Attack Wave - Dunkelschwamm

  

    There are two waves that attack player spawn, one is 100 human soldiers and the other is 100 aliens. Players are given great cover and are lavished with supplies, making the combat fairly trivial.

SCMapDB page

Author: Cannibal

Date of final release: 2002

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Attack Wave

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | August 21, 2022 | 3174 characters

    Attack-Wave is a base defense map which is decently well made, full of many fun secrets, has a memorable layout, and is pretty boring much of the time.

    100 respawning grunts attack the base, and then 100 aliens. Players must kill them all!

    I think where Attack-Wave is at its strongest is where it hides fun weaponry and tactics for the players to use against the attackers. There's underground tunnels which take players behind the enemy spawnpoint, a tower which overlooks their spawnpoint, an extra house to hide in, a Barney spawner, a handful of particularly useful weapons in the base and a bunch of the more powerful ones if the player takes a moment to search, a powerful mounted turret, blast doors, many levels to fire from- it's the type of base setup that would comfortably fit 8 or more players and create a lot of chaos.

    The problem is that enemies spawn in a slow enough rate that two players can reliably keep enemies from moving far from their spawns if vigilant. The grunts in the first wave spawn in only 3 at a time and can be easily taken care of with the mounted gun alone. When the second wave rolls around, the variety of aliens makes it harder for a single tactic to turn the map into a simple grind. Long before the map was over we were bored, and I can only imagine how easy it would be if we actually filled the base with those 8 or more players. The map took way too long to end and most of that time was spent waiting for the next trickling of enemies to spawn.

    The brushwork of the map is simple enough but very serviceable. There weren't any glaring issues that I could tell, and was mostly standard HL1 fare. The base's architecture is very basic, with an elevator in the back moving players between a ground lobby floor and the mounted gun floor, which in turn houses a ladder which leads up to the roof where a crossbow sits handy. Both of the main floors house restock supply cabinets in the sides. It's as straight-forward as you can get for a base. There's also a laser fence that I'm very uncertain about because we didn't learn about it until the end of the map. I can only imagine that it made the map even easier.

    If you're looking for a map to play with a friend give this a go. If you play with more than two, I can only imagine it's criminally boring. Throw it on a server for filler content.

Pros:

• I really like the hidden weapon stuff
• Pretty decently brushed stuff
• Things really heat up I think when the aliens start spawning in
• I like a lot about the battlefield's layout

Cons:

• The base itself has a very boring layout if not for all the features it houses
• The map is very easy and pretty boring- the enemy forces don't deliver any kind of challenge that is satisfyingly held back by the tools given
• Enemies spawn in so slowly most of the map is spent waiting for more to spawn in and dealing with the one that scrambled away while you killed the other two immediately after spawning

Score: 4.9 / 10