Allahu Ackbar - Dunkelschwamm

  

    This is the most culturally respectful map on the database. The phrase 'Allahu akbar' literally translates to 'God is great'.

SCMapDB page

Author: Keen

Date of final release: 2016

Maps in package: 2

Map review of Allahu Ackbar

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | March 19, 2022 | 3528 characters

    My understanding is that this map is "abandoned," so take that as you will. If I were to project my own feelings on the map's author, I would presume he realized the joke got old after two seconds and gave up.

    Allahu Ackbar is two unfinished maps by keen where the joke is middle eastern terrorists blowing up things and shouting allahu ackbar. If my explaining that to you didn't make you chuckle, you probably won't like the lethargic attempts at edgy humor which turns real world tragedy into memes in this map- and since they don't treat the subject matter with any respect IS the humor, that these maps are also unfinished and abandoned must really make this 10x funnier to the target audience. In the description it's stated that this is meant to make people laugh in dark times, but it doesn't do much to laugh at anything in a way which brings levity to darker subjects- it just points at those darker subjects and laughs while indulging in tired stereotypes. If you process the turmoil in the world by bundling it into its most shallow components and dropping hard "f" words in ingame text then I guess more power to you.

    In each map, you fight a couple dense squads of HECU grunts in a fairly compelling battle using a good variety of weapons which utilize the tunnel-like structures. After making your way to a bottom arena bombsite, you blow it up and it the map blasts you with an ear-violating audio-clipping sfx of "Allahu Akbar" being shouted and then music. The room begins perpetually exploding forever. In the first map, if you get within 200' of the explosion you instantly gib. If you play the second map, there is a lava pit that's hard to get across which leads to a funny tunnel full of a bullsquid half clipped into the ground, three headcrabs, and a corner that was improperly scaled and is impossible to get past. This tunnel connects to the bomb room.

    If you noclip in the map, you see that there is a room full of light connected to the bomb room. Flying into that ends the map.

    Overall, Allahu Ackbar suffers from being a political meme map which claims to make jokes to take our minds off of world events, but really just makes no attempts to make jokes and keeps reminding you of world events in the hopes that doing so will make you laugh. It suffers from that meme humor issue of jokes doing nothing to pace or set up a joke, and just reference things that are happening in the hopes they can score humor points. The map itself is unfinished, unfinishable in gameplay, and features some decent fighting which comes from interestingly skewed tunnels and the inherent fun of using many weapons against many grunts.

    If you're looking for something to play with friends and find this kind of humor endlessly entertaining, treat yourselves to a couple minutes of gameplay here with the understanding that the map ends when it starts exploding forever. Don't put this on a server rotation, as it is unfinishable and unfinished.

Pros:

• Fighting the grunts in the weird tunnels was legit fun

Cons:

• The "joke" isn't really a joke, it's just treating world events as a meme
• The map is clearly unfinished despite being super short and not needing to be much longer considering there's no joke to back up its premise
• The second map only adds a broken bit

Score: 2.5 / 10