Ally - Dunkelschwamm
Ally starts players in a tent with a crowd of friendly grunts. It took me too long to figure out these grunts are the allies.
Author: yulo
Date of final release: 2010
Maps in package: 1
Map review of Ally
(originally posted on SCMapDB)
by dunkelschwamm | March 25, 2022 | 3756 characters
Ally is a map that doesn't look great, isn't made particularly well, and doesn't aspire to much. But it's fine. And I think it's fine.
The basic idea of Ally is that you start in a room full of allied grunts and progress down a series of chambers full of robogrunts. To proceed through each chamber, you must access a control room with the button to open the door to the next area, guarded by a Barnabus, next to a friendly robogrunt spawner. The map culminates in a big final battle with the robogrunts.
Ally's biggest strength is that it arms the players with M16s with underbarrel grenades and MP5s and gives the players lots of friendly NPCs to push around. Normally fighting a room full of robogrunts would be a grating, horrible experience, but having lots of underbarrel grenades and friendly NPCs to command made it a very bearable experience- even fun most of the time.
The setup leaves a lot to be desired- the weapons which make the map fun respawn at a trickle at spawn. It was barely enough for my teammate at myself playing 2 player, I can't imagine the drought of ammo there would be with any more players than that. Additionally, having to open doors from a control panel means you cannot backtrack to access more ammo should you run out. The only way to retrieve more ammo is if somebody brings some and drops it for you, somebody has not progressed as far in the level as you and opens the door for you, or you die to replenish ammo. Furthermore, there are two of these control panel operated doors, meaning once you have passed the second one you need somebody to operate the second control panel to let you back into the second chamber, and then somebody at the first control panel to let you both into the first chamber. THEN you can get your ammo. It's an atrocious setup and I hope mapper yulo does not set up ammo this way again- especially against an enemy as tenacious as the robogrunts.
It's also worth nothing that this map is blocky and flatly lit. Textures are utilitarian and environments evoke real spaces about as much as Wolfenstein 3D ever did. Doors are thick as refrigerators and slide right into walls so flush you can see the z-fighting. The outdoor area at the end is incredibly cubish and unnatural looking, evoking some liminal self-contained cube of natural world.
More than I feel I can say about many other amateurishly made maps, everything in this was made with some kind of intent to create an interesting gameplay loop, as misguided as some of its approach was. I think there's a lot of serious potential hidden here in the design philosophy of this mapper, as utilitarian as much of it was. It doesn't look good, but when it picks up it plays really decently.
Unfortunately, when you reach the end of the map there is no ending. Because of that, I can't recommend putting this on a server rotation, as your players will end up stuck in an empty map until the time runs out. I would, however, recommend it for playing with a friend if you're just looking for a really quick firefight.
Pros:
- Firefights play out shockingly satisfyingly
- Really fun commanding friendly robogrunts and the friendly human grunts
- Underbarrel grenades were a good choice
- Map doesn't overstay its welcome
Cons:
- Map is uuuuuuugly
- The door system is just a bad idea and prohibits players from recuperating ammo
- There's not really enough ammo to go around to begin with
- Map doesn't end, meaning on a map server rotation this would just get stuck until time runs out or manual changelevel.
Score: 4.9 / 10
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