Big Scientists - GrandmasterJ

 

    Welcome back to Black Mesa where the scientists are now extra big! This is a very short mod that's been dropped into Sven Co-op to fend for itself.

SCMapDB page

Original map author: Wil5on

Conversion author: Newbai1045

Date of original mod release: 2003

Date of final Sven Map release: 2017

Maps in package:10

Map review of Big Scientists

(originally posted on SCMapDB) 

by GrandmasterJ | February 19, 2023 | 5248 characters

    By now I've played a lot of maps. I've played plenty of conversions as well. Most conversions have a minimum of care put in place to ensure a smoother experience for more players, this one does not. It has all the problems of a Half-Life mod being dropped into Sven Co-op as-is on top of the problem of not being a very good mod in the first place.

    We start off in a helicopter with a bunch of scientists. These are normal sized scientists, very disappointing. We can look out the door of the helicopter and see a big rectangle textured like cliffs floating in a void and panning to the side to give us the illusion of movement. Ospreys and apaches hang upside down in mid-air next to us and a very big scientist lies dead on the floor. Of course the floor is skybox so he floats unnaturally in the air. My teammate got teleported some place and I jumped out the window to survive the fall and hang out with the scientist corpse until the timer ran down and the map automatically changed. What a first impression.

    The second map wasn't great either. We start off and walk forward to an elevator, already I can see a horizontal block Z-fighting with the elevator doors. I thought that was a bar we would have to get rid of before we could use the elevator, that's wrong, that is the top of the elevator. The elevator is not lined up with the door, being about halfway past the floor. We can crawl through the gap and get in. The button to go down is not attached to the elevator itself, but the wall, so when pressed we go down and no longer have access to the button to go back up. Past another small scientist to the HEV suit (which we don't start with) and my teammate picks it up. It never spawns again and he dies eventually which locks it off for him too. This is why people should not dump singleplayer mods into Sven Co-op without adjustments. We do eventually find a large scientist so there's that.

    The next map has the big contraption that makes scientists big. The one after that is a train ride to a hallway to an elevator to a map transition. The maps become less memorable as we progress and overall it's just a plain experience. The map doesn't look good, it's very plain architecture with boring unbroken wall textures, and the proportions can get a little screwy at times. We got to a parking garage bit and my teammate asked me if this was the worst parking garage we've seen. It wasn't.

    Early on the weapons were very clearly paced for one player, which made supplies for two very tight. But then we turned a corner and there was just a huge pile of weapons and ammo. As we neared the end it was more common, at one point there was a line of like five mp5s, an M16, and 10 underbarrel grenades all on the floor of a room. Why would a single player need 5 mp5s, and why would a conversion need to add multiple guns at all? It's just a strange choice.

    We reach one point that is a dam with a very big scientist running around. At no point prior have we needed to actually kill a big scientist, but now we have to and it opens a door. I figured we'd be killing big scientists left and right, what makes this guy so special?

    Near the end of the series we end up in the embiggening chamber and become big and we get to stomp around the map. That was immensely satisfying even though we barely did anything and didn't spend much time there. My teammate discovered he could blow a hole in the top of a building and we could see some rooms, that was very cool. But it wears off quickly and soon we find ourselves starting the last map holding miniguns and facing the wrong way, taking a step forward the wrong way will put us in a map transition to the last map. Turning around puts us at a drop into fast moving water. The current takes us to a ramp with a lip on it. This feature blocks the players from getting over it, effectively trapping us unless one is adept enough to jump on another player and get over the lip that way. There is a scientist here and a helicopter comes in to shoot it. The last map has a time limit of about 30 seconds so there isn't much we can do. My teammate and I cheated over to the helicopter and blew it up, nothing happened.

    I thought this map was going to deliver a silly and unforgettable experience, and with the exception of one map it has completely failed. The original mod wasn't made all that well and it's been dumped into Sven Co-op with very little, if any, adjustments to make it actually work well. Skip to bigsci8 and play that one and you will have played the only worthwhile part.

Pros:

• fun concept
• bigsci8 was very fun and cool

Cons:

• badly converted
• the HEV suit on that one map doesn't respawn and players badly need it
• level design is severely lacking, weapon and enemy placement seem careless
• sometimes you have to kill the scientists and sometimes you don't, objectives are unclear
• players get turned around at one point and can switch maps to the previous map
• that last level seemed to be designed as a big middle finger to players

Score:

2 / 10