When i first looked at Siege SE, i puked. Then i looked at Siege SE v2 and puked again. Now with Siege SE v3 Final, i've decided to take a serious look at the map and hey, it's not all that bad. In fact this map is superior to Siege is almost every way.

But first, the bad stuff.. the lighting, oooh the lighting. I'm used to dark maps, since i am using a voodoo2 which is dark in nature, not to mention i have a 5 year old semi-burnt out monitor, but geez. This map is DARK, i'm certain some areas have literally NO lighting at ALL, only small 16x16 light brushes guide your way. However, in the two base areas and the "blue" corridors in between them, there is barely enough lighting, so it is playable. Chrono, let Sul teach you how to use _wait to extend your lights over a great distance. Because of the extreme darkness, i'm tempted to say this is a spiders map, but i've seen humans do well on previous versions of Siege SE.

Now the good stuff.. while the map is fugly, it's quite playable. Both starting bases are human oriented (the ladders and multi-level), but due to the extreme darkness spiders can manage. In the outside, the vast, mostly flat ground favors humans, but also wraiths. Again, because it's dark, spiders can usually creep around. So in terms of balance, it's all good.

Now the essentials are covered, let's talk about nifty extras :D And there are lots of them. A nice "middle" base with an RxN coke machine, but one unlike any other. This one doesn't exactly dispense frags ;) I'll let you explore and find out what it does. Evil chrono, very evil. Oh, and here's a little text snip i took out from siegese_v3.txt, the incredible story behind Siege SE Final. In fact, i officially declare this the best storyline for a map ever in gloom. Congratulations Chrono!

Taken from SiegeSE_v3.txt

Fearing the breederhouse (only those whom played the orignal SiegeSE would know what I was referring to) the humans destroyed it and in doing so, rid it of its evil, magical, healing powers. Afterwards, the humans obliterated all alien presence in the area except for a single breeder in which they captured. Not wanting anything to do with the empty, infested, alien castle the humans *began* construction on an enormous wall and managed to build a specially designed (or not) breeder pen. Why would humans want to keep the last remaining breeder alive? (Arrogance? Stupidity? Maybe they just wanted to cuddle up to that cute blue-eyed breeder??) (Unsurprisingly) The breeder managed to escape from his evil breeder pen. One would think he could easily stack over the fence but he wasn't too bright. Rather, he used his leet breeder horn and "busted out"... (although his horn takes off a meager 2(?) damage to most human classes, erm.. it took off extra leet damage to the fencing.. erm... nevermind) (note: Afterwards, the breeder thought up a way to put his evil pen to proper use.. >:))

Overall, it's ugly and dark but it's playable and fun. Not to mention it has some.. er, extra "features". *grin*. A nice upgrade to Siege SE. Get it!

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Update:
Well after talking to Chrono i decided to run the map in quake2 deathmatch (which has no intensity caps) and ran in a normal brightness mode. I checked the map again and it wasn't as dark as i had said in my review.. It's still VERY dark in some areas, but it's not as bad as i had stated originally. Now if only R1CH could raise the intensity cap to 3 for people with Voodoo2's somehow(which produces very dark images)...