Sv Mountain - GrandmasterJ

 

    Sv Mountain is the first map made by the author, it combines platforming with some combat. Players must scale the outside of a mountain and clear some rooms inside the mountain.

SCMapDB page

Author: SV BOY

Date of final release: 2017

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Sv Mountain

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | February 18, 2022 | 4800 characters

    Sv-mountain is a map that focuses heavily on jumping around the exterior of a large rectangular mountain. I'm not a fan of first person platforming so this didn't really appeal to me. I will say up front that I had to cheat my way through the map, my teammate who is much better at platforming than I agreed we had to in order to finish. By the way, what kind of maniac names their bsp file sv-mountain? We use underscores here, not dashes.

    The map starts players off in a small blocky encampment next to a big block of rock that stands in for the mountain. Right off the bat the architecture is blocky and rudimentary. There are misaligned textures on flat walls in rooms, showing the outlines of each separate brush. Doors will sit directly on the brushes next to them resulting in Z-fighting, where textures will overlap and look real bad. There are a few prefabs, some stretched out. This is the author's first map and it looks like it.

    Early on in the actual platforming a ledge crumbled away underneath my teammate, sending him to his death. This happens at least three times throughout the map. This is really mean.

    There are rooms inside the mountain separated by platforming segments on the exterior of the mountain. There are sometimes enemies here. One problem I have with Sven Co-op platforming is that when I die I usually have to cover a lot of ground to get back to where I was, and I often just die immediately. Before I resorted to cheats I had 52 deaths, around 20 of which were on the same jump. There are checkpoints, if there weren't I wouldn't have played for as long as I did, but I still ended up going over a bunch of platforming again and again.

    Near the end the platforming gets really hard. Eventually players are in a pitch black room full of vents with misaligned textures. Alien controllers spawn in after players reach a certain area so watch out. Platforming in the dark was a pain, so this is where we began to cheat. The map timer (set somewhere around 70 minutes) was close to expiring so we rushed to the end.

    The top of the mountain has a teleporter that drops players down a tube, into water with two alien grunts and a king pin. It's worth noting here that a shortcut to a teleporter opens up here to the roof. Going through this teleporter drops the player from high enough to take fall damage, then players jump through the teleporter to go to the king pin.

    Something I glossed over is the building with shotguns and trip mines. In the second room inside the mountain there is a block of paper that will give players a code when used (hint: its 9341). This is used on a 3x3 grid of blocks on a wall that is supposed to resemble a number pad. Pressing individual keys is very difficult taking many tries to get right. When the keys are pressed in the correct order the incredibly fat door opens up and players then I ran in and stole everything before my teammate can have any. I made it a point to steal it out from under him as much as I could. There is enough that one person can easily pick it all up and then the other player has to wait for it to respawn. This room was fun for a while but quickly became disused. The act of entering numbers on the key pad was painful and we were platforming mostly, so there was no need for weapons. I didn't actually shoot the shotgun until the very end, and I only bothered to grab the shotgun once. That room was made intolerable by that awful keypad.

    After taking out the kingpin, which is not easy, players walk towards a white tube. Make sure to turn around and admire the side of water. Swimming up the white tube will lead to a crystal, falling out of the white tube will send players to their death. Press the button next to the crystal and the map is over.

    The map is ugly, does not have gameplay that I personally enjoy, and contains several traps to frustrate players. I retread the same ground many times over when I died. There were shortcuts but the first shortcut felt like too little too late, and the second shortcut damages players instead of going straight to the final fight. The armory is locked behind a janky keyboard and only worthwhile thing in there is the shotgun, which isn't used much.

Pros:

• This map would be unplayable without those shortcuts

Cons:

• The map was blocky and had bad texturing
• the armory keypad was extremely finicky and ultimately not worth the effort
• crumbling ledges added to already difficult platforming is really mean
• second teleporter shortcut damages players and then players have to go through another teleporter

Score: 4 / 10