The Community Map Project - GrandmasterJ

    Featuring 15 authors, 7 years of development (or 12 depending on how you define 'development time'), and 7 individual maps, The Community Map Project is a beast of a map set. Somewhat unrelated, but this post taught me that Blogger has limits to how many labels a post can have, a max of 20, when I was tagging this post I was forced to leave out 'series' and 'Black Mesa'.

SCMapDB page

Authors: al_peggio, Amckern, Aurora, BMT, Dan200, eMTeG, Fortune2, Hezus, Koelzk, Morgan, Nih, PD-KC, Penguin, The_6th_monkey, The-Real-Game

(Due to the number of authors and the page tag limit of 20, not all authors are tagged)

Date of final release: 2009, updated version 2015

Maps in package: 7

Map review of The Community Map Project

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | August 14, 2022 | 6073 characters

    This is an interesting map pack and presents somewhat of a problem to review. It's got about 15 authors and according to the map description it did not have a smooth development. The result is whelming.

    The map is based around typical Black Mesa fare, making this yet another Black Mesa adventure. This isn't to say the map looks bad, on the contrary there is consistently good and fun brushwork throughout with tons of impressive set pieces. My teammate remarked at one point that it seemed like a map set made for screenshots. So I'm a bit disappointed that I the decided look was standard Black Mesa fare and that the first level drops into a sewer followed by vents almost immediately. It surprises me that the map with 15 authors would feel so uninspired right off the bat. I feel compelled to mention once again that the map does look gorgeous. I remember remarking to my teammate that the map set looked like the author RNG remade Half-Life, assuming you don't know who that is, that is a compliment.

    As an aside, Between sewers and vents there is a glass wall with an explosive crate on the other side. Players start off with some good weapons, including one satchel charge which I promptly threw over and detonated by the crate. It did not blow up, instead we later teleported a vortigaunt to go slap it, thus blowing the wall open. A lot of this map is designed really well, but there are certain areas like this whose solutions are not apparent. This is a mild example and there are worse later in the map series. Most explosive crates in the map set do explode when damaged enough, but some (two or three I think?) don't and it is never apparent until after you've wasted ammo trying.

    One thing the map set really shines in is updating checkpoints and shortcuts. The map set also really sucks at those things too, but early on these quality of life considerations were incredibly helpful and made the map set go by smoothly. We really tore through the series at first, with just my teammate and I we didn't have a problem with most enemies, at first. The map will increasingly throw in black ops soldiers with underbarrel grenades and others with snipers, this is a deadly combination and slowed our progress to a crawl. Later in the map series the checkpoints and shortcuts dry up and players have to deal with long travel times just to get killed the moment they enter a sniper's view. This is not the only thing to change later in the map series, maps start to get shorter, which somewhat mitigates the problem with no checkpoints but not enough. This is completely understandable given that the project was apparently declared dead multiple times, there is a clear decline in map quality at the end and an increasing feeling of content added for the sake of content added.

    At the end of the day, the experience was high quality bland. The map was incredibly detailed and lovingly crafted but didn't show me anything I haven't seen before. The early maps have lots of helpful features like checkpoints, shortcuts, cut scenes showing objectives, messages tracking progress that are balanced out by the lack of these things later. I don't think the map set is bad by any stretch, most of it is very competently done, I just got tired of it. Once I hit the halfway point I was over it. There are seven maps, I started keeping notes at map four of things that really annoyed me, and here they are: In the fourth map there was a rocket launcher, which I picked up, then I continued, found a gargantua, blew myself to gibs with the rocket, and the rocket launcher never respawned, forcing us to kill a gargantua with grenades and the one satchel charge we start the level with; In the fifth map there is an area with no HEV where players face snipers (the snipers one/two-hit us) and we die a lot, the way back from spawn is past an elevator and is painful to go through every single time; The sixth map also has particularly bad lengthy bits of hallway respawning players have to go through to get back to the action, including a particularly bad vent section.

    I don't want to just focus on the bad parts, commap2 has a very impressive massive satellite dish, as well as some big wacky computers that remind me of Toonrun. It's some very fun architecture. Map 2 also has my favorite sequence of the whole series with a monster bugs bunnying up through the asphalt. Commap3 opens up with a big noisy science laundry machine with spinning drum, it's so simple and yet is so cool to look at. Commap3 has this outside area with multiple buildings and a road that may be the best looking Black Mesa area I've seen in a Sven Co-op map. In commap there is a massively fun bit where players are driving an APC and an enemy tank is chasing them.

    Ultimately I do recommend this map. It's well made and looks good. I'm just disappointed that it wasn't a consistently fun experience and was painted in the same shades of Black Mesa that I've seen so many times before. I feel with the sheer amount of mapping power involved in this endeavor should have amounted to something more. The result we got is good, but not great. It is fun to play but is overshadowed by better maps. It's a otherwise pleasant guest that overstays his/her welcome and talks just a tad too much, not perfect, but pretty good.

Pros:

• Looks really good, has great details
• the means of progression is delivered to the players well, for the most part
• players are equipped well, for the most part
• checkpoints and shortcuts abound, less so in the second half of the series
• the tank sequence was great fun

Cons:

• Not interesting enough for how long it is. The map set runs out of steam and so did I
• the map set did not consistently have checkpoints and shortcuts in the later maps
• I don't know why the rocket launcher didn't respawn, that ruined the gargantua fight

Score: 7.5 / 10