Classic Arcade First Person Shooter - GrandmasterJ

 

    The map is Doom, the classic first person shooter is Doom. The map design and layout is very reminiscent of Doom, there are some pretty good new models and others that are not so good.

SCMapDB page

Author: BlueFeena

Date of final release: 2005

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Classic Arcade First Person Shooter

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | November 3, 2022 | 4472 characters

    This map is fast. This is the very first thing that grabs my attention because trying to walk forward slingshots me into the far wall. I'm going to tell you right now this is my biggest problem with the map, the uncontrolled speed. Everything else is pretty good looking Doom inspired stuff.

    There are a couple ways to do Doom in a 3D engine like goldsrc, this map opted to make recolors of standard Sven Co-op enemies and renamed them. Vortigaunts stand in for imps and human grunts take the role of the zombies. Headcrab zombies and bullsquids also show up, I think the bullsquids are colored to be pinky demons, but in game are just called demons. The exception is the lost soul, which is a big flaming skull. It also acts as an alien controller and chaingun fires the homing bullets at players, so it is very deadly. The gun view models are tilted to be quake style straight forward. Some are new models, some are recolors.

    The map starts off as classic first level of Doom, but then slides into just being Doom inspired. Some o the rooms are miserable to be in, the ones with hurt floors. The insane speed make it incredibly hard to maneuver with any precision and I always end up in the hurt pits. Players go down really easy, there are no medkits, and the health pickups don't give a lot of health. It's a challenging map and dying because I slid off a ledge more times than dying from legitimate enemy attack isn't fun. There is one room that is revealed by a giant demon head wall lowering, it is a hallway with a section of lava down the middle. The walls have ramps where they meet the floor. Players move so fast they can very easily take one step and ramp straight up off that ramp. I spent half the time (in combat) in that room either in the hurt pit or completely airborne. There is one door with a small hurt pit right before and right after it. It is the best example of malicious level design I can think of.

    Beyond some of the room design the map does look good and flow pretty well. There are tons of shortcuts that open up but they are all slightly inconvenient in their own way. For instance the first shortcut is a window that becomes passable, but the bottom ledge is pretty high so getting over the ledge requires jumping just right, while player speed is jacked up. The next shortcut is far from spawn and across a hurt pit. The next shortcut drops enemies in spawn. There is always a catch to these shortcuts.

    The weapons went from pistol, to shotgun, to mp5, to rocket launcher. There is also the bfg but we didn't figure out how to get it. These three weapons will unlock near spawn but not really in spawn, so players still have to take a bit of a walk to collect all three before going out. The shotgun is right outside the ledge, the mp5 is on the other side of the room in front of a door, and the rocket launcher spawns right in the room to the left of where players face when they spawn.

    There was this one elevator though, near the beginning of the map. Inside a hurt pit, but reachable from the side, is a button that starts a timer for an elevator to go up. My teammate and I got suck on that elevator several times. That elevator was annoying to go up due to the timed nature and the distance of the button and then we also add getting stuck. It's a bad elevator and I hate it.

    I liked the map. I was very annoyed at my speed and how the level design made it really easy to get hurt. But the charm won me over. Yeah sure, the enemies are really campy and are just normal Half-Life enemies with some makeup hastily thrown on. But the music and classic Doom textures looked good and the gameplay never got too annoying. Enemies went down easy, ammo never ran out (except rockets), and there were shortcuts even if they were never truly convenient. It's a solid Doom map.

Pros:

• Map looked good, the Doom textures looked nice, fun music
• Map had many shortcuts
• the map's weapons appeared near spawn
• plenty of ammo

Cons:

• I hate that door with the hurt pit before and after it and it is on the top of my shit list
• players move too fast
• shortcuts and weapon locations are never completely convenient
• a few rooms just sucked to be in, specifically the hallway with the middle hurt pit and the ramps

Score: 7.5 / 10