Battlefield - Dunkelschwamm
This map is a series of battlefields, some more annoying than others, that players must fight through. The big 'CK' in the above picture indicates the author's clan.
Author: Havok
Date of final release: 2001
Maps in package: 1
Map review of Battlefield
(originally posted on SCMapDB)
Battlefield is a creative sequence of battles for Sven Co-op. Each battle gives you a different set of weapons to overcome overwhelming odds.
The rundown is simple: players respawn in a hallway with doors to teleporters to each arena. The first arena is the letters "CK" floating in xen-space where players must battle aliens using alien weapons to reach a button and continue. The second arena is a darkened cargo hold where players must fire on respawning soldiers and assassins until they find the button. The third is a big reservoir full of ichthyosaurs which players must navigate through to find a button. Finally, players battle vorts and controllers on suspended walkways with a crystal spinning in the middle. Destroying that crystal ends the mission.
The map bafflingly arms the players with most of the weapons, then requires they strip their weapons on their way into the next arena. I get the weapon strippers, as players will be proceeding to the next map before, but it's not clear why players are given these weapons up-front and not before they enter the final arena (the only one which doesn't autostrip the weapons). This provoked me to try to break the strippers by throwing my weapons past the stripper to where players equip themselves for the arena. It worked. I soon decided the weapons given were adequate for the fights at hand, but my teammate felt it worthwhile to abuse this tactic as long as it was applicable.
The visuals of the map aren't incredible, but serve their purpose in a way. The first arena (the CK platform) looks visually awful, and so does the final battle. The spawn area and second and third areas are serviceable, though the underwater scene doesn't do much to evoke a scene as much as a location that makes some sort of physical sense. Overall I'd call it a C effort, overcoming many lighting and texture misalignment mistakes, but doing very little to craft a decent scene.
The same can't be said for the conveyance of this map. Buttons with unclear purpose remained mysteries to me to the end of the map. I'm sure one of them was important to beating the map, I don't know. There was one button that exists to tell you how to beat the final mission, because without that I would never have guessed that the giant glowing cone in the middle of the arena needed to be repeatedly shot to destroy it, especially after several attempts to do so led me to deduce it was likely an indestructible decoration. The teleporter players must reach in the first arena is practically invisible against the skybox, so good luck finding that amid the chaos of alien grunts riddling you with bees. In the second arena you're moving around in the dark, and the most clear and obvious thing you can see is a teleporter which was the way to proceed in the previous mission- but now sends you back to spawn without unlocking anything, because somewhere in the dark there's a button you need to press first. Somehow, the underwater portion is the most clearly labeled segment of this whole map with a huge arrow pointing to the objective.
Finally, the combat itself. It was a lot of rushing and a lot of not staying alive long enough to make good use of weaponry. The best way to approach any of these battles was to run straight for the objective. The enemies respawn anyway. The only instance where this isn't the case is the ichthyosaurs in the water arena, which I shot from atop a rock. If that sounds fun to you, it probably will be.
If you're looking for a fast paced action map for your server rotation, this'd probably fit in. I think you can do a lot better with your time, and most of the time this is pretty grating. It's a good look at why you can't just smear enemies across a randomly shaped arena and expect compelling gameplay.
Pros:
- Variety of combat situations.
- Lots of weapons
Cons:
- Hard to tell what's going on or what needs to be done
- Maps are haphazard enemy spawners on a random chunk of arena until you run to the objective
- Every aspect, from the weapon strippers, to the map design, to objectives, just feels extremely half-assed
Score: 4 / 10
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