Sven Co-op Map Reviews

       This map is a series of rooms with two doors to choose. One path leads to death and the other leads to the next room. There are 5 rooms. SCMapDB Page Original mod authors: The Hunter Conversion authors: CubicVirtuoso Date of original mod release: 2005 Date of final Sven Map release: 2008 Maps in package: 1 Map review of 5 Ways to Die (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | December 4, 2021 | 1514 characters      I'm not sure I understood the intent of this level. I think it was like, you had a coin-flip chance each room to die depending on your choice. I just happened to choose right each time and survived to the end- left, left, right, left- then you throw a grenade at a barney surrounded by trip mines, jump behind a blast shield, and the level is over. That was the extent of my experience. I believe my friend who made different choices than the ones I made as I went forward was killed by level geometry or something.      Was very short, very fast. I don't hav

      This map is a series of rooms with two doors to choose. One path leads to death and the other leads to the next room. There are 5 rooms. SCMapDB Page Original mod authors: The Hunter Conversion authors: CubicVirtuoso Date of original mod release: 2005 Date of final Sven Map release: 2008 Maps in package: 1 Map review of 5 Ways to Die (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | December 4, 2021 | 1171 characters      The idea behind this map is not very good. You have a series of five binary choices (left or right) and choosing wrong kills you. The map description is accurate, it's pure luck, unless you go left, left, right, left, right, then you've cheated to the end. The puzzle at the end is throwing a grenade at Barney.      Overall, I didn't like it. Living or dying is arbitrary and the final puzzle is finding a way to detonate explosives, something Half-life and Sven players should know how to do at this point. The map ends after that and I ended up in the ca

       SV Mountain is a map about platforming up to different rooms in a big boxy mountain. The remake is a walkthrough map rooms connected by corridors. SCMapDB page Author: FoxPlays Date of final release: 2019 Maps in package: 1 Map review of SV Mountain Remake (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | March 6, 2022 | 3041 characters      Sv Mountain Remake is a "Remake" in the same sense that "Batman Begins" is a remake of the Adam West show. There are a few shades of the same concept, but it's utterly a different thing.      Sv Mountain Remake is an adventure walkthrough map that takes the player through strange, large rooms that I couldn't tell made sense in any real life fashion but were fun pastiches of the types of shit Half-Life assets do best: A room full of toppled shelf racks where you have to crawl around a toxic spill; a lobby waiting area with portals which drop enemies in; alien rooms with strange, pulsating walls- the typical Half-Li

      SV Mountain is a map about platforming up to different rooms in a big boxy mountain. The remake is a walkthrough map rooms connected by corridors. SCMapDB page Author: FoxPlays Date of final release: 2019 Maps in package: 1 Map review of SV Mountain Remake (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | March 6, 2022 | 3355 characters      This map is supposedly a remake of another map, also called SV Mountain. I don't really get it, that map was all about platforming with some action, and this remake is a walkthrough map with no platforming. The original story was literally 'bla bla bla" so I don't see any connection storywise. There is a crystal at the end of both of them so that's one thing in common.. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for drawing inspiration and making a new thing, I'm glad this map exists but I don't see much of a connection between the original and the remake.      The map starts off and players only have a desert eagle and a

       Alien Defense is a simple arena with infinitely spawning aliens. Players start out in a fort with some friendly soldiers and the aliens continuously run in. SCMapDB page Author: Wildcat Date of final release: 2003 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Alien Defense (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | March 6, 2022 | 1591 characters      Alien Defense is a map wherein players team up with respawning grunts in a moderately sized fortress to hold back respawning shock troopers, alien controllers, and pit drones. There is a healthy selection of weapons so players can choose how they want to endlessly battle their foes.      The mapping is serviceable, boilerplate. It doesn't really evoke a real location as much as the impression of an understandable location: a fortress in some sort of desert valley at night. It's easy to understand that much.      Overall, there's very little to say about it. The map is fine, and the encounter seems balanced enough that we coul

