Aerial Contact - Dunkelschwamm

  

    Aerial Contact is a reimagining of the classic map series Apache Battle. Five Apache helicopters will assault the player and all five must be destroyed to win the map.

SCMapDB page

Author: Hezus

Date of final release: 2004

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Aerial Contact

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | February 19, 2022 | 3324 characters

    Aerial Contact is a map that takes a strange approach to a simple concept: fight five apaches, one after the other, from a secure complex while grunts and male assassins harass from afar. The assassins and grunts respawn endlessly, while the apaches only respawn enough times for you to fight five before the map rather abruptly ends in fanfareless victory for the players.

    One of the main features of the map is two large turrets. One is situated in the fortified complex in which the players spawn- this turret is a big machinegun which turns at a glacial pace. Across from the fortress there is a rocketlauncher turret which also turns just as slowly, but also fires as slowly which makes it harder to track where you're aiming with how long it takes to catch up with the player's aiming. Frankly, I think this slow turning already renders the turrets utterly useless, as it's almost impossible to aim more than occasional glancing blows at such mobile targets. However, the turrets are rendered even more redundant by how vulnerable they leave the player to both the rocket barrages and machinegun fire of the apaches and the gunfire of the infantry.

    Just outside of the fortified base there is a SAW. You can either jump out a window to grab it or lower the fort's blast door with a temporary security override to grab it quickly and run back in, but to do so deeply exposes the player to plenty of hitscan enemies for a weapon which you cannot replenish ammo for within the map. Ultimately, I found that any of my grabs for the SAW contributed little to our ultimate success in this map.

    Ultimately, for all of the elements of the map, I found the best strategy for actually taking down the apaches was to crouch in the middle floor of the base and fire out the window at the apaches with the revolve, replenishing ammo by crawling up into the the third floor occasionally, and replenishing any incidental damage from the charging stations on the walls. This generally dealt the most damage the fastest, and the less we experimented and tried to engage with the various elements of the map to the faster we dominated the goal and never looked back.

    If you think fighting the apache is fucking great, this is the map for you. If you like functioning turrets, this is not the map for you. If you're looking for a good action map to play with friends and you think they'd love to fight a bunch of apaches, then go for it. If you have an action server where you like fighting respawning enemies, you'd probably dig this map for your rotation.

Pros:

• It delivers on fighting apaches
• Good looking brushwork
• Clearly a lot of thought went into giving this map lots of interworking elements
• Some fun weapons to fight with

Cons:

• Turrets feel like they're implemented by somebody who wants to convince everybody that turrets are terrible
• The respawning grunts really just serve to make the map outside of the spawn nonviable for battling the apache
• Taking down apaches really gets old to me around apache 4 in a row.
• Most of the map feels like it's wasted by how it's all designed together.

Score: 6.3 / 10