Svencoop 1 - Dunkelschwamm

  


    Svencoop is THE eponymous Sven Co-op map. It is the first map ever created for the mod, it was the only map included when Sven first came out, and it's been included in every single release since then.

SCMapDB page

Author: Sven Viking

Date of final release: 1999 (updated a lot, last in 2010)

Maps in package: 1 (but there is a separate Svencoop 2 map)

Map review of Svencoop 1

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | February 5, 2021 | 2906 characters

    SvenCoop 1 is a charming and simple cooperative map from a simpler time that is largely overshadowed by the maps which have since followed.

    Throughout it makes many attempts at fun cooperative activities. A couple times this involves two guys pressing buttons at once, there's this one puzzle where you have to lower these blocks which slowly raise back up which each have buttons behind them to press at the same time but while you're trying to lower these baby gargs spawn in. There's this one puzzle where a player has to press a button, but must crawl through a tiny tunnel to get there while being ambushed by alien controllers and houndeyes so the other player has to help by firing a power turret. There's cute ideas like this throughout, which makes sense if this was intended to be the model for how other mappers would attempt to model co-op in the Half-Life engine. That said, given the time that's past SvenCoop 1 feels very antiquated in its ideas, which have long since been iterated on to the point that making a setpiece even seven degrees of evolutionary separation from on of SvenCoop 1's setpieces is still making a cliche that was done to death 15 years ago. The mapping scene has moved so far past these paltry tricks that they are barely amusing gimmicks that graze our attention as we complete them on auto-complete.

    I think it's cute how Tor has voiced lines at the beginning of the map. It's also cute to see that Tor is still an alien grunt after all these years- even after the release of the Xen Commander "Tor" enemy.

    The gunfighting for the map is fine. There's a lot of enemies just spawning in during portions of this. The players are equipped right away with a 357, but can pick up many more guns for going out of their way. There's a couple really fun grunt battles, and some fun bits early on with lots of alien slaves.

    The map is over really quickly, I have to say. Overall, I'd say that SvenCoop 1 is pretty good. Nothing about it particularly stands out, but it's all decent quality. There are setpieces- not particularly memorable set pieces- but setpieces throughout.

    If you're looking for a map for your server, I think a handful of players will wreck it pretty quickly. If you're looking for a quick map to play with a friend, SvenCoop works fine.

Pros:

  • Everything about the map is fine
  • Decent gunplay in some fine battles
  • It feels like this map really knows it wants to do coop gimmicks first and foremost
  • Tor is a big cutie

Cons:

  • Everything about this map is also kinda meh
  • All of the coop gimmicks are pretty quaint by today's standards
  • I don't like the way enemies just kinda keep popping in
  • Ending was kinda abrupt

Score: 6 / 10

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