Escape from Hoth

Author(s): Richard Gold

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The Rebels have completed their evacuation of Hoth with the exception of one man, Marcus Alliance, High Commander of the Corellian sector. He is presumably hiding somewhere in the many ice caves that surround the base. The initial Imperial invasion force has been replaced with regular stormtrooper squads, and what have been to referred to as "Super Stormtroopers," possibly Dark Troopers. These will be accompanied by large numbers of Probe Droids, so be cautious.

You round the corner to see a large metal structure. You raise your head and look up, and up..... It was probably a foregone conclusion that Hoth levels would be common in the Dark Forces universe. The Robotics level was little more than Hoth level with a new twist, and included all the features Dark Forces level authors could use to create their own Hoth levels. Escape from Hoth was one of the first to come out, and it's done a good job of building off the Robotics level. The level has a lot of cool stuff in it, and tons of extra space for you to explore. You can literally spend hours crawling through the ice caves of Hoth, and you never know what you might find. The problem with all this extra space is that it really serves no purpose other than to make the level larger. If you know your way around, you can complete this level in a few minutes, otherwise it could take, as I mentioned above, a few hours. However, the hundreds of corridors to search through do increase the difficulty of the level, and also give you something to do. The best thing about the level is the AT-AT 3DO it includes. Having shown up in several levels since, it was incredible the first time I saw it. But aside from that, the level is pretty much built off of Robotics. You can find a lot of the same stuff, right down to the old conveyor belts now turned into large ice formations. The level can get really boring after a while because of the similarity of the textures. It's the same over and over. This is a drawback of an ice-planet, and the author can't manage to overcome it. I was also disappointed to find that Echo Base hadn't been set up like the movies. Unless this level takes place in some other base on the planet("It could be smugglers, it could be..."), I think the author might have tried a bit harder to recreate the hangars and passageways we saw in ESB. It would have added something to the level that it tends to lack.

This level is somewhat of a letdown; it doesn't do much more than build off of ROBOTICS, and add a few mazes and Dark Troopers. But if you grab the cutscene with the level, it becomes a little more fun, and there's enough new stuff in here to keep you interested. So it might still be worth your time; if you have extra download time you can be the judge.

Level(s) replaced:	ROBOTICS
Difficulty Settings:	Yes

New BMs:	No
New FMEs:	Yes
New WAXs:	No
New 3DOs:	Yes
New VOCs:	No
New GMDs:	No
New LFDs:	Yes
New VUEs:	No

Base:	Seems built off of ROBOTICS.
Editor(s) used:	DFUSE, 3DOSHOW, FMEDRAW
Known Bugs:	Some slow-down in the outside.
Download Escape from Hoth. (escape.zip, 86k)

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These pages originally created and maintained by Geoffrey Elliott, c. 1997.
Last Updated February 13, 2004