Auspices - Dunkelschwamm

 

    Auspice (ôspəs), noun, a divine or prophetic token. This is an officially released map for Sven Co-op 3.0 taking place somewhere in Black Mesa with good variety of combat, puzzles, and exploration.

Author: Seraph

Date of final release: 2003

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Auspices

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | August 18, 2022 | 5266 characters

    Auspices is a map that I always dread playing but everybody else seems excited to play. I never protest, because I can never remember why I dread playing Auspices. I usually don't remember much of this map at all.

    I was excited, this time, to explore why that may be, as I played to review this map. I think I've figured some things out along the way. Let's cover basics.

    First of all, Auspices is not necessarily a map anybody should dread- it's full of fun ideas, a great arsenal, some really action-packed combat, very well brushed and textured, and has some great checkpoints. Before I delve into the bit-by-bit, where I may seem a bit more negative at times, I want to preface by saying that this is definitely an above-average, dare I say, quite good map. Right out the gate here, I want to impress on you, dear reader, that I do recommend this map for private play and server rotations.

    Now, the rest.

    Auspices starts players with some quite impressive imagery with a big, open, red outdoor nighttime concrete brutalist fortress area with a couple bunkers and a bunch of military guys. Players are given a sniper rifle to counter-snipe some blackops guys. By infiltrating the bunkers, we enter a complex full of HECU, a storage area full of HECU, sometimes hallways full of xen aliens, underground complex full of shock troopers and headcrabs and gonomes. There's quite a cadre of aliens and monsters and grunts. It's pretty good stuff, and there's some randomized paths to keep things interesting.

    Bits that stand out to me include: crawling under a rail which a tram occasionally speeds by on, gibbing anybody standing; a frankly annoying segment on a conveyor belt where players must proceed upstream on a belt against enemies who liberally throw grenades and machinegun you down; areas where ceilings collapse, revealing soldiers who seem to have have sealed themselves into tiny concrete crypts to wait for an ambush; just lots of falling through holes in the ground, crawling in pipes and vents, crawlspaces- tones of that shit.

    I think one of the areas where the map falls apart for me is that it really is just a bit environmentally bland to me. It's hard for me to find standard Black Mesa textures interesting, and this map applies them with so little concern. While everything fits together and looks well constructed, every corridor in the complex is the picture of sterility. It's creates this bland look that's really hard to form any sort of mental connections to. All the annoying bits- the crawling, the corridors full of grenades, the waves of enemies unexpectedly spawning in right on top of us in the area we just painstakingly conquered, then silly conveyor belt- those are the parts that stand out to me in the end, because everything else is just kinda basely good and enjoyable but not terribly interesting.

    Speaking of being left with a bad impression, the final boss portion of this map is nonsense. First, it spawns in a bunch of enemies. Once you've dealt with those, a laser gun fires at the players until they destroy and intermittently vulnerable generator. Then they have to do that again, but with two laser guns firing at them.

    Then the second phase begins: players must do what I called the "Laser Dance" by jumping around several lasers on the floor. If you suffer from server lag at all- prepare to get culled here. Every now and then, a force field in the middle of a wall opens just low enough that players can awkwardly throw grenades or shoot spores in with a high chance of bounce-back during a short window of time to explode additional generators(?) which lower more fore fields until the third phase begins.

    The third phase is a gargantua. There's a rocket launcher you can grab where the garg comes out, but I didn't see that so I just took him out with grenades. Then the map's over.

    Like I said, I recommend the map for private and server play. Most of it is a positive experience when you're playing it. Just really hold onto those positive feelings, because if you look back and find you only remember grey corridors, frustrating crawlspaces, an annoying-as-shit boss chamber, and a bad conveyer belt room- at least try to remember the fun of the fun bits.

Pros:

• Very well done brushwork and no technical issues with textures
• Very fast and hard combat sequences that the players are generally well equipped for most of the time
• Very very good checkpoints
• Good SAW and spore launcher application
• Interesting path randomization idea

Cons:

• Some combat is annoying, especially when there's an environmental aspect at play or it involves enemies spawning in mass numbers on top of what we had just cleaned out unexpectedly
• Tons of this map involves crawling, which is especially cruel considering giving the players miniguns as often as this map does
• Really shoddy final boss area that I don't like
• Utterly bland aesthetic almost all the way through.
• Bad conveyer belt room with utterly annoying navigation
• The lasting impression this map leaves is a bad one

Score: 6.6 / 10