Resident Evil 2 Mini Game - Dunkelschwamm

  

    Take a break from the other Resident Evil maps where you explore a mansion maze. Fight never ending enemies on the streets and explore to find new areas and secrets.

SCMapDB page

Author: mrfranswa

Date of final release: 2004

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Resident Evil 2 Mini Game

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | October 16, 2022 | 5354 characters

    Resident Evil 2 Mini Game is a zombie sandbox map which endlessly drops zombies and some other random foes on you, mostly in the theme of Resident Evil. The setting is a city block beside a farmhouse parked in a small patch of forest.

    Most of the map takes place on a city block beside a patch of forest, connected two tunnels, creating a big ring. The city block area includes a garage, a park, a sandbag-fortified position with a friendly soldier, and some buildings which can be variously levels of entered. Boosting atop one building grants a crowbar (key item, not weapon) which opens a door to an NPC who swears to create an ally for us if we defend him before darting straight into enemies repeatedly and getting himself killed. It would have been easier if we had a medkit that we could attempt to undo his stupidity with, but every time we picked off an enemy who was harassing him, he was already in the grips of another.

    The map has a few such missions. One involves protecting a "whore" (I hope you're not too put off by casual misogyny, because this map does playfully engage in that) in a farmhouse while zombies pour in. Attempting this alone got her killed, and as there's not second attempt at this mission I never saw this through. The thing about these protection missions is that you get no medkit to mitigate errant damage to your VIP, and they start without warning, leaving you underequipped and undermanned to protect these one-attempt characters for TEN WHOLE MINUTES. I'm not doing that.

    Another quest involved destroying a guy's rampaging machine, which spawns the big rhino monster from Natural Selection as a gargantua which must be dealt with using grenades, tripmines, or underbarrel grenades from the supply chest behind the sandbags. This mission can be repeated, which adds to the overall appeal of the map. As far as battles go, being able to consistently restart this one I think is the most dynamic choice the author could have made. Much better than the robots grunts.

    There's one or two robot grunts in the map which gave us a lot of trouble at first. The thing is, early on, especially if you spawn near the farmhouse, you'll not have much in the way of weapons for a while. You start with a chainsaw which is very decent for dealing with zombies and headcrabs (of which there are many), but it does jack shit against robots. When you do start picking up weapons, it's in the form of a 9mm and an M16 beside a crate with grenades and tripmines (at the sandbags), a shotgun in one of the tunnels between the forest and the city block, a sniper in the farmhouse, and an MP5 in one of the buildings. I didn't notice anything beyond that. I recommend going for the sandbags early so you can blow the robots to smithereens.

    The visuals of the map are fine. It's one of those Goldsrc wonderlands with weird tunnels, chunks of farmstead, a city block with an awkward park lot between tall buildings… it's a weird mess in the way I think Goldsrc maps often tend to be. There's custom models which help enhance the experience, and the enemies look pretty great. Overall, there's nothing I'd complain about with the map's visuals much other than that it seems to signpost areas for boosting up to, but then puts invisible walls there. However, there is one area that you are supposed to boost up to, which looks as boostable as the other areas. I think this kind of inconsistency only leads to mixed signals and disappointment. Up the stairs of the farmhouse, though, you can play some Misfits music which I was kinda into.

    To end the map you need to murder a woman in the spawn area. I mean, hey, that's one way to end a map.

    I also want to point out that I think a lot of my problems with the map would have been solved with the inclusion of a medkit. When you start out you often take hits because you have no weapons, but by the time you have weapons you have less and less health. Often I'd feel a run is near to ruined just because I take damage early on. There are no health pickups in this map. Beyond that, the lack of a medkit means the escort missions are that much more punishing and frustrating in Sven Co-op, which is an environment where I think designers should give a lot more grace to compensate for inevitable jank. The jank ruined those missions for me here, and medkits could have been the buffer there.

    Overall, I think Resident Evil 2 Mini Game is a somewhat annoying zombie survival map, but it has some very satisfying zombie fighting. If you're the type of person who's into endlessly fighting zombies, and don't care that the missions are either sloppily implemented or annoying escort missions, you'll probably have fun with this.

Pros:

• Fun environment and custom models
• Very satisfying gibbing zombies and headcrab chickens
• A fun variety of settings
• Very nice weapon caches

Cons:

• The missions were janky and annoying
• The lack of a medkit was a constant pain
• Gets old very fast
• I try not to be one of those guys constantly crusading about sexism in media, but I feel like this map is just trying to be shocking in a way that hasn't aged well

Score: 5 / 10