Resident Evil: The Awakening - Dunkelschwamm

  

    There are many Resident Evil maps in the Sven map database, but this is the first and has the highest score (of the time of writing this paragraph). Players are Bravo squad, the lost and dead STARS member seen at the beginning of the first Resident Evil, can we overturn canon and survive?

SCMapDB page

Author: mrfranswa

Date of final release: 2003

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Resident Evil: The Awakening

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | October 9, 2022 | 5271 characters

    Resident Evil: The Awakening is a map that very appropriately answers the question: What if Resident Evil were Sven Co-op? The result is the marriage of two distinct flavors of jank, some systems that fall apart in tandem, and some middling horror-action in some middling mansion environments.

    The map begins with the players in a spawn area where they must choose a class from three (the one with the gun and the medkit is the only acceptable answer- this class system is silly and unbalanced, and adds little as a result of those factors. Players crop up at a downed helicopter, must travel beneath ground to the mansion grounds, then enter the mansion to really begin the level proper. I mention all of this beginning hullaballoo because whenever players die and respawn they must go through all of it all over again. However, you likely will try not to do that because weapons in this map do not respawn- so once a player who is using them dies, that weapon is simply gone (unless it's a starting class weapon). Since a lot of enemies can kill you before you have time to react to their ambush in this map, it's crucial that somebody be on standby who can revive a player so you don't lose all of those weapons and have to travel all the way back. These systems really all work together to make any class in the class system who isn't the medic ridiculous nonsense to choose, which makes the class system redundant, but it's still part of this long respawn trek you gotta do if you die and not everybody is a medic, thus reinforcing being a medic. See how it's like this vortex between two bad game design ideas, like a binary star system doomed to consumed itself?

    Also, there's just not a lot of ammo in this map. Minor complaint, but it creates an additional big problem. If players are running out of ammo in most Sven maps, it's a good time to start suiciding for ammo. However, you can't do that here because you'll permanently lose weapons for the entire team if you die carrying them and respawn. It all really compounds on itself.

    It's not all doom and gloom- the map itself looks quite passable as a spooky mansion. It has a lot of They Hunger quality to it, not entirely because of the They Hunger zombies and sounds (though they don't hurt). I think the aesthetic works great for a halloween map. There's the mansion, the woods before the mansion, secret rooms from books being placed on shelves or pianos being played or giant chessboards being played, a secret underground lab. My only grievances here are a pretty bland area where players drop into if they fail a rooftop platforming puzzle (which opens way later, but players are likely going to kill themselves before that) and the sewer system which is a huge pain in the ass and just a massive frustration. The sewer isn't just effective at being challenging, it's so off-putting that it alone makes me reconsider whether I want to replay this map.

    Combat, as stated before, is middling. When you get better weapons, it's a blast fighting zombies and hunters. However, much of the time, you're restricted to a few weapons and are having fights with low ammo. Against zombies this is fine, but later when you're fighting tyrants and hunters (which almost always hop out of ambushes directly into the player's face) it's often a death sentence to be so ill equipped. However, I think much of this map does pull off a good balance of tension some of the time. It's so all over the place, I can really only call it middling.

    Toward the end, there is a boss battle with a giant squid that requires guiding it into a giant laser which another player activates to lower its health. This is a lot of fun, I liked this battle. It was almost a bit much, but really if we weren't concerned about saving ammo we probably could have just fought him straight up. I liked this battle on its own, but the whole area surrounding it is really annoying.

    Shortly after the squid battle, my teammate and I were heading back up and we think Chris was killed by a surprise spawned-in tyrant. Neither were in the room where this was happening, but could hear it. The map ended and we were given the ending screen. We considered this the ending and concluded we could review.

    Overall, I think Resident Evil: The Awakeninig is one of the better looking Resident Evil mansion maps, and follows the formula better than any of the others do. I think it's really jank in a few major areas of its design, however, and it brings the whole map down in a major way. I'd recommend playing this if you want a spooky action zombie map with esoteric puzzles, but don't expect to finish it.

Pros:

• Good looking spooky RE mansion
• Lots of weapons
• Great RE setpieces
• Very fun squid boss

Cons:

• Bad class system
• Long respawn treks
• Bad ambushes which almost certainly kill a player
• Bad weapon and ammo systems
• Bad level end condition on Chris dying, considering he's an idiot we can't babysit at all times and are given no indication we need to babysit the whole time
• Terrible, rotten sewer segment

Score: 5.3 / 10