Alamo - GrandmasterJ

 

    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 straight into the enemy position and got murdered. I never saw them past the first five seconds of the map. Getting attacked in spawn was very annoying.

    The next area had some bunkers, tunnels, trenches, and a ruined building. It definitely put me in the mind of being in a warzone. The bunkers all have tunnels that lead back to a rear trench, the ruined building sits in the middle with supplies inside.

    After this area the map design becomes very complicated and mazey. There are many branching paths each filled with enemies. These all end in barricades or roll up doors that open later, shortcuts around the map. When first clearing the map it will take a while to explore every branch and it is easy to get separated from teammates. The level is absolutely stuffed with enemies and even if a path is a dead end there will be plenty of things to fight.

    The second worst part of this map was the headcrab density and tiny models. Headcrabs were replaced with many different models, two in particular, a tiny devil looking thing and something that looked like a facehugger but wasn't, were really hard to hit and there were a ton of them. There was also a Barney head with legs as a headcrab replacement, it had a lot of health and took a lot of shots (I suspect it may have had armor from Barney's helmet) but it was a much bigger target and thus easier to shoot. I got stuck in corners surrounded by tiny bugs and devils constantly. My tactic was to start dropping grenades where I stood so that at least these things would die when I did.

    There were some fun armored vehicles with mounted turrets on top of them. Destroying the turret or vehicle would blow the whole top off leaving the floor and the bottom of the treads. These usually had rockets and HEV inside, making them good resupply points.

    It should be noted that there is an Osprey flying around the level. At a certain point in the map we came near where the Osprey was dropping troops off and the enemy density shot up. We died a lot in this map, with the regular enemies being infinitely bolstered by the Osprey things got a little nuts. My teammate decided to sit down and focus fire (M16 shots to the rotors) on it until it was dead. During this I very slowly chipped away at the next swarm of enemies up ahead. I didn't make much progress until he killed the Osprey and came to help.

    Players spawn with a good selection of weapons and tons of ammo. There is plenty of ammo around the map too, including some rare underbarrel grenades, some satchel charges, plenty of grenades, and rockets for the rocket launcher obtained late in the map. The grenades are reskinned to be TNT.

    At a certain point when my teammate and I were killing things in the maze one of us destroyed a barrier and opened up a shortcut. I don't know if that triggered it, but right then the map refilled with enemies and three apaches spawned in. Knowing I had to re-clear the whole map of enemies made me depressed, but then the apaches mowed me down and flew over to spawn and killed my teammate and me constantly. At first I managed to escape while the three apaches focused on my teammate, but eventually I died from swarms of tiny headcrabs. When I respawned the helicopters started shooting me and he managed to escape.

    The fun ended here. The three apaches sat in the area immediately after spawn, the one I mentioned previously with the bunkers and tunnels. My strategy for getting past these three was to jump into the bunker and use the tunnel for cover, then sprint out of the trench. I never made it. My teammate managed to shoot them from later in the map, where he ended up. He did manage to attract all three helicopters away, but I ran up to where he was and the helicopters hit us with a rocket barrage, killing us both. This is when I cheated and gave myself all the weapons.

    I really hate cheating in Sven Co-op, I consider it a bad sign when I have to cheat in order to progress but it still bothers me. I could have killed those apaches without cheating, but that would have been with small arms, carefully hitting their propellers, and probably killing myself to replenish ammo. It took over an hour to finish this map and the fun ran out long before then, These apaches sucked all the fun right out of the map. If I didn't cheat I would have just stopped playing and reviewed the map like that. But I did cheat, and I used a rocket launcher, which was available way far away at this point, do blow up all three apaches and the we got a cutscene telling us our next objective was to find the airplane and escape.

    By this point we had explored the whole map, and all the shortcuts were open, so we ran around semi-lost killing the enormous number of enemies scattered about until we found it. We started the two engines and the map ended.

    The architecture was very confusing, I got lost a ton. I'm a fan of huge enemy densities but at many points I questioned whether or not enemies were respawning and started avoiding areas instead of dealing with the monsters there. The plentiful ammo throughout the map helped and encouraged me to find new areas. But then the helicopters came and rained on my parade. They let the air out of my balloon. The map was fine until they came and then I couldn't leave spawn. I was having fun until then.

Pros:

• Plenty of ammunition
• lots of shortcuts
• great fast paced combat

Cons:

• confusing layout, maze-like design
• Three Apaches and the rocket launcher is so far away
• the three Apaches can fly over spawn and keep players from playing the map
• the Osprey was annoying and had to be dealt with before getting the rocket launcher
• the tiny headcrab replacements came in swarms and were incredibly annoying

Score: 4 / 10