THE IMMORTAL LOCK

A massive, meaty game in a single horrific Quake map.

- Dominic Tarason

Exploring eldritch hell-dungeons is par for the course in Quake, but this is the first time the dungeon itself has said "I want to feel you inside me". Just how far will Quake's hero go on a first date? Welcome to The Immortal Lock, likely the largest, fleshiest Quake map ever made, and essentially a whole action-horror game in a single contiguous space. Over a year and a half in the making, it's a harrowing three-to-five-hour experience, potentially much longer depending on how often you die.

You will die, too. This is Quake turned up nearly as loud and hard as it goes, so quicksave often. The readme file implores that whatever difficulty you normally play Quake on, you'll want to go one lower, as this is intended to be a harrowing experience. If you're a beginner or returning old fan, there's no shame in dialling it down to easy. I usually play on hard, and normal had me sweating through almost every fight and retrying regularly. Brutal, but far from wasted time, as The Immortal Lock is an excellent downward spiral into a dimension of yearning meat, backed up by some compelling hidden lore owing to the mapmaker's primary artistic outlet: surreal horror writing.

The setup is standard enough for Quake. An assault research team has gone missing, so they're sending Ranger (Quake's unnamed protagonist), the Most Badassest of Marines, to find out what happened.

But things escalate quickly and you find yourself in the guts of a living labyrinth that wants to eat you, but also wants you to enjoy the process of being chewed up and digested.

The map is roughly broken up into three acts (the third of which is optional and semi-hidden, but well worth discovering), each acting as a non-linear hub consisting of several set-pieces each the size of a small-toregular Quake map. It seldom repeats tricks despite the fleshy theme.