modjam_adaya is impressive work. Usually, with Quake mods, the question with new and modified weapons is whether they really add anything. For the modified SSH and SNG, I am not really convinced that they do. But I really enjoyed the Hourglass of Kronos, a new powerup that slows enemies down.

modjam_bloodshot is merely three very silly weapons, but I had a ton of fun with them. The baby shambler in particular is ... very weird. I played through The Ogre Citadel (e2m2) which turns out to be good choice for this mod as it gives you the grenade launcher (which is replaced by the spawnmaster 2000) fairly early.

I enjoyed the Ironguard map that came with mod_ish, but without really using the new weapon. There was one place in the map that seemed unrealistically hard — going up in an elevator to where three ghost fields attack at once and you have very underpowered weapons. Once I had god-moded past that bit, I enjoyed the difficulty of the rest.

Lots of weapons and powerups in here with a good feel to them. I know it's a barrier that Quake doesn't support a nice "mutators"-like framework but I do hope more of this stuff will get used in future releases by various folks. (The jump-boots have already proliferated a bit!)

A couple of things stood out to me as someone who particularly enjoys exploring/traversal:

The jump-boots of course. Real nice feeling of "breaking the rules" that you become accustomed to after years of Quaking. Actually the demo map that came along with this powerup was very nice in itself... an inviting and mysterious area that you get to poke around in before getting the boots that really open it up. Some terrific audio in there too.

The "teleport gun" was also exciting as a rule-breaker. Thinking about new considerations like keeping a monster alive while you kill its buddies so that you can telefrag it at the end of the fight to reach some vantage point. I imagine it would be challenging to create a full map that makes good use of this potential without letting the player get completely stuck or completely miss out on important things, but fingers crossed that someone takes a shot at it.

I love jump-boots, so modjam_jcr was a joy for me. The demo map was fun to explore. Anyone who's not yet played the original Jumpmod release and the subsequent Jump Jam, I highly highly recommend them!

Whereas mod_khre seems completely pointless to me. You get an additional "weapon", your right index finger, which you can use to make monsters jump backwards. That's it. It doesn't seem to hurt them. There is no demo map that takes advantage of this ability. shrug.

mod_redfield is basically about the powered-up double shotgun, which trades a longer reload time for much more damage — I think about double — and a satisfyingly chunky sound-effect. The included map, Aeons Beyond, is enjoyable enough, though not really ambitious enough to merit the epic title (55 kills on Hard).

Also, we need to talk about the dragon at the end. That combat is difficult, but not the fun kind of difficult. It's fine that you need to figure out a strategy to hit the dragon repeatedly without getting hit in return by one of its pretty-much-instakill attacks. What spoils this is the the combat moves are hindered by periodic earthquakes that throw you off course, and by terrain that is easy to get stuck on, especially in the frozen lake in the middle of the hall. That kind of impediment is purely frustrating, like playing at a low frame-rate or with the sound not working. I'd much rather a fair fight — even with a tougher enemy — that lets me actually use my skills.

modjam_scrama is missed opportunity. The new weapon it introduces is fascinating, but the tiny demo map really doesn't let it show its paces at all. I hope someone takes the telegfrag gun and runs with it, creating a map that really uses it.