Actual - GrandmasterJ

 

    Actual is an early Sven map where players take on the role of airplane crash survivors. They must penetrate a strange laboratory in order to escape the wreckage.

SCMapDB page

Author: The_6th_Monkey

Date of final release: 2003

Maps in package: 2

Map review of Actual

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | January 23, 2022 | 6530 characters

    This is a map that I had high hopes for. The screenshots for it look pretty good and I thought the story would lead us somewhere interesting. It had its ups and downs nut ultimately I think the map kind of flopped.

    Players start out in an airplane. The proportions are horrible, chairs are massive and everything seems really big. Maybe this is how first class VIPs fly, but in my experience this plane was like three times too big. Then the plane begins to crash, there is a pretty cool bit where a hole opens up in the plane and we get to see simple scenery rush by. I thought it looked great. When the plane finished crashing I assumed this massive hole was how players would leave the plane. Nope, the hole becomes an impenetrable black void, players are supposed to navigate through a hole in the center of the plane. The plane fills with water at this point so you have to swim underwater to see the hole, and I didn't realize I could swim through it. A massive chair blocks the way and it wasn't until my teammate came back and showed me how to get through that I managed to actually get out.

    There are two maps in this series, this map ends after getting out of the plane and going through some tunnels. The map does not automatically change to actual2, so after ending up in bm_sts and a moment of confusion I had to manually switch to actual2. I don't mind the first map being an introductory cutscene, I thought the plane crash sequence was well done. I do mind the rest of the map being a confusing swim through water filled tunnels only for the map to end seemingly at random.

    The second map started and I immediately noticed a problem. The map looked fullbright and my teammate was solid black. This did not end up being exactly the case, As my teammate moved around on my view the darkness went away and came back, it fluctuated. Eventually we left the tunnels and halfway through traversing a cliffs section the map looked better. I don't know what went wrong in the first part of actual2 but things looked weird and wrong.

    The cliffs section was highly reminiscent of the Half-Life level, the one with the big tube. It felt like the author was doing something similar to that, except with less well done platforming. Alien controllers spawned all around here and we had to fight them on the cliffs. We died a few times and had to go through the awful lighting section again. At the end of the cliffs is a big tunnel.

    The map picks up here. At some point the spawn will change to be right at the end of the cliffs, past the weird lighting bug or whatever it is and past the worst of the cliffside platforming. This is the spawn for the rest of the map and it's not a bad spawn point all things considered.

    Players go down the tunnel and fight plenty of pit drones. Players then jump down another pipe through a grate and into a flooded room. There is no obvious exit, the way out is yet another pipe at the bottom of the room. on the other side of this pipe is a much bigger flooded room filled with ichthyosaurs. There is a ladder here that leads to a catwalk to the next area. Halfway through the catwalk a section of floor breaks, sending an unfortunate player back into the water and spawning more ichthyosaurs. Thus begins this map's ichthyosaur infestation. From here on out this room will have ichthyosaurs spawning in periodically. I don't know if they spawn infinitely, but my teammate spent a lot of time murdering them safely from above and they kept coming. Later in the level we hit some trigger that made an ichthyosaur spawn in the first flooded room, which was a massive pain in the ass. There are so many ichthyosaurs in this map that I had to copy the word 'ichthyosaur' for this review becuase I am not spelling it out every time. Ichthyosaur.

    The next room has breakable crates, as soon as you break them shock troopers and pit drones rush in. I think these enemies are here just in case players run away back over the catwalk. Both pit drones and shock troopers are very good at hitting retreating players. Every death has us swimming through ichthyosaur infested waters just to get back to this point.

    After killing all the enemies players walk past a broken HEV charger, taunting us with slightly longer lives and less swimming through water filled with ichthyosaurs. Here players walk past a room overlooking the first flooded room, past that is a room with a switch that once flipped will spawn enemies here, above the first flooded room. We died and had to come back through, we dropped into the first flooded room and instantly got killed by shock troopers. The shock troopers also fell into the water, so we couldn't see them and when we did see them we were udnerwater and none of our weapons worked. I had to just keep jumping in with the pipe wrench, the only melee weapon I had, and start whacking them. We had no pistol, so the best option here was to melee them underwater. My teammate commented "it feels like we're losing ground, and this isn't even an attack defend style map". I agree, forward progress felt like it was taken away with each new round of bullshit.

    After killing all the newly spawned enemies and the ichthyosaurs which stopped spawning in at some point we swam out a tunnel in the second flooded room, past a big slowly spinning blade thing, and through a sudden and unexpected map transition.

    I don't know if I had fun on this map. The first map was kind of cool in the beginning and then sucked when it came to actual gameplay. The second map had visual issues and not great platforming in the beginning, and then hit us with tons of enemies spawning in previously cleared areas. The spawn point changing to be slightly closer to the action was a huge help though and the 'throw yourself at the enemies suicidally until they are gone' absolutely works here.

Pros:

• Really fun opening plane sequence
• updated spawn really helped move the action along

Cons:

• unclear paths of progression, escaping the plane was needlessly difficult
• There were so many ichthyosaurs
• The map looked real bad in some areas, the plane was disproportional and there are lighting issues
• the way the enemies spawned in felt like we lost ground, not great feeling of accomplishment
• both maps end suddenly in the middle of tunnels

Score: 5.5 / 10