Arena Fights - GrandmasterJ

 

    This map is a series of arenas that players fight enemies in. It really lives up to its name, there isn't a whole lot left to describe.

SCMapDB page

Author: eMTeG

Date of final release: 2002

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Arena Fights

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | July 1, 2022 | 5262 characters

    The map is Arena Fights and I can confirm that there are arenas and players do fight in them. The map description really does sum it all up nicely, there are three areas with different enemy composition and pressing buttons opens the way forward.

    The map starts players off with almost a full complement of weapons. I would have liked an egon gun but I did start with 10 underbarrel grenades so all is forgiven. There is a ton of HEV in the spawn area even though players start with full HEV. There are two blast doors here but only one opens right now.

    The first arena is full of friendly soldiers behind a defensive position. Pressing the accessbile buttons here will start enemies spawning in, headcrabs, vortigaunts, bullsquids, alien slaves, and most annoyingly baby headcrabs. The ceiling also started breaking, allowing trapped barnacles to become hazards in the arena. The friendly soldiers got in the way a lot and I think all of them died from our splash damage. Vortigaunts would spawn in four at a time altogether and I didn't want them reviving each other so I kept putting a grenade right in the middle of them to keep them gibbed. There is health and batteries scattered around the area. I stayed behind cover and spammed explosives while my teammate bounced around collecting the pick ups. He ended that encounter with full health and HEV while I died once, so there's the best strategy for that room. The baby headcrabs kept coming thought, it was extremely annoying and it took forever to kill. There are no ammo pick ups in the entire level, so death is the only way to resupply. Pressing the gigantic button above will open the way forward.

    The second arena is down a ventilation shaft that opens in the floor. Players are supposed to jump down, get slowed by a fan, and enter an opening near the bottom. What happened to me is that i jumped down, bounced up without hitting the platform, then my teammate jumped on my head and I sat suspended in the middle of the vent. Crouching did nothing, eventually I fell all the way down into the spinning fan blade at the bottom and died. My teammate had no problem getting down but it took my a few tries and a death to do it.

    Players jump out of a hole high in the wall into the second arena. There are friendly troops here again behind some lasers. When enemies spawn in the soldiers will run into these lasers and instantly gib. The enemies do it too, so I would say the lasers are a big help but the allies are rendered totally useless, well, more totally useless than normal. Lots of alien grunts and alien controllers start spawning in. There is a small room here with HEV chargers and medkits, using the gauss cannon can put players up on a platform with a sparkly sprite that teleports them to another platform. I went up here and my teammate stayed with the HEV and health, crouched just so that the enemies would not be able to hit him. As I was high up and without cover, every bee fired by grunts and every orange sprite ball fired by the controllers would hit me. Eventually a Gargantua appeared and we thought the fight was coming to an end, but it was just the precursor for a Big Momma. After the Big Momma ran into a laser and instantly gibbed itself we guass jumped up to the next button and activated a teleport back to spawn, the other blast door is open.

    Past a simple puzzle (use the valve! it doesn't spin so just press 'e' once!) and some spooky hallways filled with female assassins is the last arena. The first two fights were frantic affairs but I feel like this third arena didn't really feel like the grand finale. The fight was so forgettable I can't even describe it, because I forgot. There were some ichthyosaurs and afterwards we could trap the ichthyosaurs in a cage, then raise the water level. Doing that does nothing, there is no way to proceed. This map has no game end. One fun thing to mention is that the water doesn't extend very far past that room, so players can swim out sideways into a dry hallway.

    I think this map has some very interesting and mostly useless design choices. The player allies definitely did not help at all. But the first two arenas did provide a lot of frantic fast-paced combat. It wasn't perfect, the baby headcrabs in the first arena took forever to kill and the small bastards completely stop player movement. The second arena was pretty good too, I am not sure i liked fighting such large creatures in such a small area, but I survived, mostly. Not having a resupply really sucked, I killed myself twice to get more ammo. This map is unpolished but perfectly fun.

Pros:

• Players start well equipped
• plenty of health and armor throughout the map
• the combat was mostly fun, frantic, and satisfying. Having explosives helped a lot
• simple flow, buttons were really big and hard to miss

Cons:

• No ammo, had to suicide to resupply
• allies were useless and got in the way
• I hate baby headcrabs
• water at the end did not cover the connecting hallways, causing the water to end abruptly
• no game end

Score: 6 / 10