Svencoop 2 - Dunkelschwamm
The follow up to Svencoop 1, the sequel continues showing off things that can be done with Sven maps. Be warned, the map can be rendered unwinnable if you aren't paying attention.
Author: Sven Viking
Date of final release: 2008
Maps in package: 1
Map review of Svencoop 2
(originally posted on SCMapDB)
by dunkelschwamm | July 17, 2022 | 9968 characters
200 map special wooooo
Sven Coop 2 is the continuation of Sven Coop. It's a mostly linear walkthrough map with a couple puzzles, some combat, a crazy action setpiece at the end, and some wacky design decisions. Here I'll discuss them.
So, what is Sven Coop 2 trying to do with its design? I think it's trying to experiment- show interesting things that can be done in Sven Coop and spur creativity. Design is problem solving, and Sven Coop seeks very much to solve the problem of "How do we broaden what coop gameplay can be when applied to Half-Life's sensibilities?" Sven Coop 2 also asks this question, but I think it does so with a bit less gusto. The puzzles in this iteration are a bit less signposted, a bit more annoying, and maybe a bit reliant on their convolution or strange and impressive implementation to imply cleverness.
For example: there's a strange bullet-proof alien controller laying down at the bottom of a ladder who quickly kills you with powerful bullet shots if you try to climb down onto him. This almost inevitably kills a first-time player, who now must retrace their steps in the walk of shame back to this point. At this point you can either try what solves the puzzle (pushing a crate down the ladder shaft onto the alien controller and squishing it) or do the sensible thing and attempt to shoot it since it looks like an alien controller, which you shoot. Instead, your shots are ineffectual and by getting within gunfire range it has been shooting back at you- if you take too long to realize you're doing no good, you may get killed here. I bring this up because it's an annoying puzzle, but I think it's also my favorite puzzle in this map. It's satisfying to squish the alien afterwards, but the majority of the puzzle was just confusing and frustrating contradictory misleading information that I was punished for trusting by having my time wasted. And I say that telling you that this is my favorite puzzle in the batch.
Other winners include slowly raising a platform for another player while being attacked by respawning houndeyes and vortigaunts, leading that player to pick up a rocket launcher and fall into water, which another player must then press a button to open a compartment from the water to help the player from drowning. The player can then exit the water. By doing all of this, somehow a crucial door next to the initial raising platform opened. ?????????????? The sequence of events are so convoluted and arbitrary that they feel like a puzzle, but they don't feel satisfying like a puzzle when the door opens. That's because the door opening was arbitrary. There was a task to do, the players did it, and now they may proceed. The bit about letting the player out of the water is fun and tense, but the sequence of events feels like a contrivance.
One puzzle I found annoying was a hallway where grid tiles suddenly crush you. Again, somebody is almost certain to die here on their first attempt and then require a lengthy walk back. I actually like what you can do with this puzzle once you learn it- you can use the crate you previously used to crush that strange ladder alien, push it along to see which tiles are crushers. Then, when the gonomes attack right afterward you can lure them into the crushers and instantly kill them. This is all great, but that crate method I used only came into play on replays of this map because I knew the crushers were there. If I had known there were hidden crushers, I could have put some thought into how to approach and attempt to detect the crushers, but instead I'm given the lesson that the map will pull the rug out from underneath me so I shouldn't treat any information given to me as a possible aspect of solving the puzzle. Imagine if a puzzle came with decoy pieces. It's like that.
There's a puzzle toward the middle of the map where Tor and Chubby are in a room where a beam of electricity threatens to kill them unless you blow a fuse board protected by some zombies and a gonome. This is great, except for the entirety of what's leading up to this puzzle, and including long after you realize what you're meant to be doing, the way to the fuse board is blocked with a fire door on the opposite side of the window showing their imminent demise in a hallway with multiple exits. Long before this fire door automatically (and silently) opens on the opposite side of us from our most pressing concern, one of us has gibbed running straight into nearby electricity out of urgency and the other has begun backtracking to find a solution quick. Being too slow, the two NPCs die before the players return. Well, guess what. Despite this happening near the middle of the map, the rest of the map doesn't matter! You lose! During the last action setpiece, if Chubby is dead their ghost appears and berates you for not saving them, letting you know that if they had been alive they would have solved the problem for you. Without that solution- you cannot proceed. That's honestly fine, as there's not much map left afterward, but not knowing that beforehand can be extremely frustrating- especially with the sour taste of the annoying final battle that this lose scenario locks you at.
