At first, I couldn’t figure out how I was even supposed to advance through the map, or even IF I was supposed to be able to advance through the map. then I found out that the huge windows that were on the same wall as where you entered the room from were breakable, and the barrels behind them were shootable, that led me almost straight to the gravity gun the rest of the map became pretty simple.

The simple meyhem and destruction element was rather nice, but there was absolutely no flow to the map, no direction that really led anywhere, and in actual fact I ran into the portal room without completing so much as a single other piece of the map. Then it just faded out and kicked me back to the main screen. If I hadn’t realized that there were other areas to explore I might have thought that was all there was to it and marked it as a pointless “think twice” map or possibly even “avoid it”
Once I actually got into the meat of the game, it was fun. There were a lot of things that were destructible and a lot of enemies to blow up with a relative amount of ease.
There’s not going to be any real reason to play this more than once though.

Boomfest

I should make that a TAG!

Visuals
The visuals aren’t really the point of this map, but only once or twice did they make me feel I was playing in a level, rather than not even thinking about it.

Gameplay
Timing. It’s all about when you choose to explode the barrels and even if you want to move some around. It took me a while to get inside the bar-protected area but that was half the fun. Father Grigori could have been used better but it was nice to see him in there.

Layout/Design
Complicated enough to make it interesting, but not so complicated that you get lost. As Goldilocks said “It was just right”.

Summary
No story, no beautiful vistas, no heart-pumping climax, just barrels galore. If you liked the first you will most likely enjoy this one too.