Resident Evil: Covert Operations - GrandmasterJ

 

    The second installment of the first Resident Evil series (two series of Resident Evil maps by two authors, this one is made by mrfranswa) is bigger and more Resident Evil than the first. We are trapped in a mansion once again and have to scavenger hunt our way out.

SCMapDB page

Author: mrfranswa

Date of final release: 2004

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Resident Evil: Covert Operations

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | October 13, 2022 | 6632 characters

    I want to like a Sven Co-op Resident Evil map. I really do. This one started off real strong, it looks beautiful. The lobby of the mansion is huge, well lit, and has some really nice marble textures. It has the same scavenger hunt gameplay that's to be expected from survival horror but just so much more. Multiple times we had to traverse the entire level, once we had to go from the lowest depths underwater in the sewers to the top floor of the mansion and then back just to grab a valve. I hope you like how good the mansion looks because you will be walking the halls a LOT.

    The map starts off with players in a room choosing 'normal' or 'insane' difficulty. We are not insane so we picked the rational choice. The map intro was really fun with cutscenes and a nice intro screen. I'm a fairly fast reader and I only got about two thirds of the way through each exposition dump before it moved onto the next page. We don't get nice narration, Star Wars scroll, or even in-game messages to convey the story, we get to look at textures with paragraphs of text. Once players pop into existence in the mansion, careful not to telefrag each other since there appears to be only one spawn point and telefrag protection is off, we can walk into the main hall. Here we see our friend Martin writhing in pain. This triggers another cutscene where Martin asks us to get him medicine from the second floor. We get totally new characters here, no Chris, no Jill, and certainly no Kenneth.

    From here on out it's a chain of finding items to unlock doors. The layout of the mansion is highly reminiscent of the first Resident Evil. The main hall is particularly good looking with it's arched ceiling and fancy marble textures. The whole map looks really good but the main hall looks the best.

    My main problem with this map is how we have to cross the entire map multiple times. We would grab an item, and then have to hunt for where the item goes. The absolute worst example of this was at a point where we fought the Gorger, to get here we have to go through the sewers and then through a lengthy underwater section that will cause players to drown. We kill the gorger and find we need a valve, the valve is way back in the mansion and we have to go back to get it and bring it back down to the lowest point in the sewers. It's busy work. At one point we had to pick up a golden emblem, I could not for the life of me find it, I had just opened a door that had the golden emblem in the original game. I checked out the walkthrough posted by quakis (check the map description) and as vague as that walkthrough was at times it did convince me that the golden emblem had simply failed to spawn. We noclipped through the likeliest door to open from the emblem and continued, but that was a huge problem. I hate cheating to finish a map and here I had to do it.

    There was one puzzle in the greenhouse (it does not look like a greenhouse but it sort of has the same layout as the Resident Evil greenhouse) that required players find a wedge, place the wedge near a ledge, and then slide a block up the wedge onto the ledge. But it didn't slide up, it got stuck halfway every time. I had to turn down the gravity to solve that puzzle.

    Weapons and ammo don't respawn on the map and players do not have medkits. This is somewhat standard for survival horror Sven maps but this map likes to respawn some pretty damaging enemies in hallways in the late game. My teammate and I died a couple times, we did lose our weapons but there are copies of weapons scattered around as well. We were able to regain some of our lost arsenal. What really sucked was walking over a medkit, getting full health, and then having to fall down a shaft and take mandatory fall damage.

    Then there are the elevators. Every elevator in this map is tiny and cramped and has poorly placed buttons so players have to run off the elevator to get it going. It has extra weapons and cooperative segments, but then it makes tiny elevators that can barely fit two players? There is one part of the map where players get barnacles and have to rappel off each other to get to the bottom of a long shaft, there is an elevator here but it is locked. My teammate goes down and sees the bottom of the elevator, thinking he can activate it for me so we can both get down he rides it up. It stays up. Now the elevator is up and not helpful at all. Some areas have great consideration to cooperative play, other areas seem hostile to it.

    At one point in the map there is a cold lab/morgue looking area that players can go, both my teammate and I went in there and the door locked behind us. We killed a monster and tried to get out only to find we are stuck. I looked at the walkthrough, we needed to not be in here at the same time, we were trapped and had to noclip to escape, again.

    The map is pretty big and the scavenger hunt gameplay makes us walk across it over and over again. We get limited weapons and ammo, and yes the map does provide many chances to regain lost weapons but with the infinitely respawning enemies it can be hard to keep ammo. Especially since we have to walk across enemy filled areas just searching for the way forward. Even then, the golden emblem never appeared for us, and we both got stuck behind a locked door at the same time, forcing us to cheat our way out. The map looks good, it's the best looking Resident Evil map by far. It even kind of lines up with the original Resident Evil, enough for me to see a lot of similarities. It's got nice presentation and cutscenes, I just wish it was half the length and that I didn't need to cheat three separate times. I really wanted to like this map.

Pros:

• Looks great, main hall is especially good, good lighting
• fun cutscenes, well done except for the pages of exposition
• a Resident Evil map that looks like Resident Evil
• weapons and ammo don't respawn, but there are chances to regain weapons later

Cons:

• I hate having to go back and forth across the entire map including lengthy underwater sections
• The gold emblem didn't show up and we had to cheat to continue
• We both went into the same room and the door locked behind us, trapping us forever
• tiny elevators with poorly positioned buttons
• the wedge ledge puzzle is broken and we had to turn down gravity to complete it
• the map has limited health and yet still forces mandatroy fall damage in certain areas

Score: 4 / 10