Hellmouth - Dunkelschwamm

  

    Hellmouth is a map that takes place in Hell! Players must defend a statue at the mouth of Hell before venturing in and killing a bunch of monsters.

SCMapDB page

Author: Ike Brovlofski

Date of final release: 2005

Maps in package: 2

Map review of Hellmouth

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | January 22, 2022 | 4392 characters

    Hellmouth is a 2-part map series. The players take on the role of angels sent to battle back the forces of Hell from a great big portal. The portal is a fun effect: multiple transparent brushes in front of one another, making an optical illusion.

    The first map is a defense/horde mode. Apparently the monsters are supposed to target the Chumtoad statue in the middle of the defense area, but they don't (anymore?). In my estimation, this is for the best, as I do not want to spend this map defending against the updated and boosted Sven Co-op 5 enemies while they can attack a helpless target and trigger a lose condition. The players face wave after wave of interesting enemy formations. There are swarms of zombies, squads of vortigaunts, gonome rushes, pitdrone waves- and all of them with thematic demonic models to match the part. There's an additional nice touch wherein the players spawn with a heavenly glow from above. Overall this is a decent setup, but it's somewhat strained by the arena just being a big, flat circle with very little cover when vortigaunts roll around.

    The player starts this portion with only a crowbar, then work their way up to a 357, an MP5, and eventually a minigun. By the time the players can reliably get their hands on a minigun, the map's practically over. Strangely enough, it sort of just ends after a fairly milquetoast wave. There's a wave shortly beforehand where the players have to battle a gonarch and it's treated less as a landmark wave than some smattering of They Hunger zorks.

    The second map is more of a walkthrough map. Players fight those monsters again, make their way into a cave where they fight way too many alien controllers which fast-fire their attacks, tentacles, and headcrabs. Around this point the player is learning about crystals- to win this section of the map, players must activate crystals to unlock further portions. This isn't signposted well, and there's no feedback to using crystals, but to be fair there's a hint to USE crystals in the map's description. Once players open a giant door near spawn there's quite a bit of zombie, vortigaunt, and gonome combat. After falling down a giant pit and fighting a baby garg, the map ends. This map has some very nice, very large cave brushwork which almost evokes Half-Life 2's displacement brushes. There's also some really nice aesthetics with satanic imagery and pillars of skulls.

    I think that this second map falls short, and I'm not sure how much of that has to do with modern Sven Co-op updates. Players spend a lot of time underequipped to deal with high HP gonomes which fully heal after eating dead players and remodeled the alien controllers in a way which makes them fast-fire their projectiles, and they respawn an amount of times which seems indeterminate or even indefinite until we finally saw that they just stop respawning at a certain point. This map also knocks the player back down to just the crowbar and the 357, which keeps the map from ever feeling terribly dynamic. It's also worth mentioning that this map ends abruptly with a "To be continued" note, but give that as of this review it's been 17 years since this map was updated, I guess we just have to accept it as an abruptly ending map.

    That said, I have to appreciate a map with the balls to implement the tentacles. They're an incredibly unwieldy monster to work with, and this map uses them very well. It's a rare treat to see.

    Hellmouth has a lot of action of varying degrees of wonk. What it keeps up consistently is a very fun atmosphere, fast-paced action, and great enemies to stare at.

    If you're looking for something to play with a friend or add to your action server list, giver Hellmouth a try!

Pros:

• Great enemy models
• Well executed wave defense
• Really nice brushwork
• I can't believe they actually used the tentacles
• Great artistic direction in the second map
• Glitched enemy defense is better than original enemy defense

Cons:

• Some updated enemies deeply unbalance gameplay as it had been.
• Second map is very clearly unfinished
• Second map has poor conveyance
• Claustrophobic weapon selection
• Respawning broken alien controllers - bad

Score: 7 / 10