Deluge - GrandmasterJ

 

    Deluge is a very atmospheric map made by one of the community's most acclaimed mappers, RNG. This map is very indicative of his style, well detailed moody and oppressive environment, strange monsters, and high levels of interactivity including lots of secrets.

SCMapDB page

Author: RNG

Date of final release: 2014

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Deluge

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | April 9, 2022 | 4895 characters

    Deluge is a map that like the author's (RNG) other work just drips in style. The story in the map description is phoned in but the map starts off strong with a fake loading screen before putting us in a weird environment with lots of things to explore.

    When the level first starts off players are given four buttons to vote for easy, normal, hard, and ultra violence difficulty levels. One weird thing is that each option says "lives system disabled" even easy mode, this led me to speculate that maybe there was a lives system planned? They each say the same thing and we both respawned just fine, so I see no need to play on anything below ultra violence.

    After the map vote players are treated to a picture of a creepy building and a loading bar, which is not natural in goldsrc. Then players start off unceremoniously in a room. From here there is a button that opens the door to the main area, but there are also a lot of hidden things here, there is a breakable vent here that has a revolver.

    From here players can explore the courtyard and open up new areas. New areas are opened up by collecting keycards and there are even areas that become accessible through gauss jumping in the late game. But the game does a good job of giving players a sense of progression. There is an emphasis on finding secrets in this map, heavy exploration will reward players with ammo and new weapons. A lot of the weapons become available as players progress normally, like the deagle and the shotgun, but others need players to actively look for secrets like the machine gun, revolver (which is replaced with a rifle model, I've never seen a revolver reskinned to be a rifle), and sniper rifle.

    Combat is difficult due to lack of any armor and enemies will repopulate previous areas as the players progress. But most enemies go down in one headshot from the starting pistol, headshots are the only way to play this map. There really is an emphasis on finding secrets as most ammo is hidden. At first it was pretty frustrating to not have any ammo, but as my teammate and I found some secrets soon I had plenty of ammo. There is even a point where weapons spawn in more convenient locations for players o collect upon respawn. The way areas open up and new weapons become available gives players a good sense that they are working towards something. My teammate and I were trying our best to get every secret and we really hoped we got them all, but at the end there is a recap of level progress and we did not get every secret. But we still found so many and the end showed we got about three-quarters of them so I still feel satisfied with the results.

    The map is beautiful in a drab concrete decay gooey swamp kind of way. RNG has layered well honed mapping techniques to bring this depressing industrial hellscape to life in an old engine like goldsrc. The ground has a subtle haze with a scrolling effect giving a real nice low hanging fog vibe. All sorts of lights, computers, and mechanics jut from walls, one room has two banks of monitors, three high and four wide. Lots of things explode, there is a room with some pipes on the wall that can be destroyed and a lot of the monitors can be broken. There is really good detail here.

    However, one downside of RNG's level design is that we got lost halfway through the map. Almost nothing is communicated to the player about how to progress the map, just cryptic phrases when certain events happen. It made for a somewhat frustrating experience looking for the path of progression when instead I keep stumbling onto secrets. There are enough secrets here that whenever I found one I would question if it was a secret or necessary to beat the level. Also RNG phoned the story in, the map was obviously the first map in a planned series and I don't see why he felt the need to put a story in but also make sure the story basically a joke.

    The map plays great, it looks great, and I had a lot of fun with it. The map has some great exploration and secret hunting with lots of combat. The only real complaint I have about it is that After I exhausted all the obvious avenues to explore I had no clues as to what the map expected me to do next. I highly recommend this map, it's a real shame that it won't get it's well deserved sequel.

Pros:

• Looks good
• plays good
• fun secrets
• good map layout, short trip from spawn to anywhere
• weapon spawns updated to be more convenient
• combat was difficult but headshots paid off big time

Cons:

• no real indication of where to go or what to do
• its really easy to mistake a secret for the correct way to go and vice versa
• the map is really good, why give it such a bad story?

Score: 9 / 10