Big Cave 2 - Dunkelschwamm
Climb down into a cave system with a lot of science hallways and industrial rooms. The cave itself certainly is big and the map ends once it is explored in a linear fashion.
Author: amckern
Date of release: 2019
Maps in package: 1
Map review of Big Cave 2
(originally posted on SCMapDB)
Big Cave 2 is an action walkthrough map for Sven Co-op featuring immense scale, impressive brushwork and textures, and some hit-or-miss gameplay.
The idea is that there's a huge base built into the side of a cave. The map is very vertical, with players descending deeper and deeper into the big cave and the base which burrows throughout. The cave is of truly immense scale, and the brush and texture work are fantastic. Not only are the natural structures some of the finest I've seen in the goldsrc engine, but the interiors of the base really manage to make industrial, grungy, brutalist subterranean complexes interesting in a way I haven't seen in goldsrc in a while. Some wonderful moody lighting fills each corridor with personality. At times it could almost pass for a source map. There are a ton of details, little mechanisms, and shit you'd never notice like an entire train under a walkway (that leads egregiously straight into a vertical ventilation shaft, but I guess we can overlook these things). There's a missing texture on the roof of a building that is plainly visible when players spawn, and I made a note of that when we first started, but looking back on the visuals of the map moving forward that note feels petty.
While it looks pretty, the map suffers from terribly inconsistent interactivity. There are many vents and windows which look breakable, with rooms clearly behind them, but they do not break. Partway through the map, I joked to my teammate that this map is like the "opposite of an RNG map" in that nothing is interactable. A while later, it was necessary to break a vent to proceed and I felt like everything the map had taught me so far was a lie. There are doors necessary to progression which are identical to doors which will never open. There's a part of the map where you need to turn on lights before attempting to jump on a clearly visible platform doesn't result in an invisible wall sending the player careening to their death. These are areas which fail to convey how to proceed, and break the player's trust in the mapper's language.
To guide the players through this map, we begin with only the handgun and the crowbar. It isn't long, however, before players get equipped with an MP5, and then a shotgun. Handgrenades, an M16, and an RPG follow shortly after. As spawn points get updated, the handgrenades, M16's underbarrel grenades, and MP5 become less reliable to pick up. However, the RPG remains constant once it's introduced and adds a fantastic dynamic to approaching the map from then on. While it's a bummer that the arsenal barely stays consistent, it at least consistently remains enough for the job. I was never particularly hurting for ammo, aside from a gun occasionally running dry and forcing me to switch to one of my other handy instruments of death.
There's an eclectic bunch of enemies, ranging the gamut of what Sven has to offer. Even more obscure enemies like stukabats, baby voltigores, and a Tor (which we humiliated with shotgun blasts to the face before he could make a move) make appearances. There's some interesting setpieces, like a military ambush from within a suspended cargo container, a great big tank battle, or a gargantua attack on some crates. Aside from one battle where we got ambushed by some sudden teleporting alien grunts, it all felt a bit like a pushover for even just the two of us. There was a whole teleport checkpoint system we completely bypassed because we didn't die before a different checkpoint system opened anyway. It's hard to tell how much of that is because we're pretty good at the game and how much of that is because this map isn't very well balanced, but I'm presuming the latter and that it'd be just a completely pushover on servers with higher playercounts.
By the end, the map ends at a funny little double-door that's way too short. I have no idea what to make of that, though my teammate and I had some fun making jokes about the tiny door. This door supposedly leads to the aforementioned train that leads straight into a ventilation shaft. In fact, that ventilation shaft is the aforementioned sudden breakable vent that rendered the rest of the map's language a lie. In fact, it was shortly after this vent that I faced the alien grunts that were the only major threat in the map. A lot happens right at the end there that's of note.
Anyway, overall I think that Big Cave 2 is a very pretty map with frustrating progression and decent-if-easy combat. While I make heavy note of lots of the negative criticisms, I think this is genuinely one of the better produced and memorable maps I've played recently, and offers a lot for players looking for an action experience.
Pros:
- Varied action gameplay
- Beautiful, gorgeous mapping
- Lots of intricate details
- Impressive scale
- The RPG was a good choice
- Good checkpoints
Cons:
- Battles were a bit of a pushover
- Mapping language was inconsistent
- Most of the map frustratingly static
- The invisible wall making the jump into a death leap until we turned on the lights puzzle was stupid and bad
- What is up with the door that ends the level? Lol. Lmao.
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