      Alien Defense is a simple arena with infinitely spawning aliens. Players start out in a fort with some friendly soldiers and the aliens continuously run in. SCMapDB page Author: Wildcat Date of final release: 2003 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Alien Defense (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | March 6, 2022 | 2485 characters      Alien defense is really just an arena with infinitely respawning alien enemies. There are friendly human grunts here to help out, although they died a lot and did little more than be effective distractions.      The map layout is simple, players spawn next to some shelves that hold some weapons and ammo. Around a corner is a small courtyard in which aliens are coming through. There is a wall here with an arch where the aliens are coming through. Up a ladder onto the wall allows access to a room with plenty of HEV and explosives. From here the map is on easy mode, stay on the wall and rain down explosive death on these poor aliens. I gibbed

       Alien Battle is a simple arena map. Players start in some sort of fort and fight off infinite waves of alien slaves. The map is based off of Starship Troopers according to the map description but it's hard to tell from the map itself. SCMapDB page Author: Ttam Date of final release: 1999 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Alien Battle (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | March 5, 2022 | 1602 characters      Alien Battle is a tiny little infinite-wave vortigaunt fight in a tiny little fort map. The fort looks like something like a ruins, but it has cover in a lot of the right places. Atop desert dunes ahead of the base, vortigaunts spawn 3-4 at a time, On the front battlement of the fort there is a mounted gun which can instagib the vortigaunts and is perfectly lined up with how they spawn in. You can easily kill all of them immediately when they spawn using this gun.      There's not much else to this map. The brushwork is pretty spartan, and there's so li

      Alien Battle is a simple arena map. Players start in some sort of fort and fight off infinite waves of alien slaves. The map is based off of Starship Troopers according to the map description but it's hard to tell from the map itself. SCMapDB page Author: Ttam Date of final release: 1999 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Alien Battle (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | March 5, 2022 | 1382 characters      Alien Battle is a very simple arena map. Players spawn in a fun little fort and vortigaunts spawn in continuously and invade the fort. When I first spawned in vortigaunts ran up and started attacking me right away, so that was annoying. Players only have mp5s, no medkit, no crowbars. There was a mounted gun on the front of the fort, it gibbed the vortigaunts instantly and you can maneuver it into a position to kill most vortigaunts the moment they spawn in.      The map wasn't much really. There is ammo and HEV spread around so killing vortigaunts is never re

       There really isn't much of anything for players to do but watch baby gargs play football. They do play it, they play slow and stupid, but they are still actually playing the game, its amazing! SCMapDB page Author: Mad Jonesy Date of final release: 2003 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Garg Football (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | March 5, 2022 | 2006 characters      Garg Football is a map that asks not what a good Half-Life or Sven Co-op level could be, but what MORE could be done with the mechanics and tools provided by these devkits? The answer is obvious: gambling on big beefy aliens playing footie.      Two gargs bat around a "ball" with their tremendous feets and two goalies attempt to also kick the "ball" and their positioning via clever clipping makes their kicks look aimed and intentional. Whenever the ball passes through the goal post a scoreboard is updated to reflect the point.      If I recall correctly (and I probably don

      There really isn't much of anything for players to do but watch baby gargs play football. They do play it, they play slow and stupid, but they are still actually playing the game, its amazing! SCMapDB page Author: Mad Jonesy Date of final release: 2003 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Garg Football (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | March 5, 2022 | 2316 characters      Garg football is a fun and charming game of football, the soccer kind of football, between two two-garg teams. It's amazing how well it works. It's definitely not perfect, but the gargs do try to kick the ball and more often than not, it goes towards the goal. The gargs do have a tendency to kick the ball as soon as they run up to it, usually towards their own goal and in one instance a garg in my server did score a goal for the opposing team, but they also have an equal chance of running past the ball and coming at it from the correct direction. The fact that it worked at all amazes me. T

