Backattack - GrandmasterJ

 

    Just another average Black Mesa themed walkthrough map. Backattack is a small collection of Black Mesa themed areas with some heavy combat sprinkled around.

SCMapDB page

Author: Sust

Date of final release: 2004

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Backattack

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | September 10, 2022 | 3433 characters

    The map description reads "a small indoor/outdoor walkthrough map" and that is really the best way to describe it. This map has your standard Black Mesa fare, with lots of underground hallways, crates, plenty of vents, and some desert outdoor areas. The map is fairly short, but the enemies have tons of health and there is not much ammo around, it is definitely geared for more players on a server.

    Players start off in a tunnel with a crate. The crate breaks as players walk by and a headcrab feebly attacks. You're going to want to go inside this crate because it has the revolver in it. Right after that is a locked door, a big door, and an unlocked door to an office with an angry Barney shooting at you through a little window. Pressing the button in this office will open the big door and subject players to an absolute onslaught of snipers, turrets, and heavy weapons grunts. This room also has the shotgun and an HEV station. It's worth mentioning that players start off with 25 HEV, this is very helpful.

    The vents don't have transparency so it is not obvious at first that this is the way forward, but after an annoying vent section filled with headcrabs players progress to a shack with a hole in the ceiling and some grenades that respawn fast. These grenades are great. Right outside the front door of the shack is a big arena filled with soldiers, snipers, and a bunch of crates and shipping containers. My teammate and I endlessly hit them with grenades until they all died. We walked out, opened a door that required two buttons hit simultaneously (co-op required!) and did the same thing with aliens. Past that is a corner with a sneaky barnacle and another headcrabbed vent section.

    The next area is a bunch of soldiers, here we get a shortcut to spawn, unlocking a door from the other side to reveal a ladder to the next area. This was very helpful, even if using the shortcut had us skipping getting very useful grenades. There are more hallway shaped rooms with more soldiers to kill and eventually we get to one outside where the soldiers keep respawning. After fighting to the door and pressing a button the map ends with a 'To be continued'.

    The map was short and sweet. The enemies are plentiful and beefy and the ammo and armor is very limited, the more players the better. I wasn't a fan of the standard Black Mesa look and uninspired level design, especially the vents. But I can't say the map was poorly made, the map looked like a fine representation of Black Mesa, although I did see some misaligned textures at a few points. The shortcut helped the map not feel like a chore, it came at exactly the right time, and the map even ended right as I was starting to feel over it. This is a short map that definitely benefits from being short.

Pros:

• The combat is geared for cooperative play, its old school Sven gameplay
• that shortcut helped the map keep up the pace of the action
• players start with a bit of HEV and there is an HEV charger near spawn
• the map is the perfect length for what it is trying to do

Cons:

• the two vents filled with headcrabs was very uninspired and not fun
• the shortcut skips the grenades
• not really anything that stands out in this map

Score: 6 / 10