Alien Planet - Dunkelschwamm

  

    This map is supposedly set on an alien planet but starts off in some brutalist YMCA and never really looks too alien. There are parts where players can see through cracks in the level.

SCMapDP page

Author: DeathBog

Date of final release: 2003

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Alien Planet

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | March 11, 2022 | 3682 characters

    Alien Planet is one of those maps that shakes you to your very core. Something happened to this map. Something about it ain't right. It's sloppy in ways that I cannot fathom stumbling upon accidentally. Rooms are made out of patches of similarly textured brushes which overlap, fail to match on axis, leave gaping holes into clearly padded-in skybox brushes to prevent leaking. It's so bad in some places that it feels like you're in a house made out falling cards frozen in time mid-fall. If you managed to conjure that image to your head, add copious z-fighting to it as well.

    Walls are paper thin when you walk around them, sliding doors align so perfectly with the walls in which they're set that they z-fight upon being opened, buttons slide along confusing axes, an early water section poops you out into dry land which you walk horizontally into from a water tube. You just walk right out into it, no effect given to make this make sense or anything either. Enemies are lazily scattered about. At one point it just starts spawning gonomes at you, but it works out because they have pretty low health. The textures used in the terrible, janky, mosaic of brushes are boring, non-evocative black mesa textures. It's boring and bland and does not, by any means, evoke the idea of an alien planet at any point.

    By the end, the players are teleported into an arena full of vortigaunts with an alien grunt with tons of health. I used a recently acquired gauss gun to hammer him in the face repeatedly, stun locking him till his death which abruptly ended the map.

    Now, before you think I'm being nothing but negative, there are a couple good things I have to say about this map. First of all, I like the weapon selection. It's pretty good about giving the players useful weapons and unloading them into the tons of enemies is a delight. The enemy selection also isn't terrible, despite their sloppy and seemingly thoughtless placement. Finally, there was some effort put into giving the players shortcuts: first in a door which bridges two areas, and again which puts a teleporter behind spawn which leads to the penultimate ammo chamber. I think these are all really solid, and show that -despite this map being fuck-ugly and broken in ways I didn't know were possible- the mapper still respects the players and wants them to have a good time.

    Overall, I would say that the experience with this map is mostly harmless while occasionally insanity-inducingly sloppily thrown together. I've never seen a map that looks as broken as this, and that's an accomplishment. Sometimes the map manages to be sort of fun, but mostly it's just a very mediocrely made beginner-style map over exceptionally frail constitution. You can probably skip it for your servers and gaming session with friends.

Pros:

• Thanks to fun weapon and enemy selection, some of the firefights feel decent
• The beginning part with all of the ichthyosaurs was like shooting fish in a barrel- and I loved it
• The shortcuts throughout showed that, even if this map looks like it was half summoned before its summoner was slain and now it is stuck in our plane with only half of a physical form, the mapper had good priorities and cared about the players

Cons:

• This map is falling apart everywhere you look at it
• It looks terrible
• The overall sequence of events in this map has zero depth
• Every button and interactable is really screwy
• Z-fighting and leaks into skybox, just, everywhere

Score: 3.5 / 10