       As you may have guessed from the map name and the above picture, this is a map about fighting an Apache helicopter. The map consists of a hallway and a courtyard and will end with the apache's death SCMapDB page Author: Wildcat Date of final release: 2003 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Apache (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | March 5, 2022 | 2058 characters      Apache is a short map that was made for a different time- a time before Sven Co-op updated and made the enemies that were already present way harder, thereby fucking with the balance and design of every map which had committed the sin of using and trusting Sven's content continuity.      The map is running down a hallway, attempting to survive respawning robogrunts, and then shooting at an apache until something kills you or you die. I fell asleep playing it, and most of what I remember before losing consciousness was repeatedly running into walls and throwing grenades hoping to disrupt the robo

      As you may have guessed from the map name and the above picture, this is a map about fighting an Apache helicopter. The map consists of a hallway and a courtyard and will end with the apache's death SCMapDB page Author: Wildcat Date of final release: 2003 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Apache (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | March 5, 2022 | 2516 characters      Inspired by a particularly bad fight with an apache I thought I would play a map designed around the apache. There were a lot more robo grunts than I thought there would be.      The map design is simple, players spawn at the end of a hallway with two turns in it. There is a room immediately to the left which has a shotgun, ammo, health, and HEV. At the other end of the hallway is a room that opens up to a courtyard where the infamous apache lives. Robot grunts continuously spawn in this arena and rush into the hallway. They can and frequently do make it to spawn and give players a hard time. There ar

            Aggregate Pain is another conversion of a standalone Half-Life mod. It takes place in Black Mesa and players fight both soldiers and aliens. SCMapDB page Original mod authors: Michael Sisk Conversion authors: Garompa Date of original mod release: 1999 Date of final Sven Map release: 2017 Maps in package: 3 Map review of Aggregate Pain (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | March 5, 2022 | 1939 characters      Aggregate Pain means Total Pain.      That's what the mod's creator seems to indicate on the map description. I guess must have been updated for more recent versions of Sven, as it has modern Sven monsters despite being dated originally for 1999.      The map follows walk-through format for the most part, with the players moving from room to room clearing out enemies and occasionally dealing with other obstacles. I'm gonna be completely honest, no matter how hard I try I cannot remember most of these maps. I'll tell you what I do remember.   

           Aggregate Pain is another conversion of a standalone Half-Life mod. It takes place in Black Mesa and players fight both soldiers and aliens. SCMapDB page Original mod authors: Michael Sisk Conversion authors: Garompa Date of original mod release: 1999 Date of final Sven Map release: 2017 Maps in package: 3 Map review of Aggregate Pain (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | March 5, 2022 | 3200 characters      Aggregate Pain is a very short three map series. The map is set in Black Mesa like a lot of maps are, this map does almost nothing to stand out.      The first map players start in a truck. A human grunt stands right outside and will begin shooting so don't dawdle. One my first playthrough three more grunts came around the corner and I had a big fight right out of spawn. On my second playthrough the grunts stayed put. There is a hallway with a lot of enemies at one point with two heavy weapons grunts. After another hallway the map ends.      We played the

       Zombietown is a zombie survival map with a LOT of scripting done. Players can go to a shop and buy weapons, play one of three fun and unique minigames, or fight zombies in the town. SCMapDB page Author: Sence Date of final release: 2016 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Zombietown (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | February 27, 2022 | 5181 characters      Zombietown is an utterly charming zombie horde survival map which pits the players against nights full of zombies and days full of shopping and minigames. The crux of the map is in the points system: the Sven Co-op points, applied as Sven Co-op points normally are, are used in shopping for guns. If you die during normal zombie waves, you can also gamble points in a spooky booth, but if there's multiple people who died in the zombie wave you have to take turns using the spooky gambling booth. You use the points to shop for guns to kill the zombies to make more points to gamble the points to make more points to