Speaking of, let's talk about the combat. Most of it is pretty basic stuff. Like I said, I like the fight in the crusher hall where you need to lure the enemies into crushers. The rest are mostly waves of enemies somewhat clumsily thrown at the player. There's a long hallway with snipers in it where the player is given no weapons which can supply an upper hand against snipers. The arsenal is pretty strange in this, though I do appreciate the inclusion of a hivehand as the first weapon found. It's frustrating that so combat is often clunky and awkward, so I'm always trying to fully restock with each respawn, but deaths feel so sudden and unexpected. It's the kind of thing that makes a map confusing and unfun.
The final battle is really the worst of it. There's this gimmick where it takes place on top of a grid of platforms which over time lower one-by-one into acid. In this chamber with basically no cover, alien enemies spawn in, hitscan enemies like assassins and Barnabuses rappel down from above or use an elevator from in front of a near-invincible turret. All the while, explosives rain down, and if you fall into the goop and don't have a crate beside you in the pit you can't climb out so you melt and die and have to retrieve your ammo and health and recharge your HEV and if other players are respawning they need to do that too which means waiting for supply respawns. If you think it's annoying that I bring up these restocking pitstops so much, imagine having to actually play it so much. That's the point. Eventually, after killing enough of these enemies, Chubby either saves you or haunts you. Then you move on to the ending.
This map is not all gameplay design though. There is also a graphical design element to it. I would consider this map to be alright in that department. Each corridor is clearly what it is and it's hard to get lost despite most of this map composing of similarly sized hallways. It's mostly Black Mesa looking stuff. Nothing really stands out as particularly good or particularly bad. There's some really fun easter eggs like a computer with an ejectable disc tray. There's a whole-ass secret my teammate and I found while noclipping after playing but couldn't find the entrance to it. That secret is pretty cool and fun.
I know I've been pretty hard on this map throughout, but Svencoop 1 was full of inspiring content that Svencoop 2 simply does not deliver. For a followup to a map which makes me wonder in awe at the possibilities of Half-Life co-op, this really just makes me quest the necessity of such gimmicks. To what end are they employed? Fun? Is it fun to wait long periods of time, suffer repetition over unpredictable traps, have the map failed for you early without your knowledge…. It's not terrible, but man it's not my cup of tea. It all feels so aimless, so rote and perfunctory in its execution. These puzzles needed certain elements, so they just had them. Checklist fulfilled.
Also if you use the teleporter checkpoint later you take fall damage. Dick move.
If you're looking for a fun action map to play with a friend, give it a go. Just remember that you MUST run to the fuse board as quickly as possible through the fire door when Chubby and Tor are in danger. I imagine I don't need to recommend this to see it on server rotations, but go for it. Despite my complaints, it's really not bad. Just an action-packed puzzle romp that felt a bit bland and a bit hollow to me.
Pros:
- Some decent firefights here and there
- I liked the interesting selection of weapons
- I liked solving the puzzles which used pushcrates
- Really fun and well done cutscene bits
- Everything was well made, mechanically
Cons:
- Bad lose condition that is unclear and needlessly punishing
- A lot of needlessly punishing aspects of this map really blindside the player. Creates an abusive atmosphere of mistrust and frustration
- The puzzles really meander in their convolution
- Bad gimmicky final battle section that feels like it's the antithesis of how to stage a fun gun fight
- Even though they're really well done, sometimes the cutscenes are confusing and take a while and I don't know what I'm supposed to do
- I have played this map through like 3 or 4 times now, and almost all of those times we did not save Chubby or Tor. Every time I've played this map I think I've liked it less, and I really don't want to play it again. I don't know if that counts as a con- the general sense of frustration that this map gives me that makes me not want to play it anymore.
Score: 4.5 / 10
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