Ambush - GrandmasterJ

 

    In this map player's get attacked right away by a wave of enemies, I guess players get ambushed.

SCMapDB page

Author: Lymphoid

Date of final release: 2002

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Ambush

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | March 26, 2022 | 5244 characters

    To quote my teammate, "there was an ambush."

    Right off the bat the spawn area was hit by a squad of HECU and a heavy weapons grunt. The spawn area is a tunnel with a truck parked in it, players can spawn to the side of the truck with the ammo or inside with the some guns. A wonky jump over the car leads to two batteries and a climb to the top and back of the truck has snarks. Under the truck is a revolver. This sounds like a nice selection of guns but with the waves of enemies hitting spawn meant I had to basically navigate an obstacle course while under fire just to have a chance of fighting back. I opted to jump over the truck hood to get some cover, the truck's hood is destructible in pieces so it will deteriorate, but I was only successful a small fraction of my attempts. Plus with two players the supplies would go quick. This part took forever and we died a lot.

    Outside the spawn area is a rough outdoor area. The HW grunt spawns in the corner here, thankfully not infinitely, and more soldiers spawn around a corner. Another tunnel has yet more respawning soldiers. I felt like this area alone had at least seven heavy weapons grunts. There were a ton of them in the level, at one point I managed to go ahead and my teammate sat back to grind through the respawning enemies. He said he was just killing tons of them. This map definitely leans into the heavy weapons grunts.

    Through a bad looking vent, I suppose I should mention that the map is indeed fullbright just like the description says, and into a narrow trench with yet another respawning HW grunt (about five maybe?). At one end are some explosives and the other end has a door. This room has two zombies, a blast door that does not open, and another door to a courtyard with houndeyes. A small hole in the wall is labelled 'security overrride'. At first we thought we had to throw satchel charges in the hole and detonate them, but a bunch of signs arranged in a pyramid on one wall was the clue, we were supposed to stack players to see into the hole. I had to turn down gravity because two players wasn't cutting it, maybe four players can do it. There is a button in the hole, we shot it and a hole opened up at spawn, it took us a while to realize that though.

    Way back at spawn a door opened up into a maze. Hooray. A maze. It's not a dark maze and is easy enough to navigate I suppose, but I am not a fan of mazes. Right before the end of the maze was pit of lava or acid of something. Run through fast, the end has something weird going on where you have to jump onto a shelf underwater before jumping out of the water, like a trap to make players spend just a little more time in the lava. At the end of the maze a button that slides sideways opens a shortcut straight to the end, this was a nice touch, I love when maps have shortcuts.

    Up a ladder and we were in a building, it looked very military. Inside was a rocket launcher with some rockets, underbarrel grenades, a shotgun and ammo. Outside was a gargantua spawner that spawned three gargs. We jumped out the windows instead of using the front door and went up a very thick rope ladder, which was very janky for me and was not a good ladder, to the roof where we had a better chance against the gargs. HEV is in the corner. After three gargs are dead climb over the chain link fence, not the other chain link fence, the one that looks identical but is a ladder. There are also such chain link fences in the level but none of them are ladders either, so discovering this took a minute. This hall has spawning gargs as well, also three. After killing them we went to the end where there was a truck and a door and then the map ended and we won.

    The map was roughly done, with misaligned textures, simple and blocky level geometry, thick doors and windows, and is fullbright. Enemies hit spawn right off the bat and the weapons are scattered in such a way that makes fighting back really difficult. There were tons of enemies and heavy weapons grunts which wouldn't have been that bad had they not spawned in right after I finish killing the preceding wave on top of me. I also ran out of ammo constantly, there is not enough ammo to deal with the onslaught of enemies in this map. Despite my complaints I do appreciate the map's shortcuts. That shows thought went into actually helping out the players. The map may be rough and it is likely this is the author's first map but once I got past spawn I had a decent time.

Pros:

• Helpful shortcuts for the players
• the map being fullbright helped the maze suck way less
• there was an ambush

Cons:

• the ambush right at spawn at the start of the map was brutal and not fun at all
• the way the spawn area is set up with supplies makes the above con even worse
• the map doesn't look good
• there is not enough ammo for more than two people
• the combat consisted of rooms where enemies just spawn in over and over until you kill them all
• it was not made apparent at all what pressing the button did in the human pyramid room

Score: 3.5 / 10