      Zombietown is a zombie survival map with a LOT of scripting done. Players can go to a shop and buy weapons, play one of three fun and unique minigames, or fight zombies in the town. SCMapDB page Author: Sence Date of final release: 2016 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Zombietown (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | February 27, 2022 | 6448 characters      Zombie maps are a dime a dozen, I didn't have high hopes for this map. The first wave started and these bloody naked men started running at me and all I had was a wrench. I died and respawned in a waiting room. I was annoyed. But as the map went on and I played the amazing minigames I began to love it.      Players begin in a set up room, each person presses a sequence of three buttons that ultimately kills them and respawns them in the main arena. Once there the first wave begins.      The game is round based, there is a vote every round whether or not to go to the shop. If no, there is a chance for a minigame

       Alamo is a level taken from the Half-Life mod Heart of Darkness. Unlike other mod conversions to Sven this is just the one level taken out of context. It's set somewhere in Asia, not Texas. SCMapDB page Original mod authors: foolish_mortal Conversion authors: Trempler Date of original mod release: 2002 Date of final Sven Map release: 2016 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Alamo (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | February 27, 2022 | 3882 characters      So, the map is a Heart of Evil map I gather with a bunch of new shit added to it. Because of that, it takes the form of a Vietnam war style scenario but with alien attacks added.      First off, the brushwork is great. Heart of Evil was a pretty primo mod to begin with, but it's been too long so I can't quite remember any of this from the original mod. That said, still: the urban warfare is felt in collapsing buildings and intricate brushwork mixing heaps of debris with crumbling architecture. The texture

      Alamo is a level taken from the Half-Life mod Heart of Darkness. Unlike other mod conversions to Sven this is just the one level taken out of context. It's set somewhere in Asia, not Texas. SCMapDB page Original mod authors: foolish_mortal Conversion authors: Trempler Date of original mod release: 2002 Date of final Sven Map release: 2016 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Alamo (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | February 27, 2022 | 6472 characters      The point of Alamo is to assault what appears to be a ruined military base, but not the actual Alamo. The map is from the mod Heart of Evil so it must be meant evoke a feeling of being in Vietnam, the player spawn is in a multi-tier rice paddy so right off the bat it does give players an Asian vibe.      When the map starts there are some friendly NPCs. My teammate and I spent some time messing around before the map started and eventually enemies invaded spawn and started shooting at us. I imagine our allies ran st

       The author of this map,Robootto, is Finnish. Sticking the map name into Google translate spits out 'Muumin valley'. Google the terms, it's some interesting Finnish culture, too bad the map looks like a gravel pit. SCMapDB page Author: Robootto Date of final release: 2006 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Muumimaaliset (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | February 26, 2022 | 1663 characters      This map is a weird one. A very strange looking zombie with a tremendous amount of health but a seeming inability to deal damage stalks players in a small, circular, bizarre field with some skewed crosses in one corner and a massive tower silo in another corner. A strange blob lurks within. Spend entirely too long with all of your weapons killing these creatures. There is no catharsis. Spend the rest of the map timer thinking about what you've done.      That's what's in store when you play Muumimalliset. There's some mention of the Moomin Valley in

      The author of this map,Robootto, is Finnish. Sticking the map name into Google translate spits out 'Muumin valley'. Google the terms, it's some interesting Finnish culture, too bad the map looks like a gravel pit. SCMapDB page Author: Robootto Date of final release: 2006 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Muumimaaliset (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | February 26, 2022 | 1126 characters      This map is a terrible looking arena with a monstrous looking thing that runs at players. It doesn't attack or if it does, it does no damage. It does frequently block players into corners and traps them there. It has a lot of health and killing it takes forever, when you do kill it nothing happens. There is a lot of ammo at the spawn area and some weapons behind the tower. Inside the tower is a teeny tiny elevator past some platforms with more weapons and ammo, and a weird blob thing that I later learned was a monster. To get down from the tower players have to j

