Black Operations: Special Forces - GrandmasterJ

 

    Black Operations (not to be confused with Blackops, a different map) is a Half-Life mod converted over to Sven Co-op. It uses many new textures along with impressive detail to tell the unnecessary story of how the United States acquired the nuke used to destroy Black Mesa.

SCMapDB page

Original map author: Little_Otis

Conversion author: Shinkichi

Date of original mod release: 2005

Date of final Sven Map release: 2010

Maps in package: 13

Map review of Black Operations: Special Forces

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | January 26, 2023 | 5947 characters

    This map series is a conversion of a standalone mod by the same name. We follow a Black Ops soldier named Declan Walker whose job is to plant the nuclear bomb that takes out Black Mesa. The map description says we're getting back a mysterious briefcase from a Black Mesa scientist. Spoilers, but that briefcase is the nuke. We're also in Metro City but manage to plant the bomb in Black Mesa anyway, the story is composed of plotholes. But beyond the nonsensical story is a beautiful spread of maps with good combat.

    The map starts off with ops_intro, an introduction cutscene level, then we transition to the briefing, then we finally get into the action. The map has tons of cutscenes and lots of interesting things happening in the environment. Each map is well made with completely new textures, some custom models, Half-Life music sprinkled in appropriate areas and some top notch map design. My teammate once said "superfluous detail" and I think that is a fitting term for this series. There were blinds in a couple areas that had volumetric lighting between each blind and it looked fantastic. It's a detail that would be easily missed but greatly enhances the level ambiance. My teammate pointed out a dynamic shadow cast by a fan made with an animated texture. It looked amazing and I almost didn't catch it due to how convincing it was.

    Most of the enemies looked the same, Metro City may have had its own feel but we still fight HECU and xen aliens. We also fight female assassins which I don't understand, aren't WE the black ops? I don't understand why we are fighting soldiers and our fellow folks in tight black leather. In the briefing map we get to hang out with female assassins and they do have a new skin that adds a big boob window. The jiggle animated was a little sped up though so the boobs seemed to have a mind of their own.

    Metro City itself was mostly urban decay. We start off in an alley, then to a subway, a nightclub, then move to China town, through a trainyard, eventually ending up in a prison that is obviously modeled off of Nova Prospeckt from Half-Life 2. I'm skipping a ton of locations, but the point is we got to visit a wide variety of run down locations that's all covered in graffiti. The map design was mostly decent throughout but there were plenty of times gameplay came to a screeching halt as we had to figure out what to do. For example the subway area was mirrored, it had a whole area that was built exactly like a previous area. I thought I had backtracked until my teammate explained the crates were placed differently and then I turned a corner and saw new stuff. Not too long after that was a nightclub with two dance floors that weren't near perfect copies of each other like the subway, but was still similar enough that when I came to a new area I thought I had opened up a shortcut to a previous area.

    The map has survival mode on by default, which I always just turn straight off, but it still has some updating checkpoints sprinkled around it. Most of the time there were tons of shortcuts opening as well, although in the train yard we didn't get an updated checkpoint or shortcut for quite some time. We had to keep running through a steam hallway and an annoying shipping container hallway that zigged and zagged constantly.

    This is a single player experience and as such two players ate up a lot of the supplies. Midway through the series the maps start throwing in larger amounts of ammo and things get better, but I was frequently running out of ammo early on and my teammate was very good at stealing it all before me. He was kind enough to drop ammo for me and I paid him back by getting better at stealing the ammo for myself. HEV battery stayed scarce through out the series. One thing I wasn't a fan of was the lack centralized supply dumps near spawn points or shortcuts. In the early maps we had to collect all our weapons on a respawn and had to scavenge for ammo. Later there are clearly areas to resupply but it's a pain in the early maps.

    The combat was ok. Enemy health is hidden and it feels like all the health was raised a bit. It's hard to tell but zombies took two shotguns to the face before dying and HECU typically took three. Some of the fights took place in hallways, some in poorly designed arenas, and some in really well designed arenas. The maps look pretty first and foremost and are functional second.

    I had a great time. The entire series looked pretty good. I thought some parts ran long and maybe the level design wasn't all that inspired, especially that zig zag shipping container hallway. But every inch of it was hyper detailed. Obvious effort was put into this series to bring players to the new location of Metro City and to change things up to keep it interesting. There were fantastic little details like busy signals on payphones, hand rails on stairways, and there was an SUV that my teammate jumped onto and the car alarm went off which triggered some soldiers to run around the corner and shoot at us. The map is not perfect, but it is impressive in its own right. It's an absolute delight to look at and experience and any problems can be overcome with perseverance and shotgun shells.

Pros:

•     The maps look fantastic and is drowning in very nice detail
•     Cutscenes galore and the story is delivered in a straightforward and easy to understand way
•     shortcuts and updating checkpoints
•     decent supplies that get better and better as time goes on
•     great application of sound and music
•     varied locations

Cons:

•     The subway and night club had repetitive rooms that caused great confusion
•     The path of progression was not always clear
•     The story is nonsense
•     early game had scarce ammo for two players

Score:     8 / 10