It Has Leaks - GrandmasterJ

 

    Released officially in the Sven Co-op 4 release, this map claims to have leaks. The name is a non-sequitur, as the main point of the map is to retrieve the scroll of wisdom.

SCMapDB page

Author: Skacky

Date of final release: 2011

Maps in package: 1

Map review of It Has Leaks

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | January 16, 2022 | 4471 characters

    I played It Has Leaks years ago back when it was a map included in SC4. I don't remember much of it or how I felt about it then. But now that I've played it again it is solidly all right.

    Before I even get into the map itself I want to talk about the textures. The whole map takes place in a library and there are some interesting textures used for the library shelves. There are jars of weird liquids, scrolls, and of course books. The lighting is very moody and really sells the fantasy medieval library vibe the map has. The architecture is somewhat alien and reminiscent of Quake in some places, like the catwalks above hallways where the player can accidentally drop down. The level is somewhat brownish and drab, even though there are some items on shelves that are colorful, they are muted.

    The level design can very easily become maze-like but there is a portal right in front of spawn that opens up early in the map and puts the player at a junction used throughout the map. This teleporter will actually update to face the player in the next direction they have to go. This is immensely helpful and completely negates the level architecture's tendency to be confusing.

    There are buttons that look like red crosses that must be shot to activate. A few times in the level my teammate and I didn't know what to do and the answer was those cross buttons. There is one room with a interesting and weird spike hanging from the ceiling flanked by those buttons. We had to shoot both buttons a lot in order to progress. It was really cool seeing the spike activate and zap a hole in the floor, but we had to keep at it for a while and we did stop halfway through to see if maybe there was another means of progression.

    Fairly early in the map we got to a locked door and to our right was a door with a gap on top. I climbed over my teammates head and got over, but later we learned that with persistence you can climb over the door alone. But this requires the climbing mechanic and even when we knew what to do it was very difficult to accomplish. Then in the next room we had to shoot a button, my teammate guessed that one, I would never have figured it out.

    There were two areas in the map where players had to climb on top of each other in order to make difficult jumps. Neither were obvious that this was the case, so both of us died many times before looking for an alternate means of progression and then finally landing on the trick that got us through. The first instance is a room with a pillar in the middle with a button on it and a floating platform behind it leading to a doorway. The second time is an area where there are two doorways over a huge pit and a platform just to the side of each doorway with a button on the wall. I thought both players had to push the buttons at the same time, but nope, players need to stand on another player's head or else the jump is impossible.

    The combat was ok. The main enemies were pit drones that had a lot of health, alien controllers that spawned in areas that were sometimes hard to deal with, and the occasional voltigore miniboss. There were also fish in some water at some point that I think were leeches and the end boss was a baby garg. The combat was pretty difficult with some really tricky terrain, halfway through most of the map happens on suspended walkways with lots of places to fall down. There are even a couple lava pits that I walked backwards into.

    At the end there was a very cool area where the floor fragmented away to nothing and big spiked portal loomed in front of me. I jumped in and the map was over. It has its ups and it definitely had its downs, but overall it was a very fun and interesting map.

Pros:

• The level design nails the fantasy medieval library vibe, fun shelf textures
• the portal near spawn is immensely helpful and even updates to point players in the right direction
• the combat was hard, but felt good

Cons:

• the level design can lend itself to being confusing
• progression was unclear, many times we looked for alternate paths after investigating the correct path
• I was not a fan of the jumping puzzles, nor the one door we had to climb in the beginning
• the main difficulty in the combat was not falling off the platforms

Score: 6 / 10