Bounty - Dunkelschwamm

  

    This map is a work in progress and may change drastically in the future. That said, it's really only missing a proper game end and everything else looks good and works well.

SCMapDB page

Author: Gruntzz

Date of final release: 2022

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Bounty

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | June 10, 2022 | 6181 characters

    Bounty is a map heavily inspired by Hotline Miami, from the aesthetic to the gameplay. What's the gameplay like? Why, you run into a room fulla guys and immediately get shot to death, that's what!

    This is a work-in-progress map (as of June 10 2022) as far as I understand, so take this review as constructive criticism that I'll happily revisit in a re-review should this map be updated.

    Getting on with the review: let's start with the aesthetic. I think one of Hotline Miami's greatest strengths is its strong sense of aesthetic, but visually and sonically. Bounty captures the lighting, mood, and simplicity of Hotline Miami to a t. The whole map drones the background track "Blizzard" from Hotline Miami 2. The club Camellia boasts a cube shape that is at once brutalist and heavily stylized, thanks in large part to clever use of colored lighting and lit front sign. The screenshots of the beach in the front of the map are what sold me on wanting to play, and though the beach plays no real role in the gameplay of the map, is still a fun and well realized beach that is fun to swim around and die in, prompting a message that the player "returned to the sea". The enemy models, when not standard bodyguards, also fit the Hotline Miami standard Russian mobster appearance and apparel. The interior of the club itself is really nice, with a bitchin' dance floor and a great bar full of fun and wacky destructible bottles. Really, the presentation here is off the chain. Everything in the club feels big, and I think it adds a lot of personality.

    The assault itself is a huge pain in the ass. I don't know how to suggest fixing it, since I think if the map were less of a pain in the ass in the ways I'm about to describe I fear it may be over too quickly. See, this map heavily relies on 3 tiers of this building being the entire gameplay- the lobby, the dance floor, and finally the club seating upstairs. These three areas are heavily populated with bodyguards who shoot with such accuracy, often resulting in instant kills, and with such incredible reflex time, that it was hard to find a way for two players to approach a single bodyguard positioned across the dance floor from us, much less a room full of them. In the map's defense, I'd occasionally hit strides where I'd take down six or so bodyguards before being gunned down, both those winds were brief, few, and far between. The map imposes survival mode early on, but we turned that off early to have any chance of completing the map. It really took throwing a lot of bodies at the problem, and I imagine this map would be absolute chaos with tons of players. The thing is, it's huge open spaces where the player has only an MP5 and a handgun, and handgun wielding bodyguards instakill you the moment there's a mutual line-of-sight. They also patrol between points at times, so it's hard to consider a spot cleared so you can advance. They'll even jump off of the top floor down to the dance floor, which was, to be honest, pretty gosh dang flippin' neat. We died like a combined 47 times, as two players. Take of that what you will.

    I will say this: the lobby elbows connecting to the dance floor are bullshit. There's these overlooks from the top floor there where enemies can wander in unexpectedly and take pot shots, often hitting their target, often killing us in one hit, often from behind while we're trying to focus on clearing a path into the dance floor. This bit was really just annoying, and the only way to effectively counter it is to awkwardly position yourself to be looking up at the floor in just a way where if the enemy attempts to approach only their head will poke out and you can get a shot, but since the enemies mill about attempting to line that up is like playing an incredibly inconsistent and deadly game of whack-a-mole. Meanwhile, an enemy may suddenly wander up from behind and pop a cap in your ass. Even if you kill the enemy who's hanging out up there, since they disappear over the side you have no real way of knowing how many of them there are. So, over time, we just accepted that every now and then those corners would kill us. Once the dance floor was cleared, I'd walk into it backwards with my gun pointed up at the floor they'd shoot us from. I can't imagine doing this shit on survival, even with tons of players. Hell, good luck doing this on survival mode- we found that ammo was often very tight despite out frequent respawns.

    Still, though, it was all of this that kept the map extended out a bit and made these three very simple arenas enough to keep our attention for a while. It's very challenging, and with infinite respawns is fun to whittle away at. Since the bodyguards also die in one hit, every kill is super satisfying, especially since we HATE those bodyguards.

    The map attempts to trigger a transition once you retreat to the car after taking out the "target" NPC, true to Hotline Miami.

    Once the map was over, I reflected on my time with it as I wrote this review. I think this map could do better in a few places- namely in the horrible killboxes with the lobby elbow hallway entrances to the dance floor. Dying over and over again to guys with instant kill, instant shot, instant accuracy isn't fun, but getting revenge on them is.

    If you want a fun actiony map to play with friends, try this. Don't put it on a server list yet, as it has a broken level transition instead of an end. You'll end up spending a bunch of time on a dead map.

Pros:

• Looks great
• Sounds great
• Great models
• Fun environments
• Gunplay extends to decent length despite a simple map with a short flow
• I like it when enemies aren't bullet sponges

Cons:

• I don't like it when enemies fire super quickly, kill me in one hit, and have perfect accuracy all at the same time
• Map design in the lobby creates a really frustrating snag of a killbox
• Not really a whole lot of ammo given for a map expecting to be finished on survival

Score: 6.5 / 10