Maelstrom is a bit of a mixed bag to me. The gameplay feels like it functions on hope and prayers for most of the level due to a lot of the transitions being pretty inconsistent, and some parts are noticeably worse than others (namely the ship at 0:15, and the cube at 0:22 as well as the following transition part). The aforementioned parts are just sort of bland and quite typical for what one would expect from mid-late 1.9 design levels. There's also a notable lack of any form of cohesion between any of the parts, and thus Maelstrom ends up feeling like GMD Condor just building the first thing that came to mind for the length of a 55 second level; not necessarily a bad thing, but I'd have liked to see a stronger overarching theme here.

However, what Maelstrom does have is some genuinely stunning effect and design work for the time it was made. The first ship makes really creative use of slanted lines to form the fake reflections that make the blocks look like glass, in addition to using yellow pads for the fiery effect, which are both just such cool uses of blocks outside of their intended purpose to create something really interesting visually. The blocks in the cube part at 0:34 use chained pulses that almost look like they were done in 2.0 due to their smoothness, which does a lot to elevate the relatively simple designs, structures and air deco of the part. The wave following this may very well be the most intricate and well-executed piece of "tech" deco from this time, GMD Condor's mastery over using 3-D objects and blending greyscale tones to create something this convincingly metallic is definitely the highlight of this level for me.

I can't really ignore this level's issues, but it has a lot going for it that makes it one of the most interesting and memorable levels from 1.9 to me. I'd recommend this for Feature.