting if it included additional areas, each of them opening when certain amount of enemies is destroyed. These new areas would reward the player, make them feel that they came somewhere, accomplished a milestone, and then anticipate more milestones to come, which would give motivation to continue playing. Also curiosity about what would happen next.

If there were some scripted events happening in the middle of the map, they would also do the trick of giving the feel of accomplishing a milestone.

There's also no spectacular and rewarding ending cutscene, just a fade to black.

Overall, well done design and atmosphere make this place worth visiting for every Enclave fan. Will you be able to overcome a survival level that would make original survivals from Light Campaign seem like holiday resorts?

I don't know why the video sometimes has its adjacent frames misplaced which makes it look shaky. When I was playing and recording, everything looked completely normal.

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2 Comments

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EmoLevelDesigner [author] 22 Nov, 2015 @ 11:51am

It's good to see your comment, and I'm happy to know that you like the review and the video.

Considering high quality of the game, it is strange that so much time has passed, but only one new level was made.

I'll gladly play and review your Dark survival level when it's available. Each Enclave level gives exciting feeling of discovering something new, and after having that feeling in Northern Watch I think that it will be even better in your next map.

The forum thread you mentioned is an interesting read, and the video of the map's progression is great: it is stunningly decorated with camera animations and fade of one picture into another. Most importantly, it captures the magic that happens when a location gets created out of nothing.

It would be nice to try Enclave mapping, but, as always, there are a lot of things to do, and too little spare time.

Amran 22 Nov, 2015 @ 9:22am

Thank you for posting the review and gameplay video, definitely some good feedback, and it's also neat to see first hand how others experience the level. Unfortunately, there have yet to be more user created mas released for the game, although I am hoping to work on a Dark survival level at some point.

If you're interested in reading more about the map, there's a post about it here (remove the space between editor and .com):
http://www.ogier-editor .com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=16

Should you give enclave mapping a shot as well, feel free to ask me any questions that you might have. It's always great to see more people making content for the game. :)

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