Swiss Cheese Halloween - GrandmasterJ

 

    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 GrandmasterJ | November 11, 2021 | 3718 characters

    Swiss Cheese Halloween is a really fun and charming map series that unfortunately has not held up well over the years. I really enjoyed the custom models and fun sound effects but level design and bugs made me want to quit the game early and play something else.

    The game starts off strong but the level end is a impressive portal that sucks up the players. Only it didn't work right when I did it and my teammate and I ended up pressed against the wall with no way to actually move into the portal. We had to kill ourselves. The levels after that were a series of really long hallways with no spawn points or shortcuts meaning when we died we had to traverse pretty much the entire level to get back to where we were. This wasn't that big a deal until the level that was just a long hallway with three Pumpkin Kings at the end. Those Pumpkin Kings could only be damaged by explosives and there was no ammo anywhere on the map. So we would run the ENTIRE length of the level, use up all our ammo, and then we would have to die to resupply. My teammate wanted to skip the level.

    The most egregious level design is the second to last level, schall_11 I think it was. There is a very long platforming sequence with death if you miss a platform. At the end of this sequence is a tunnel down that the player slowly floats down to the bottom, but you still take a ton of fall damage. I had given up at this point and was waiting for my teammate to beat the level, but he was killed by the fall damage in that hole. So he had to do the entire sequence again. We didn't even beat the final boss, he managed to make it to the boss with 24 health and was then killed instantly by the boss's first attack. We skipped to the next level and enjoyed our cutscene with an uncanny valley waifu at the beach.

    Despite how bad the maps are, I still kinda like it. The game has so much charm. At first I was put off by how blocky everything was, beds are two rectangles stacked, every house is nearly identical and empty, stairs are slopes with stair textures on it. But I think it all comes together really nicely in the end. I especially like the forest and tree textures used. There is this arch in the first level made out of orange trees and although simple and a bit blocky it looks great. Plus the custom models and sound effects were really nice. There is this devil model that is sometimes used as the player model and shows up at the second to last level that is amazing. The ghost replacement for the alien controller was also really good. There are also a few cutscenes, I'm a sucker for Sven cutscenes.

    I noticed in some of the notes on this map that it's been updated with spawn points in some areas. I noticed this when I played it as well. The part with the long boring boat ride would have been the end of the playthrough had it not been for that respawn point. I think this map series is in more need of love and updating. Actually it would probably be best to remake the whole thing. Despite all the problems I did have fun. At the end of the day isn't fun the only thing that really matters?

Pros:

• Overall Charming style
• great custom models
• First map is really fun to hang out in
• Cutscenes complete with blue haired love interest

Cons:

• Bugs, first map portal didn't work, others I can't remember
• most levels are linear and really long and when you die you have to start at the beginning
• nothing about the fight with the three Pumpkin Kings was fun
• Last level is straight garbage

Score: 5 / 10