Robo's 1 Hour Map - GrandmasterJ

 

    It seems that making a map in an hour is something of a trend among Sven Co-op mappers. This one is from Robootto, an infamous author known for making strange and unplayable maps. Thankfully this map is, as the map description says, almost playable.

SCMapDB page

Author: Robootto

Date of final release: 2005

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Robo's 1 Hour Map

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | September 17, 2022 | 3651 characters

    For a map made in one hour, this is pretty terrible. I played this map from the Big Robootto Map Pack, and that version was fullbright, I then downloaded the map off the map's page and reinstalled from that, the map's lighting was fixed. So if you have the big map pack you'll want to use this one instead, not that it matters much, you probably shouldn't play this map.

    When the map starts I am already being eaten by headcrabs. This is a good start. There are weapons and ammo strewn about the floor, each door we open brings forth enemies into spawn, eventually with a huge swarm of alien grunts. There is so much spawn killing in this map, when players spawn they have the crowbar out, so when we spawn and are completely boxed in by alien grunts all we can do is hit them about two times before dying. They also eat our corpses and regain health. Our only saving grace was the snarks they kept throwing, after we died it would be a swarm of alien grunts with an even bigger swarm of snarks counting down to detonation. Without the grunts' own snarks we would never have gotten through that section.

    After that is a hole down to the next area, there is no way back up so don't accidentally fall down the hole without picking up weapons like I did. The next area is a confusing button system with a railing hallway. I think players aren't supposed to be able to jump over the rails, but because of the climbing mechanic we can and the button puzzle is completely nullified. This is great becuase the button puzzle is bad and only serves to limit which players can progress. The area immediately after has a cold floor that will freeze players dead, there is glass over the floor, I'm guessing to keep players from dying on the cold floor. But there are also enemies in this room, so when we opened the door we got into a firefight and the floor ended up breaking. Try as we might we could not survive the room for very long at all, prompting us to start noclipping.

    After this room is a teleport to mid-air followed by a long and deadly fall through a razor thin slice of water. To not die we have to hold spacebar to swim up so when we hit the sliver of water we can arrest our fall. Past that is a long hallway filled with zombies and another long hallway filled with vortigaunts. Now, in the fullbright version we played form the Big Map Pack there was another long hallway with a metal texture followed by a long fleshy hallway blocked off by a wall (we noclipped around it) and filled with headcrabs. That was not in the nicely lit version we played off the map page download. An entire long useless hallway is gone, what is going on here?

    The map is not good, spawn is the main battleground early on in the map and players are faced with a battle that we only won due to the enemy's carelessness. There are annoying puzzles like the buttons and the sliver of water, impossible puzzles like the cold room, and long hallways full of annoying enemies. The map also has no end, so there's that. The only thing I liked about this map was the amount of firepower we get at the start, there was a hallway full of zombies that I tossed satchel charges down, and that was very fun.

Pros:

• Good weapons and ammo at spawn
• the lighting on the map downloaded from the map page is pretty moody

Cons:

• bad puzzles that are broken
• the freeze room is seemingly impossible if the floor breaks
• enemies invade spawn
• no map end

Score: 2 / 10