      This may surprise you, but this map is a glass box. I don't know about 'modern' but there is absolutely a glass box in this map. Breaking out of the box starts an unstoppable cycle of death. SCMapDB page Author: Robootto Date of final release: 2005 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Modern Glass Box (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | February 26, 2022 | 1974 characters      Robootto strikes again with a map which is finely tuned to distasteful design. Modern Glass Box is a downward vertical map wherein the players' objective is to destroy the ground beneath them, several times, via any means available to them. At first this is chainguns, but as they break through the layers of glass floors they come across explosives as well. The entire chamber is glass, the breakable floors are glass. If you couldn't see the layers beneath the player and know Robootto's shenanigans you might not know that you need to shoot through the glass floor because it h

    This may surprise you, but this map is a glass box. I don't know about 'modern' but there is absolutely a glass box in this map. Breaking out of the box starts an unstoppable cycle of death. SCMapDB page Author: Robootto Date of final release: 2005 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Modern Glass Box (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | February 26, 2022 | 1501 characters      Just as the map description says, players start off in a big glass box and have to break through it to get out. There are multiple levels of glass to break through with increasing health. There are miniguns here which help a lot but after we broke through the first level the miniguns were no longer able to be picked up. Without miniguns we had to resort to using explosives in close quarters to do any real damage. When we blew ourselves up we would respawn where the first level was, way above our current floor, we fell and took fall damage every time.      Eventually we broke through and j

      Players spawn in an arena with a big monster labelled "Alien Boss' stands facing a wall. The goal is to kill this boss. Players have some nice custom weapons and zombies begin to infinitely fall into the arena. SCMapDB page Author: Nexon Date of final release: 2017 Maps in package: 1 Map review of ZS Lastclue Zombie Scenario Map-2 (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | February 20, 2022 | 3820 characters      ZS Lastclue Zombie Scenario Map 2 is a conversion of a Counter-Strike Nexon map, I think? I know nothing about Counter-Strike Nexon, and I'm not going to pretend like I know anything I don't. As such, I'll review this map completely on its own terms.      The map begins with the players in an arena with a massive "Alien Boss" with his back turned. It reminds me of how some Doom maps begin with a monster with its back turned. Shortly after the map begins, the warehouse which houses your arena comes to life as mechanical gears are reve

      Players spawn in an arena with a big monster labelled "Alien Boss' stands facing a wall. The goal is to kill this boss. Players have some nice custom weapons and zombies begin to infinitely fall into the arena. SCMapDB page Author: Nexon Date of final release: 2017 Maps in package: 1 Map review of ZS Lastclue Zombie Scenario Map-2 (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | February 20, 2022 | 2589 characters      This map is a simple arena battle. Players are dumped into a pit with a large creature called an "alien boss" it has 600000 health. Zombies will rain down into the arena at set intervals, flooding the area with zombies.      There are some new weapons in here, the large axe that replaces the pipe wrench is my favorite. It is powerful enough to blow the zombies to pieces and swings much faster than the wrench. The crowbar replacement, a mace, is worthless. The machine gun is the best one, it's the only gun that can really lay sustained damage

       Afrika Korps is a map series about fighting Nazis under General Rommel out of Northern Africa. This bonus mission is more of the same thing. The gameplay is exactly the same. SCMapDB page Author: MysticMDT and SiC Date of final release: 2008 Maps in package: 3 Map review of Afrika Korps Bonus (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | February 20, 2022 | 2649 characters      Afrika Korps Bonus is exactly what it says on the tin: a bonus map for those who liked Afrika Korps. It feels a lot like Afrika Korps' second map, in that it's just a straight level of the mapset's iconic objectives rehashed in another formation. It sort of reminds me of those Zelda Rom Randomizers that people get that mix up the Zelda dungeons. This is like a mixed up version of Map 2 from Afrika Korps.      For those who don't know Afrika Korps as a mapset, it's a WW2 themed objective-walkthrough mapset prioritizing stealing documents and destroying German tanks, radios, and weap