Two Disclaimers:
1) This review, like literally every review ever written about anything ever, is ultimately tainted by personal taste. It is not meant to make people who's opinion is different conform to mine.
2) All criticisms present are meant to help map devs in the future avoid making similar mistakes. They are not meant to demean or otherwise insult the original developers, and the presence of criticisms does not automatically mean I think the map is bad.




Minecraft 1.9. Some love it. Some pretend they don’t. Besides fixing Minecraft’s combat, it also added several new features, one of which being Super-Mario-64-esque gliding through use of a new item called “elytra.” Unsurprisingly, map devs immediately atttempted to make use of this feature, though it was mostly small obstacle courses. A few maps, however, attempt to push the elytra mechanics for all their value. Let’s discuss one such map now. Let’s discuss “Terra Swoop Force.”


Having downloaded the map, we’re immediately asked to do a few things, the first of which being opening your world to LAN. Now, I’m sure there’s a perfectly good technical explanation for this, but it generates certain… issues. More on that later. Also, the game doesn’t tell you this, but set your brightness to max. Trust me, it’ll save you many tears down the road.


Rather than swan diving straight into peregrining, the game throws you into a laboratory to mess about and learn about the story. The plot itself ultimately amounts to “we lost a thing, grab a wing suit and get it back,” but the laboratory itself is pretty nice. There’s more easter eggs than there are stars in the sky, and the environment itself is quite lovely, especially with the custom models and sounds. Honestly, this was probably my favorite section of the map.


After we’ve had our fill of world building, we’re sent off to die. The map, unsurprisingly, makes almost exclusive use of the elytra. Unless your in a between-level checkpoint, landing on anything causes boom-boom to happen, killing you instantly. However, this seems dependent on the server or LAN, so if you quit playing then come back, even if you remember to re-open LAN immediately, it might not work. Messing about in the checkpoint for a while seems to fix this, but that elongates startup time and discourages ragequitting, which is never a positive.


As for the levels, they’re beautiful to look at… the first few times. This map is a very difficult map. I don’t mind difficult when it’s combined with short levels or frequent checkpoints like in the flash game “Tower of Heaven,” but when difficult is combined with long, it means “seeing and doing the same things over and over.” Nowhere else in the map is this more prevalent than in the third level, where turns get ridiculously narrow. Hope you like slime blocks and netherrack, because you’ll be seeing it far too often.


If you’re looking for fast flying and great scenery, then play the first two levels of this map. After that, stop. The map has really good ideas, but it needs some serious work. That said, I’d be lying if I told you all I didn’t find enjoyment from this map. I’d be more than willing to play a similar map with the issues corrected.