Another Unit - GrandmasterJ

 


    Another Unit is an official Sven Co-op map release, it's flavored in typical Black Mesa aesthetic and presented from the HECU perspective.

SCMapDB page

Author: B-dama

Date of final release: 2003

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Another Unit

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | March 26, 2022 | 4129 characters

    Another Unit is an official map and it shows. The level architecture is beautiful. Everything is detailed and would look at home right alongside levels in the original Half-Life.

    Players spawn right off the bat with a shotgun, mp5, full ammo for both, and 40 armor. This means players don't have to rearm when respawning. The map starts off with two long hallways side by side with turrets everywhere. You have to toss a grenade in the booth with the evil Barney to open the door, then you can use the big unlock machine to open up the doors at the far end of the hallway. Going through the hologram walls triggers barricades to rise up and robo grunts to charge out. It's a breeze if you rush and crouch behind the barricade.

    Eventually we leave the tunnels and exit outdoors into what is effectively another hallway. A narrow road is clanked closely by two walls, houndeyes and vortigaunts spawn below with shock troopers spawn above. Thankfully right at the start of this area there is an HEV charger next to a friendly grunt off near a shack with some health inside. There are some cinematic parts here with Manta Rays dropping off more aliens multiple times. A kingpin appears here and serves as a mid boss. This guy killed me a lot. Eventually some explosions will knock a conveyor belt down and players can leave the hallways, but not before finding the spore launcher in one of the other conveyor belt openings.

    Its sometime around here that players get the first checkpoint. I want to point out that survival mode is on by default and I always turn that off, so I don't know much about exactly how it works. But this map has checkpoints and I am so glad for that addition. I die at a stupid rate so I need those respawns and the more care a mapper puts into them the happier I am.

    The conveyor belt spit players out into an intricate indoor area. I say intricate and not labyrinthine because I didn't feel lost all the time, but I definitely felt like I was covering a lot of ground over and over again. The path forward here isn't clear and even when we managed to find the keycard, open the door with the keycard, we couldn't figure out how to get past the crates. Here's a hint for you, go to the caged catwalk and shoot the explosive barrels. It took us forever to figure that out. This is all glossing over the fact that there is some frantic combat here. More shock troopers spawn in high places, gonomes swarm the player, and a bountiful addition of barnacles took my teammate out at least two times. Its some pretty solid combat that was fun with two people.

    In the next room a Barney freaks out, runs away, and blocks off the next area. Houndeyes and vortigaunts start spawning in, but its a pretty low rate and we easily kill them the moment they appear. Right at the point we started getting bored and looking for ways out the crate blocking the way forward shatters and another vortigaunt appears.

    The map gives us a long hallway, then a small break room attached to a locker room before dumping snarks all over us. Past this is an outside room with a fight against four robo grunts. This serves as the last boss and the map ends shortly after this.

    The map was well made. Thought and care was put into the weapons players would have, I didn't even mention getting the grenades in the first hallway. Spawn points updated throughout the map, there was a lot of HEV, and the level aesthetic looked top notch. But I wasn't a fan of part with the keycard, it was confusing and I had to look up a video of somebody playing the map.

Pros:

  • The map looked great, lots of detail
  • players start with all the equipment they need to jump right into the action
  • updating spawn points
  • fun frantic combat
  • plenty of HEV throughout the level

Cons:

  • level layout is a massive hallway
  • confusing level design and objective halfway through the map
  • I wouldn't mind having snarks dumped on me if survival mode wasn't on

Score: 7 / 10

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