Persia - GrandmasterJ

 

    Persia is a walkthrough map set in a Middle Eastern city with tons of snipers around. There are a lot of enemies on rooftops and hiding around corners making progression tough and tense.

SCMapDB page

Author: Skacky

Date of final release: 2008

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Persia

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | January 23, 2022 | 4567 characters

    Persia is a great looking map with solid combat and a lot of platforming. There are no new spawn points so all the good parts of the map are interrupted on death with the same platforming sequence again and again.

    The map is supposed to look middle eastern and it totally does. I feel like in some maps set in the middle east it always looks like a warzone but this map felt more like Prince of Persia. The buildings were large and imposing with those fun stylized windows like you see in Aladdin. There was a really nicely made tank in the beginning and lots of sandbags, but I never felt like I was in a warzone, more like a war came to a nice Persian city. I always appreciate when maps distance themselves from Black Mesa and I greatly enjoyed how this map looked and felt.

    The map is fairly straightforward, the objectives read 'steal the secret documents' but they get picked up very easily just in normal playing so it's never really a hunt. I never even saw a secret document although I do think I had my back turned to a table and when I backed up into it I might have picked it up. A message will pop up every time you take a document. The map is very straightforward, I never got lost and the path of progression was clear. There was even a cutscene explaining one area where the ceiling was a ladder, so players didn't get confused about how to progress.

    That being said, the constant trek back from death was the worst part of the map. Right at the beginning of the map is a platforming sequence. It's not particularly hard but the platforms are very narrow ropes. The map is full of snipers so it's easy to get knocked off a platform, here are in other areas of the map, and fall to your death. Not to mention snipers on their own are pretty deadly. Players will die a lot and they can die easily on the return trip to the action. Every time I died I groaned out loud and resigned myself to not having fun for the next couple minutes while I caught up, maybe even twice as long if I miss a jump or two on the way.

    A shortcut does open up partway through the map. But it comes after the long platforming section and before players get the sniper rifle. This means that players will walk past the shortcut just to pick up the sniper and then walk back. It barely cuts out any time at all and doesn't alleviate the main problem, the platforming section.

    Players find weapons throughout the map, they start off with mp5 and revolver, then upgrade to shotguns and uzis, and then sniper rifle and grenades. There is barely any ammo in the map. Here or there will be some ammo but with two players one would get it and the other person would not. I feel like the ammo did spawn a little faster than the default, still too slow for me to wait around for it. The sniper in particular ran out of ammo very fast and there was no sniper rifle ammo anywhere except next to the rifle itself.

    Enemies are all equipped with devastating long range weapons, sniper rifles, miniguns, and M16 with underbarrel grenades. They were clumped up and always positioned in such a way that the players will be in their sights without the players seeing them. There were lots of them on top of roofs, even shooting through latticework roofs that hid them extremely well. The map was very sniper and revolver heavy for my teammate and I, enemies were always pretty far away and we were usually in a vulnerable position. This makes the combat pretty hard.

    At the end of the map was a fun mech with dynamite and a plunger hooked up to it. I'm glad the terrorists left it like that for us, we pushed the plunger down, blew up the mech and ourselves, and the map was over.

    The parts of the map with things to do were really fun. The platforming section at the start is not fun, and constantly redoing it after each death was nightmarish slog. The shortcut was weak and didn't help the overall problem. But at least at the end I get to blow up something cool.

Pros:

• The map looks good
• I did really enjoy the sniping action
• Clear objectives, helpful cutscenes, never got lost

Cons:

• Lack of spawn point update really brings down the fun
• The platforming section in the beginning gets old fast after going through it again every respawn
• the one shortcut in the map does not skip the platforming but does skip an important weapon
• ammo is scarce

Score: 7 / 10