Halloween Hospital - Dunkelschwamm

 

    Are you ready for Halloween in a Hospital? This map uses the typical scary map formula, respawning zombies, a maze, and players must go on a scavenger hunt to figure out how to progress.

SCMapDB page

Author: GreenTea MiaoMiaoLe

Date of final release: 2017

Maps in package: 1

Map review of High Rise

(originally posted on SCMapDB) 

by dunkelschwamm | November 28, 2021 | 4417 characters

    Halloween Hospital is a map that is like going to a really neat haunted house but you have to wade through thigh-high tar everywhere you go. Throughout there is some really fun brushwork and textures working together with minimal lighting to create a very spooky environment with variety, memorable locations, and thick atmosphere. The enemies, however, are where things unfortunately fall apart a bit.

    First, a look at the progression of the map: The map begins with a goal of finding blue, lit squares and shooting them throughout the map. Doing so unlocks a later area. Now, when I was playing with a friend, we did find an extra blue square after we had completed the task, so I am left wondering if there was an allowance for one to be missed for better playability or if that was a mistake in the map. Either way, it's welcome. After finding blue squares you then find green cubes in new locations which open up throughout the entire map. After finding the green cubes the map devolves a bit into a "find the next object of interest" scavenger hunt before some nonsensical location shifting takes us to a final boss. The concept, most of the way through, is very fun and interesting.

    The place that this map falls apart, as many Halloween or Horror themed maps do, is where there's constantly respawning Afraid of Monsters zombies and other derivatives throughout the map congesting the whole map and making the scavenger hunt a drawn-out, painful experience most of the time. When you first find all of the squares it unlocks a nicer area with bright lighting and no respawning zombies and my teammate and I GROANED when we realized we'd have to go back into the respawning zombie rooms. To make matters even worse, about halfway through the map you unlock a new spawn area which soon after becomes the spawn area for an Afraid of Monsters zombie, which occasionally gibbed me on spawn.

    Another special shoutout to a monster that's an interesting idea that I think was really only annoying to play: a ghost haunts one of the floors of the map which will instagib the player. They fly along a rail track and sometimes go through walls. I could never wrap my head around their route and would get cornered against a wall they were about to pass through. I think the idea ultimately detracted more than it added.

    That said, when the map shines it shines rather bright. There's a plethora of ideas, a lot of fun environmental content, a decent progression of events, some fun gimmicks (there are TVs that act as portals that are really fun- even if at first they seem like a dead end), and some unexpected turns here and there. Also, after a map full of annoying zombies cheesily spawning in and corning the player, it's nice to fight a boss zombie whom the players can easily cheese by luring off the ledge, climbing up onto the ledge, and firing down upon him.

    Overall, I think this map is full of really good ideas that I think would shine brighter if the respawning ambient zombies ripped from other horror mods were turned down significantly. If you want respawning zombies, I guess I get that, but there were far too many and they just ended up creating walls of bodies who took time to knock down.

    If you have a Halloween or Horror themed server, I would say this map would work well in your rotation. It has enough interesting ideas, and with a high number of players the respawning zombies might be stomachable.

Pros:

• Really, really nice atmosphere
• Fun portal gimmicks
• I liked that you can cheese the boss
• Interesting variety of scenery given the concept.

Cons:

• Really can't stress how annoying the respawning zombies get
• The scavenger hunt aspect is less fun when you have to backtrack through the same locations for a second scavenger hunt.
• I know it's a meme to use Afraid of Monsters zombies, but it's always distracting and maps always tend to use them in a way that makes them annoying to fight rather than unsettling.
• I didn't like that you couldn't pick up the better weapons multiple times. Oftentimes death felt like either the inevitable result of erosion or the result of a sudden surprise, so losing weapons permanently sucks.
• Annoying ghost.

Score: 5.9 / 10