Crusher - Dunkelschwamm

  

    This map's claim to fame is the large crushing machine the map is named after. The crusher works really really well and that is all that matters in a map about crushing.

SCMapDB page

Author: Unkown

Date of final release: 2000

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Crusher

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | May 30, 2022 | 3391 characters

    Crusher is a map by author unknown. It's exactly what's printed on the tin: there's a great big ol' crusher, and you smoosh scientists in it. It's great. You mash a button and two big jagged jaws of rusty metal moosh their meaty bods together, gets stuck and jitters a bit as they make crushing meat sounds, then clamp as they join. They retract and a pile of gibs remain- until the next batch of scientists appear.

    If that was the entire map, that would be the entire map. But no, Crusher has some baffling side areas featuring friendly NPCs. One is an area accessible only by climbing down a ladder, wherein Barneys spawn. I cannot, for the life of me, understand what the purpose of this room was. There's another similar room parallel to it where scientists spawn.

    The real main side area, though, is a spot where scientists and Barneys spawn next to (bafflingly) another button to activate the crusher (despite being behind a wall where the crusher cannot be seen). My comrade and I had fun corralling these NPCs to the crusher, gathering as large a herd as possible, and watching it gum up the machine's jaws as it crunched down and smeeshed their gooey vessels.

    The environment is, I would say, mostly well brushed out. There's some areas that just don't really make sense as dead ends. The way there's no entrances, but there are windows and enough detail to imply a real location in a real world, creates a surreal feeling at times, especially in conjunction with the purposeless dead-end rooms. The one thing I would say stands out is the big, ugly, flatly textured rust-colored waist-tall cube of a button which activates the crusher. We understand that it's a button and needs to be pressed entirely because it's placed in front of the crusher, and because the crusher is also textured with a similar rust metal. Using the Half-Life textures I can't fathom why somebody wouldn't just find something which clearly looks like a button, but this big ugly cube is what they went with instead. The weird redundant button in the backroom is an identical big ugly cube. I wouldn't call the visuals of the map bad by any means- I think it's all perfectly serviceable early Half-Life mapping fare, and I think it goes out of its way to make the geometry and explorable areas interesting and dynamic. And, in the end of the day, the crushers and the resulting gibs are pretty glorious.

    If you want to play with some friends, I think this map's worth 10 minutes of fun if you're a creative bunch who're good at making your own fun. If you're gonna put it on a server, I recommend turning the time limit down just a tad- there's no way this'll hold attention for the amount of time it defaults to.

Pros:

• The crusher is a really good crusher. A+ crusher.
• There's plenty of gooey people with gooey people bodies to crush, delivered quickly to the crusher
• Some opportunities for emergent gameplay from the weird NPC spawns
• Idk, I just really like that there's water behind the crusher to swim in. It's superfluous, but I appreciate it.

Cons:

• Novelty wears thin fast
• You know what, I'm gonna list the ugly buttons as a con. Those are some ugly buttons

Score: 6.9 / 10