Swiss Cheese Halloween - Dunkelschwamm

  

    Swiss Cheese Halloween is a conversion of an ancient Half-Life mod of the same name. It was made back in the whimsical time of 2002 by an author who goes by Swiss Cheese, hence the map name.

SCMapDB page

Original mod author: Swiss Cheese

Conversion author: Garompa

Date of original mod release: 2002

Date of final Sven map release: 2020

Maps in package: 12

Map review of Swiss Cheese Halloween

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | November 27, 2021 | 6988 characters

    A classic Halloween mod that's great for nostalgia and festivity, but frequently trips over itself.

    Some information: Swiss Cheese Halloween is an old Halloween-themed Half-Life singleplayer mod. It was one of the first Half-Life mods I ever played, years ago. I was excited to play through it with a buddy in Sven, so I got this port. This review is following our finishing of the mod together.

    The mod as a whole offers many maps; some are quite large in scale, some quite intricate, and some quite simple. I feel their brushwork is often simple but evocative of the theme, atmosphere, and subject. There are many festive textures added to the maps to properly convey a Halloween feel that is cohesive throughout most of the mod. The maps were made with singleplayer in mind, with only a few areas where the co-op adds much to the progression of levels. Some levels create fairly compelling environments, such as a witch's cottage where satanic rituals are being performed, or a suburban block full of trick-or-treaters celebrating Halloween, or a large castle full of winding battlements. There's a couple mazes, which are almost always a grating experience in first person shooters. A fair number of Swiss Cheese Halloween's maps, though, compose of large, open paths between tree-textured walls in outdoor environments while the players use whatever weapon they have handy to unload on the frustratingly spongey monsters.

    Speaking of monsters, there's an incredible variety of them throughout the mod. Everything from ghosts to werewolves to scarecrows to witches to vampires to aliens to demons and even more will be there for the players to battle. Their art is always fun and captures the nostalgic, kitschy, cornier side of Halloween celebration that comes with childhood enjoyment of the monster costumes and such. Interestingly, early on many of the enemies the player faces (especially the pumpkin-themed ones and the flying ghosts) are extremely spongey and shrug off most of the damage the player can throw at them. Some enemies even seem to be entirely bulletproof, which means players' only means of defending themselves is to rely on not-oft-restocked explosives. Curiously, however, over the course of the mod the enemies and the player's arsenal seem to both thin down until the player is simply beating weak melee enemies to death with a crowbar- quite a strange place for the mod to end, considering that it begins with Gonarchs, Alien Grunts, and Alien Controllers.

    The progression of the player's weapons in general was a very oddly paced and unsatisfying aspect of the mapset. To begin the mod with a massive arsenal, only to lose it early on, and never really truly recover much of it, and constantly bounce between capabilities throughout, is sort of frustrating in its own right. It breaks up momentum and forces the player to constantly reorient to disappointment. And, while I'm discussing weapons coming and going, I'd also like to comment that I don't see a good reason why the medkit is only available in some of the middle maps and not the maps before or after. I suppose I'm a bit of a medkit evangelist, who sees its inclusion as only a good thing which promotes teamwork and sticking together, but I do feel its inclusion in some of the earlier and later levels would have been an improvement.

    Another welcome improvement would be checkpoints or updating respawn positions in some of the longer maps. There's many maps which require walking down large, open, mostly featureless corridors or paths for quite a trek. Walking back to the action after a death can take a few minutes in some cases, which is a tad unreasonable. The most egregious example of this is in the final challenge: a platforming obstacle course through Hell. The player must complete multiple harrowingly close jumps over lava and engage in melee combat with demons along the way. After many minutes of just running and jumping and hoping you don't slip and fall into the lava and start over, after taking some necessary fall damage, you're able to limp your way to the final boss who you must melee despite that he can instantly gib you. And then you have to do it ALL over again. Nah, that's nonsense. Getting back to him by jumping over a great deal of platforms which you've already completed before isn't fun or challenging, it's tedious and stressful.

    I think the mod shines the most when it creates an environment and lives in it a little. The suburban block full of trick-or-treaters, at the very beginning of the mod, is a very charming and fully realized residential block. You can enter houses, open garages, see what's on their TV, raid their attics, take candy from their front door… and best of all, you can break into the boarded up house at the end of the street and summon reapers to kill all of the neighborhood trick-or-treaters! Running around the houses with a friend is especially fun, and it sets a great tone that the mod only occasionally lives up to later on.

    The mod also contains some other charming set pieces, such as a UFO creating crop circles in a corn field full of animated scarecrows, a truly large castle map with a stained-glass keep in the center, or a witch's cauldron which magically stirs itself. There is a map near the end of the mod where the players ride a boat down the River Styx, which is charming at first, but quickly overstays its welcome.

    If you're looking for a varied mapset to playthrough on Halloween, I would recommend Swiss Cheese Halloween. I would do so with many caveats, though, and I likely wouldn't play this again during another time of the year. It's very fun, very memorable, and you can certainly do worse.

Pros:

• This delivers in being a mostly faithful port of the Swiss Cheese Halloween mod.
• Sets a great autumnal mood, especially for those in a Halloweeny spirit.
• A good variety of level themes and enemies
• Mapwork is simple but effective in evoking its subject.
• Lots of very fun and festive assets went into the mod. The enemy models in particular are just a delight.
• Some of the levels carry an impressive sense of scale.

Cons:

• Many of the original maps haven't aged well in brushwork, pacing, or balance. None of these are improved much in the port.
• Some of the longer maps could really use checkpoints. Some of the (frankly inevitable) deaths will result in a lot of frustrating backtracking.
• Oftentimes the player feels incredibly ill equipped for the extremely overpowered and difficult-to-damage enemies throughout.
• There are a lot of sprawling, empty bits of the mod without much action.
• The enemies in general, especially in the first half of the mod, feel extremely spongey.
• As the mod continues it begins to feel as though it has diminishing returns.

Score: 4.8 / 10