Garg House - GrandmasterJ

 

    There are quite a few maps centered around the gargantua, this particular map has tons of enemies in it yet the gargantua gets all the credit. Players go through teleporters and end up in a big room full of enemies.

SCMapDB page

Author: Hezus

Date of final release: 2001

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Garg House

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | April 24, 2022 | 3744 characters

    Garg House is a horde arena map where players are dumped into an arena filled with respawning aliens, not just the gargantua, and eventually human soldiers as well. The map descript says you go into battle 'well stocked' but that is a lie, the biggest problem in the map was trying to get explosives to take down the gargs.

    The map layout is a large simple room. The spawn area is a fenced off section on one side of the room above the chaos, allowing players to see what they are getting themselves into. Each end of the room has a teleporter into the arena with no way to get back, two HEV batteries hide behind the teleporters, meaning there is only enough for max armor for one player and it's spread out. There are also no weapons in spawn and players do not start with any weapons beyond the default. You do not enter battle well stocked.

    The arena is mostly empty except for a big red shipping container in the middle, a ramp with a short wall in one corner with a crossbow, the crossbow has the explosive bolt so this is a big help in the level. There are rooms on stilts on either end of the arena, only one is accessible from here, there is a terrible rope ladder leading up into the room. Inside there is a teleporter that spits out zombies continuously and an mp5 with some ammo. Another terrible rope ladder leads to the outop of the room, where there is some crossbow ammo and a gondola over to the other side of the room, where the inaccessible room is. The gondola is a func_vehicle that you have to drive over (on a track) but be warned, it will do a 180 degree turn in a snap and head back the other way when you reach your destination so slow down a be ready to stop. A hole leads inside the room, it has more respawning zombies and HEV and health. If you jump off the top of this room and onto a nearby ledge you can get an M16 and underbarrel grenades. You can also see that there is a rocket launcher on top of a doorway that was not apparent from ground level. My teammate did some tricky longjumps and got the rocket launcher but I stuck with the crossbow.

    By the way, if you drive the gondola to one side, come to a complete stop, and then die or fall before returning it then you just can't access that part of the map anymore.

    The combat is chaos, aliens of all sorts spawn in all different areas and keep respawning, there are bees flying around, goo, lightning, whatever the garg stomps into existence, gonarch juice, it's hectic. Killing gargantuas just make another one immediately pop into existence. Some things happened in the map like soldiers bursting in on an APC and gonarchs suddenly spawning as well that made me think maybe we were triggering things by killing gargs. I don't know if that is true, but after a while nothing new was happening so we called it there.

    As far as arena maps go it's not bad. I don't understand the lack of good weapons. There were some decent weapons scattered around the map but in the beginning when you first get thrown into the middle of things you have nothing to defend yourself. It's annoying to have to constantly find my way back to weapons that can do something. The map layout was mostly fine but those ladders were very wonky. I hate rope ladders in goldsrc.

Pros:

• spawn area had a good vantage point
• we got to see aliens vs. humans

Cons:

• the supplies were spread out and hard to get, not fun when combat is already happening
• dying after the gondola cut off that part of the map for the rest of the game
• bad rope ladders

Score: 4 / 10