Megaoxean - Dunkelschwamm

 

    There is something about this map that is not seen in screenshots or mentioned in the map description on Sven Co-op map database. That is the fact that there is some sort of white filter over the map, except underwater. Everything is white unless you are underwater.

SCMapDB page

Author: Robootto

Date of final release: 2005

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Megaoxean

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | February 6, 2022 | 3425 characters

    If you were to tie a blindfold on me, splash milk in my face, and then hit me as hard as you can in my temple with a baseball bat, I would likely go about the next several moments feeling very similarly to how this map is likely to make you feel.

    I'd love to comment on brushwork, textures, all that, except there's a problem with this map: the entire thing is submerged in thick, white fog which obscures everything more than an inch from your face unless you're underwater. The map utilizes falling in and out of water, without visible barriers between in and out, meaning the player can navigate around underwater for a moment and then fall out when they get too close to the next area and begin getting attacked with their own warning being the screen turning white.

    The map begins with you in one of these impossibly white rooms. If you shamble around aimlessly enough you might find a rocket launcher before breaking the unnecessarily durable glass window on the floor to fall into the level proper. This is a good part of the map because it's underwater and you can see. It's also a bad part of the map because it's got robogrunts, ugly brushwork that evokes nothing, and just randomly placed entities. There are some ridiculously strong piranhas which thankfully do not move from their spawn. Gauss ammo litters the bottom surface, and there's a gauss gun nearby as well. Destroying a door in the bottom of this opens up into another one of these white rooms which you uncontrollably fall into which is full of gonomes who you cannot see while they gang up on and kill you. From this room you drop into another, larger such room full of zombies and headcrabs with way too much health. Since you can't see anything while you fire you'll more than likely get killed while shooting nowhere near any actual enemies. We spent a lot of our time attempting this map trying to find the best angles to shoot rockets into that room from within knee-deep water so we can see what we're doing. It didn't help- the room just keeps going and has more and more monsters. We gave up after a dozen minutes of throwing ourselves at this nonsense.

    Eventually we noclipped. This map looks massive from the outside, but it's all plagued with this horrible white fog which renders the map utterly unplayable. There's no point in engaging with the enemies because there's nothing to aim at with your guns, there's no visible arena full of enemies to maneuver around in- the combat is stripped of everything that allows players to play skillfully. There's no POINT to attempting combat, because you can't see any of the level as you progress through it.

    Robootto is known for making some shockingly bad maps. When we booted this map up I thought "How can Robootto ruin the ocean in a way we don't expect?" I gotta say, I didn't expect this.

    Don't play this map. That isn't a recommendation, it's a warning. If you play it after all that you only have yourself to blame.

Pros:

Cons:

• You can't see a goddamn thing unless you're underwater
• The few things we can see are pretty ugly
• I have a feeling that even if I could see it'd still be just a terrible robootto map full of tedious monster rooms

Score: 0 / 10