Artifact - GrandmasterJ

 

    Artifact is a custom map converted to Sven from Team Fortress Classic. It's a hard as nails platforming map that has me questioning if there is an important change in player movement across games that makes the map harder than it should be.

SCMapDB page

Original map author: Kami

Conversion authors: AdamR

Date of original mod release: 2003

Date of final Sven Map release: 2020

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Artifact

(originally posted on SCMapDB) 

by GrandmasterJ | July 24, 2022 | 8431 characters

    I feel like every part of this map is engineered to be the most absolute bullshit. This is one of those maps where five minutes into playing it I look at the time limit, see that we have 70 minutes left, and think to myself "we're not going to beat this". My teammate and I used noclip the entire map, there was not one section that we did not cheat to get through. This map was originally made for Team Fortress Classic, I have to think to myself, is there some movement mechanics that Sven Co-op is lacking? Do we have to be scouts to complete some of these sequences? The comments seem to imply people have beaten this map before.

    The map starts off with players in a mansion. This is just for the briefing and we will not be back here once we leave. The mansion looks great and that great look persists throughout the entire map. There is a vote for survival mode, this map is so utterly beyond me so survival mode makes very little difference to my playthrough. After the intro players are teleported to a base camp in the jungle with a helicopter and teleporter. The teleporter currently teleports players into the air above spawn, facing up for some reason. There are two ways to go but we need to go in the direction of the rope bridge.

    Here is our first jumping sequence. There is a rope bridge across a wide raging river. Upriver there is a door underneath a waterfall. Logs appear and travel towards the player before disappearing back under the water. Touching the water makes you explode. Players are supposed to jump from rocks in the river to the logs and travel to the door, the problem is that the last rock is positioned just so that players have to jump through the waterfall to get to the door. My teammate and I tried to avoid the waterfall, but ended up instantly exploding on contact with the water. I bit the bullet and decided to brave the waterfall and got through fine. So the water on the ground explodes me, but the water in front of me does not. That's not even the bad part. Now players have to head back carrying an item with them. This means players have to jump onto logs the moment they appear, but the moment they appear they start going downriver. Players have to anticipate when the logs appear and jump before they surface. In other words, it's absolute bullshit. We noclipped though here.

    We head back to spawn and go down the other path. My teammate has to jump on my head to put the item into a hole above a door, thus unlocking the way to the village. There are two sections of the village, a lower area and an upper area. In the upper area is a treehouse with a rope ladder, climbing up there and jumping from branch to branch brings us to an alcove with a lever, pulling this lever opens up a trapdoor in the lower village. My teammate and I attempted this sequence next. So there is a level, pressing the lever sends a spike wall down the hallway, players can move out of the way and avoid the wall, but need to run past the wall to the far end of the hall to pull another lever to open a trapdoor and jump down before the spike wall comes back. I made it to the lever many times, but I was never fast enough to actually get down the hole before the spiked wall came back. Well, the last time I tried my teammate was there and had already opened the trap door, so all I had to do was run in and jump down. Halfway down the spike wall killed me. So even without pulling the lever I am still not fast enough to get down the hole. This is absolute bullshit. My teammate noclipped to the hole, got the ruby, and set it in an Olmec face.

    The other ruby for the Olmec face is down a hallway in the lower village. Most players would probably go here first but we did it in this order. This hallway has some spike traps right off the bat. Easy enough to dodge but they will instantly kill anybody they catch and it's annoying and frustrating and bullshit. The hall leads to a simple maze where players have to press two buttons. There are two pit traps, one right in front of the first button so that somebody has to jump, press it, and then die. The other pit trap is placed right before a bend in the hallway. After pressing both buttons a door in the maze opens up and players can grab the ruby. I suppose we could have done this sequence without cheating but if the player holding the ruby dies then the ruby goes back to where it was and we really didn't want to go back and do any of that again.

    After both rubies are in the Olmec face the door in the upper village opens up and players can go to the last big area, the bullshit forest. This is the map's first teleport destination, midair above the door and high enough to do 12 points of damage. Here players have to climb on tree branches to get onto a robe bridge. But the branches are angled just so that none of the jumps are really easy, the first jump is from a branch to an alcove, but player's are slightly too high to slip into the alcove, so they have to either jump or come in at an angle and the tip of the branch is a literal spike. It's unnecessarily difficult and its the first jump of the sequence. I should also mention that players only have 50 (38 if teleporting) health so falling from this height will kill you. Players have to make jumps through opaque curtains of foliage. Players have to jump through vines that is actually a ladder, this hidden ladder threw my teammate and I off so much. My teammate managed to climb up this ladder to the top branches only for a spike trap to appear and kill him. We're already dealing with blind jumps through hidden ladders and then spike traps pop out. This map is such bullshit. Oh, and I forgot to mention there is hurt water below the trees and it is textured almost the same as the ground so player's have a hard time telling what is ground and what is hurt juice.

    We noclipped to the bridge and went through the doorway here. Here is a sequence of fire and crushers, all of which will instantly explode the player. This is a matter of timing and going fast, I managed to make it through and grab the item we needed. Unfortunately my teammate needed to help me escape and I ended up dying before I could. Rather than try again we noclipped through and grabbed it. Then we placed the item in the final door, and nothing happened. Maybe it's because we noclipped through every challenge, but something went wrong for us and we had to noclip once again to the final chamber and get the staff. The teleport updated once again to right here, in front of the artifact chamber. The map wanted us to go back through the forest of misery. Screw that. We noclipped to the helicopter and the map didn't end for some reason.

    I get difficult maps, but I think there is a fine line between difficulty and absolute bullshit. I think this map is absolute bullshit. I don't like how I had to jump through water in the first sequence when the other water instantly blew me to pieces. I don't like how the teleporter had two teleport locations, after the map is halfway done, and one teleport even hurts players who use it. I don't like how half the challenge comes from spikes shooting in from nowhere after the player has gone through extreme platforming. I don't like how the margin of error on these platforming sequences is razor thin, my teammate opened the trap door for me and the spike wall still splattered me. I didn't have to hit the switch and I still didn't have enough time to fall down the hole. I don't like this map at all and its not just because its hard.

Pros:

• The map is beautiful
• there was a teleporter
• if survival mode was not optional I would never have played this map

Cons:

• The first puzzle has water that kills the player instantly, then a jump through a waterfall that is fine
• I don't know how to avoid the spike wall, even with the trapdoor already open I do not fall fast enough
• the teleport comes too late and drops players from high enough that they take damage
• those spike traps in the trees were extra bullshit
• the forest sequence has opaque foliage, invisible ladders, and jumps designed to be annoying
• The map didn't end when we grabbed the artifact. This is probably due to cheating, but screw this map

Score: 4.5 / 10