Resident Evil: Biohazard - GrandmasterJ

     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 GrandmasterJ | October 20, 2022 | 7715 characters

    I really want to like a Resident Evil Sven Co-op map. This map starts off strong with a beautiful opening, a great looking street, and it actually looks like a Resident Evil themed map. It's got a lot of backtracking and a combination of few enemies and firepower makes a lot of the map pretty boring.

    The map starts with difficulty selection, normal and hard. We opted for normal but in hindsight that may have made the map far too easy for two seasoned players. Regardless of difficulty players get shown a cutscene introduction and are dropped onto the city streets. There are no enemies on the city streets. Most of the city street is good looking facade with plenty of debris strewn about, there is some good looking high poly trash here. Very few doors on the street can be opened, most of them open later in a string of neverending back and forth across the map, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The start of the map is walking down a city street themed hallway. Players trigger a van crashing into a wall after talking to a gun store owner, I don't know what that is about but it's the only thing that happens on the streets for now. Players get a knife and pistol here, but no medkit.

    The next area is the Raccoon City Police Department, that and the gun store sequence had me thinking we were playing a Resident Evil 2 themed map. This map is mostly RE2 but has parts of a lot of different Resident Evil titles referenced in some way. The Police Station is good looking if a bit sparse. Players can climb up the walls or boost off each other to access the second floor, sequence breaking, But the correct way to progress is to insert a floppy disk into a computer, wait an arbitrary amount of time, and then open the one unbarred door on the first floor.

    This is the map's whole gameplay loop here, collecting an item and then using that item to access another item, repeating the cycle until the map ends. There are enemies but not many and they don't respawn, maybe this is a product of the difficulty level we chose (after testing it seems the map is just really easy) but it was still far too easy with two players. Items usually have a glow sprite on them to indicate that it is a necessary item. Locked doors and items being picked up both typically display game text wit some hints as to how to progress. For the most part things were straightforward, like the communications room key opening the communications key. But there was some strange stuff, like bolt cutters we couldn't pick up because they were too heavy. At one point we were lost and my teammate stumbled upon the bolt cutters, we had completely forgotten about them. I don't know which object we found that decreased the bolt cutter's weight but we needed that to cut open a metal door after swimming through some water. If you are stuck at the locked door after the underwater part then go find the bolt cutters.

    The main problem I have with these Resident Evil themed Sven Co-op maps is the extreme level of backtracking. It's typically small stuff that adds up, tiny hallways with respawning enemies get less fun to play the more players are forced to walk through them. This map definitely does not have tiny hallways and the enemies don't even respawn. I find myself very uncharacteristically wishing the enemies would respawn forever to keep things interesting. We certainly had enough ammo to take on far more zombies than the map provided. We saw exactly one dog. There is definitely room for more combat. Without the combat we are left with the only other gameplay mechanic, finding keys to unlock keys to unlock more keys. The bulk of the gameplay consists of finding a key, I will admit here that there are clues to help players figure out where the key goes, and then walking across a good portion of the map to unlock something and be rewarded with another key and another walk. We were quite literally going from deep inside the police station to three quarters of the way down the city street hallway to spawn, back to the police station, back to the streets, and then back to the police station. It's a lot of back and forth, through hallways devoid of enemies, and a lot of the time we were unsure if this was the correct solution. I don't mind backtracking, but the map needs to be something more than going from one extreme end of the map to the other over and over again. When I realized I had to leave the police station and go unlock doors in the street I knew this map was not going to be very fun.

    I mentioned before that the map explores a lot of different Resident Evil titles. It starts off strong with the Resident Evil 2 vibes and that is clearly the strongest influence. Right at the start of the map there is a fun "Welcome to Raccoon City, Home of Umbrella" sign that sways in the wind and hides a toilet on top of a phone booth. It's a real nice detail. The interior architecture of the mansion reminds me more of the first Resident Evil. It's got a lot of pictures on the wall that my teammate took delight in identifying. I knew 'Whistler's Mother' and that's about it. There is a Jill sandwich crusher room right out of Resident Evil but as far as we can tell there is no escape, it is only death. Late in the game there is a thankfully short sewer section where players have to swim through leech infested water. I should have known this was a telltale sign we were heading into Resident Evil 0 (because I recently player that game) and the next section was a short train section (after cutting open the door with bolt cutters). As soon as we get off the train we are greeted with an Umbrella door straight from the movies, followed by an elevator ride right into the movie. The map ends on the Resident Evil movie. There's a laser hallway too, we get a nice cutscene of a wheelchair scientist failing to be killed by one. Seriously, after the cutscene go to the door and use it, you can hear the scientist refuse to go another step.

    There was also music. I didn't know where to stick this detail, so here it is. The music was all very nice and it really added to the atmosphere.

    Overall, the map started strong but succumbed to the curse of other Resident Evil Sven maps, too much back and forth and not enough fun gameplay. The map does do a lot of stuff right, it looks really good and has some great detail. The key objects have obvious glows to them (mostly, not the short ladder after the elevator section) and there were hints as to where to use most of these keys. But leaving the police station to backtrack in town was awful. The long street hallway to the police station was pretty, but it was boring and the 3D models of traffic cones completely blocked my movement, so I didn't like walking down the street. The lack of enemies served to make the endless back and forth boring. There is so much potential here, it sucks to see it bogged down in the same old problems.

Pros:

• Looks great
• There are nice hints about which keys go into which locks, most keys have obvious glows
• cutscenes really add production value
• the music was great
• More than enough firepower to clear the map with ease
• this is the most Resident Evil map

Cons:

• Too much back and forth across the map
• The back and forth across the map was across vast distances
• Some keys make no sense, why could I not pick up bolt cutters, and how did they become lighter?
• the current amount of enemies in the map is too low and makes the back and forth boring
• the crusher room was kind of mean

Score: 6 / 10