Resident Evil: Biohazard - Dunkelschwamm

 

     The most recent Resident Evil map takes place in the streets and the Raccoon City Police Department just like Resident Evil 2. Later on it takes on a blend of different Resident Evil titles.

SCMapDB page

Author: Jamesmarine

Date of final release: 2017

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Resident Evil: Biohazard

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | October 20, 2022 | 5842 characters

    Resident Evil: Biohazard is a Sven Co-op walkthrough map themed after Resident Evil. Now, when you say Resident Evil, you might think: "gosh, what a media franchise! What Resident Evil could you mean? Do you mean the first game in the puzzle mansion? Or the second game, with the police station? Or the third game, on the streets? Or the movie franchise, which is totally different?" The answer to your question is "Yes."

    This map is a big mix of Resident Evil media, barely glancing the essence of each game. Start in the streets, move your way up to the police station, find that the police station is far more incorporated into a massive mansion than even the wacky police station in RE2 was, take a sewer train into the Paul WS Anderson film franchise and get threatened by the Red Queen and be told by an invincible Wesker to beat it after watching him laser a cripple. If this sounds like nonsense, that's because it is. If this sounds like fun nonsense, maybe you'll have fun.

    But, of course, the narrative isn't everything. In the aesthetic department, I would say this map is quite a success- the urban environment exterior is pulled off fantastically, creating a really immersive setting despite its linear hallway approach. Many areas are very memorable, which helps when later there is lots of backtrack scavenger hunting. There's posters referencing pop culture, custom store fronts, plenty of enterable buildings- there's a lot of effort in this map and it looks great- even though the majority of the enemies are silly They Hunger zombies, which are so trite by this point in time. I think, in particular, the Paul WS Anderson Umbrella labs later, while laughable to reference, looked great as a fresh execution of the sterile biolab in goldsrc.

    The curse of the Resident Evil map persists, unfortunately. While most RE maps suffer greatly from aggravating enemies, this one is boringly empty for how expansive and backtracky it is. There are a smattering of enemies early on which, even if you choose the hard difficulty in the beginning spawn area, are dirt-easy to a single player. Once these zombies are dispatched, the map becomes this boring, empty showcase where everything which is initially charming gets stale on the fifth revisit. The puzzles are mostly pretty lame key item puzzles. Find matches to a fireplace that opens a tiny painting revealing a gem which, when placed before a statue, opens a door somewhere. I'm not saying these contrived nonsense puzzles are necessarily bad since they're what's to be expected from a Resident Evil experience- but there are so many of them and they each require a ridiculous amount of backtracking through nothing.

    I also want to mention that there's a puzzle wherein a pair of bolt cutters are initially described as being "too heavy" to pick up. This is the exact way to do one of these puzzles wrong. Later I came back here and we found that the bolt cutters were easily retrieved. I looked through the console to see all of the mentions of where we picked up key items, but no announcements reveal to me why I was suddenly able to pick up those bolt cutters. When I was first told that the bolt cutters were too heavy to carry I asked out loud "Am I supposed to make them lighter?" It's inherently nonsense on its face that the problem in a puzzle like this is that the bolt cutters are too heavy and that something in a Sven Co-op map is supposed to solve it, so I dismiss it as something that's going to have a coherent explanation (and I was right to). If you are causing your players to dismiss your puzzle as something that will not have a coherent explanation you are NOT creating a good puzzle game which encourages players to outsmart it. The very idea of the puzzle being coherent made me chuckle- I was laughing at the design. That's a very bad sign.

    While the action picks up minorly toward the end with a fairly simple firefight with lots of cover and supplies, this map is much like a T-infected zombie: slow, cumbersome, thoughtless, but with the outward appearance of something which was once full of life, here only going through the motions. There were multiple moments where I thought this might by my favorite of the Resident Evil maps, and after playing I think it probably suffered from fewer glaring, frustrating issues than those maps. However, it is pretty boring, and I wouldn't replay it. Perhaps that's my condemnation of Resident Evil maps as a whole.

    If you're looking for horror maps to add to a list, you can certainly do better or worse than Resident Evil Biohazard. I recommend it if you're looking for a chill time, as there's very little combat. Perhaps the back-and-forth scavenger hunt gameplay will be more to your liking.

Pros:

• The environments were really nice and full great details (especially the world textures)
• I like that this map did not get very mazey- it only got as mazey as normal, real buildings do
• Despite some bad examples, the scavenger hunt aspect of the map rarely left me feeling unfairly stumped
• Fun cutscenes
• Good weapons

Cons:

• A select few puzzles are garbage
• Combat is boring and slow and easy and absent for most of the map
• There's a sewer, and it sucks
• There is so much backtracking that everything I enjoy about the environment fails to hold up by the end
• There's a room which, as far as I can tell, is just a certain death crusher trap with no exit, which is really annoying. We ended up having to do more backtracking because of this. Yes, I'm taking a full con for this. Put petty shit in your map, get petty shit in your reviews.
• Anticlimax ending.

Score: 6.1 / 10