Activist - GrandmasterJ

 

    In this map players take on the role of activists and attempt to free animals from being experimented on. One of the objectives states "DON'T release a deadly plague" but you can ignore that since it's required to complete the map.

SCMapDB page

Author: Frel

Date of final release: 2008

Maps in package: 3

Map review of Activist

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | January 21, 2022 | 4995 characters

    Activist is a map that has two objectives. One of the objectives is to NOT release a deadly plague. From the very beginning I suspected that we had to unleash a biohazardous threat as a matter of course to complete the map.

    The map starts players off in a well stocked armory with shotgun, uzi, and mp5 plus bullets and shells. Right from the get go it has plenty of ammo to start players off with and there are resupply points periodically throughout the map. Players are never given more weapons, but HEV and ammo are given generously. At least the amount is generous for two players, I would say any more than three and people will have to compete for resources. But for a Sven map there is a lot.

    The first enemies encountered are Barneys and an Otis or two. Then suddenly it will upgrade to SWAT (HECU) and finally mutated animals (aliens) and security turrets once the player breaches biohazard. The combat starts off decently and ramps up nicely until players are being swamped with mutated animals. Enemy health isn't too high and the combat feels satisfying.

    The architecture is somewhat brutalist, heavy on grays and with little decoration. But it comes together to sell a sense of corporate sanitation, a sense of evil minimalism. This map is about 13 years old at the time of writing this and some of the brushwork does look rough, like the gurneys, but a lot of it works well and still looks good today. There were keyboards without computer monitors in some areas, like the lobby front desk. I don't get what that is supposed to be. Also, some of the buttons were animated to have their lights flash on and off. These buttons look broken but they did something in every case and were not broken. One example of this is in a section with a pit full of water and sharks. At the bottom was a vent that was opened by pressing a sparking and flashing button. Sparks do not usually denote that the object is functioning normally.

    We never got lost, the map design is fairly straightforward. There is backtracking but it is not much. I will say that there were never any shortcuts to spawn and spawn only updated once later in the map series. Death involved long walks back to the action. There were also a lot of elevators in this map set, so travelling back to the action was slowed down a lot more. Nothing exacerbates a walk of shame back to where you want to be more than waiting for an elevator.

    The longest time we spent trying to figure out what to do next was when we first encountered the biohazard area. The map objective is to NOT unleash terrible things, so at first we tried to find a way around a fan by not going through biohazard. Eventually we gave in and just went for it, which turned out to be the right thing to do. I don't know if this is a complaint or not, on the one hand its kind of funny, on the other hand if somebody takes it seriously (me) then it might incentivize them to waste time. The end of the map has objective recaps and a 'MIND EXPANSION' percentage. I'm positive these things don't change and we experienced the whole map. But if taken seriously all this can be very confusing to players.

    Also the doors sucked. The doors have a lip all the way around the door and there are some that slide upwards into the ceiling. If you stand to close to the door you will actually stand on the lip and when the door tris to open your head will hit the ceiling and the door will close. Same thing for the doors that opened sideways. I much prefer the doors that use buttons. Combined with the many elevators in the map and a tendency for myself to get stuck in elevators I had a lot of anxiety around any piece of this map that moved.

    Overall I liked Activist. There were some parts that weren't great, mostly the parts fighting sharks because they were in the water and I couldn't see them. With the exception of certain buttons and the blatant lie in the objectives progression was smooth. The combat was solid and players had good supply. The spawn points could have updated more frequently, there were a few spots where updating spawn points would fit in so perfectly, when we first encountered one such room both my teammate and I were convinced we had updated the spawn area, but one death later and we were still coming in at the start of the map. It's a good map with a few kinks still in need of working out.

Pros:

• Nice amount of supplies for the players
• combat slowly increased in difficulty from light resistance to crazy swarms, fun all the way through
• simple yet effective map aesthetic

Cons:

• Spawn only updated once despite good spots to do so throughout the map set.
• the buttons needed for progression looked broken
• the map had a lot of elevators that slow players way down
• badly designed doors

Score: 8 / 10