Svencoop 2 - GrandmasterJ

 

    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.

SCMapDB page

Author: Sven Viking

Date of final release: 2008

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Svencoop 2

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | July 17, 2022 | 7913 characters

    I couldn't really give an honest review of the first map in this series. It was really a demonstration and a bar setter for the rest of the maps for Sven Co-op. To be honest, I didn't much like it, but I'm spoiled with over 20 years of not only improved mapping resources but also fewer limits and more functionality of the engine. Svencoop2 comes right on the heels of the first map, just one year later. It keeps on demonstrating gameplay mechanics and has very fun cutscenes but it definitely wears on me a lot more than the first game.

    The map starts off where the last one ended, a flooded room. Tor appears and opens the door for you and disappears stating this is the last time he will help you. A hive hand lies in the threshold and is the only gun players have for now. Around the corner a friendly grunt runs by followed by some xen creatures. Saving him will trigger a scene where he breaks a window and jumps over, at the very end of the map he will come back. If you don't save him, its fine.

    A door will break open allowing access to a room with a shotgun and some ammo. There is a vent here and a ladder, both go to the same room. The vent is full of headcrabs and gives players a higher vantage point, but it doesn't really help a whole lot. There are assassins in the next room and after they are gone some houndeyes and vortigaunts start teleporting in endlessly. A player needs to sit on a platform while another player spins a wheel and raises them up into a hole with a rocket launcher. The floor will open up and that player will fall into water. The player on the wheel has to go back to the room where you saved (or didn't save) the friendly soldier and press a button by what looks like a water tank. This will allow the rocket launcher player to escape the trap. Go back to the room with the endless aliens and go through the door. It's a confusing nonsensical sequence and I don't really understand how I knew to do all that. It is not obvious. Also the rocket launcher has pretty much no good chances to use it.

    The next room has Tor again, doing some wacky hijinks in a room with our pal Chubby. Don't leave while this sequence is going on. It may not affect the gameplay if that friendly soldier dies, but this next part is crucial or else the map will be unwinnable. Tor will destroy a chunk of machinery and cause electricity to arc dangerously. A blast door will open automatically, kill the enemies on the other side of it, open the fuse box, and blow up the fuses. If this is not done fast enough then both Tor and Chubby die and are unable to assist in the final room.

    In the next area there is a deadly crossfire of turrets, watch out. There is some strange architecture including a hallway that ends in a vending machine, something I thought was only something in amateur maps. There is a puzzle with an enemy at the bottom of a ladder that shoots deadly lasers. The only way to kill it is to drop a crate on it.

    The next area is a long hallway with some tricks. The section with the big tiles will have one color, randomly selected to be either black or white, become crushers that will smash players on contact. Right after this is a corner with a super gonome and super alien slave, which are just high health variants. The best solution is to lead them into the smashers. There is another gonome further in, the combination of tight corridors, limited weapons, and insanely high health makes the gonomes super deadly. But the smashers kill them instantly so suicide into the smashers with the gonomes is the best way. After all that we finally get to a checkpoint.

    There is a nice area in the long hallway with three of the ammo cannister things that give out a lot of ammo, a HEV charger, an M16, a revolver, and a black hole that will instantly gib players. This checkpoint comes a little late in my opinion and players take fall damage coming out of it. There is a weird health thing next to the black pit of death so players can top oiff but it is still very annoying.

    Down a hallway of snipers and we come to the final big challenge. There is a room with a window and a scientist. Eventually the scientist will reveal himself to be evil and start a big death trap where the floor recedes into toxic waste, male assassins drop in endlessly, TNT falls form the sky and explodes, crazy stuff starts happening. Here is where saving Chubby comes in handy, at a certain kill count Chubby will appear and open the door allowing you to escape. I played this map a few times and we kept losing and didn't know why, we thought this last battle was a puzzle we were failing. But no, there is nothing more complex than run around the room killing enemies until the door opens. A wall will open in the checkpoint allowing respawning players access to this final room, it even has a really cool and helpful map of the shifting landscape of this room with a button moving the teleport exit around.

    Eventually the door opens, and we get to run ahead and see the evil scientist safe behind glass. A door opens up and two robo grunts appear but my teammate and I used underbarrel grenades to trivialize them. The soldier we saved earlier comes in through a door and subdues the evil scientist. Text assures us there will be a svencoop 3. But I don't think we need a svencoop 3. If done correctly we beat the evil scientist in this map. It's been 20 years, there are plenty of demonstrations of what this mod can do, there are a lot of resources out there to encourage new mappers.

    The map is decent, for the time it came out it was probably the best map set by a wide margin. But a lot of things added up for me to detract form an otherwise great experience. Saving Chubby may be obvious to some players, but I ran ahead, saw that my teammate was not with me and ran back. But that triggered the whole 'save Chubby' sequence and I was back at spawn resupplying with my teammate. When we got back Chubby was long dead, then we proceeded with the level and played until the game told us we lost (and by that I mean Chubby telling us he could have saved us. Less astute gamers would probably not realize this was alluding to the earlier sequence). I don't think a co-op shooter like Sven really benefits from sequences that can render the map unwinnable. I also felt like the first checkpoint took too long, or at least move the randomized smashers after the checkpoint area. I spent a lot of time walking back here and then I turn a corner and get smashed with no warning. It was a bit frustrating and I felt like my time was being wasted. The fall damage from the checkpoint does not help things. The second teleporter into the final fight room is pretty cool though. Sometimes my teammate would suck the HEV charger dry and leave me nothing, so I would enter the battle with no armor and get shot so hard I would die before my feet touch the ground. Dying before my feet touch the ground is no good. It's even worse then I would have survived had there been enough armor for more than one person. All in all. I would say a decent map with great puzzles and cutscenes marred by early Sven's most common mapping problems.

Pros:

• Real fun scripted NPC dialogue sections
• I like how saving the soldier had a fun non-gameplay changing moment in the end
• the ladder crate puzzle makes me laugh.

Cons:

• that rocket launcher water tank puzzle makes no sense
• having the map be unwinnable after failing to finish a sequence fast enough is not good at all
• the smasher hall was where the checkpoint should have been
• checkpoint causes fall damage
• the final fight is a fustercluck, the objective is not apparent, players can die immediately on entry

Score: 6 / 10