Punk Secret Place - Dunkelschwamm

  

    I don't really know what secrets I was supposed to find, but this map can sure be a place. Hallways, doors that aren't doors but breakable walls instead, and some other random stuff can all be found here.

SCMapDB page

Author: Robootto

Date of final release: 2003

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Punk Secret Place

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | July 28, 2022 | 4393 characters

    What can I say? Robootto does it again.

Act I.

    Punk Secret Place is a map about the secret place and the punks who find it. You'd need to be a punk, you see, for only punks take the time it takes to break through the breakable doors which permeate the first act of this 5-act play. Breakable doors, at least 100 of them I'm sure, all lead up to a boss door or sorts. There is a glass security door which takes, gosh, just so much to destroy. It's in a pretty cramped area, and bless robootto he gives an area up near spawn and the ammo respawners where people can fire down on the door for support, but there's just no way for this to not be awkward firing into it. My teammate and I spent enough time punishing it, spending all of our ammo, to feel like we were certainly punks by the time we made it to the other side. Maybe with tons of people this part wouldn't be so bad. But here, with the two of us, robootto had made punks of the both of us.

Act II.

    What follows is a series of rooms which I can only describe as powerplant labcrap storage rooms, some with silly but inconsequential traps which are easily jumped over. Extremely easy to jump over, I would say, because you have the longjump module. I find these rooms charming. Their brushwork is crude and basic, but I like the flashing radioactive sludge wedges. It's cute.

Act III.

    This is where we truly became punks. If the doors hadn't done it, it was the maze. Fuck the maze. The maze is featureless, forces us to crawl, is sprawling and intricate, and I got no time for it. After following what I thought was some natural progression, not noticing branching paths I could seriously take, ending up in a dead end, and realizing my teammate and I now had to maneuver around this crawly maze slowly obstructing eachother, I got to thinking- what about the servers that actually have enough people on them to trivialize the boss door in Act I? The arteries of this hellish maze would be utterly congested.

    We noclipped, and felt no regret.

Act IV.

    Revenge of the labcrap, you might say. A room with water blocks you can walk in and out of to traverse below a wall, a room with "PUNK CLAN" emblazoned in brushes and funky colors, and a server room that's actually pretty kickin. These little vignette rooms are where I think robootto really shines. They're charming and weird and not super well made but I enjoy spending time in them. There's so much of his maps that feels like it exists just to taunt and it feels so mean spirited. Whenever robootto opens up and tries to make something that's just fun and neat and he tries to share something genuinely cool with us I really enjoy spending time in his maps. It makes me want to see more of what robootto has to offer.

Act V.

    The final room in the map is the "FUN" room. You know it's fun because "FUN" is written in brushes at the end of a long pool full of green goo. You have three modes of traversal across: a narrow beam on the center, platforms for jumping across on the left, and monkey bars to the right. The room is bright and gaudy, but I was ready to just have some fun in a playground to round out the map. I chose the monkey bars, saddled up, jumped to grab them, found that there was no ladder brush to grab onto, and plummeted into the green goo.

    "SV_HullPointContents: bad node number"

    The server crashed.

    In summary: If you want a map to annoy your friends and make them feel like punks for thinking they can have fun hanging out with you, Punk Secret Place is for you. If you put this on your server and anybody hates themselves enough to finish the map it'll crash your server, so don't do that.

Pros:

• Some cute little labcrap rooms
• Lots of weapons to play with
• I thought the use of water was creative
• To robootto's credit, I think the goo crashing the server is intended. So, like, kudos

Cons:

• Fuck the maze
• Fuck opening the map with spending all of your time clicking on a door for all of our ammo
• The goo crashing the server is a liability for anybody considering hosting this
• As cute as the cute parts of the map are, most of the map is tedious, repetitious, featureless, and bland

Score: 3.7 / 10