Ragemap 2012 - Dunkelschwamm
I'm so angry! Because of this map! Because it is a RAGE map! We return to the collaborative community series with the 2012 edition, more rage and more map.
Authors: Nih, Puchi, Protector, RNG, JPolito, JaF, Tuesday's Avenger, StreamFox, CubicVirtuoso, Aurora, Prinzmetal, Zombiner, Mutant, Maiten, Hezus, Dynamite, Keen, Walter, g1l, AzShadow, Silencer, Zorbos, El Gringo
(Due to the number of authors and the page tag limit of 20, not all authors are tagged)
Date of release:2007
Maps in package:1
Map review of Ragemap 2012
(originally posted on SCMapDB)
by dunkelschwamm | February 26, 2023 | 5410 characters
Ragemap 2012 is the 2012 Ragemap compilation map for Sven Co-op. Like Ragemap before it, this is a heavy collaboration between many mappers, quilting together several vignettes of varying quality and style. Most of them follow a fairly linear action focus, but there are also lots of visual setpieces and puzzles mixed in.
Given the nature of this collaborative effort, I'm unable to assess everybody's contributions individually. However, I'll say that this is definitely a set that saves the better stuff for later. While the segments of these maps are mostly quite good looking, there's quite a few that feel like bizarre experimental attempts at gimmicks that grind the map to a halt.
Of particular note, there's an escort mission wherein players must bring a scientist through a grid of hallways which constantly respawn snark nests. This is a huge issue, as the scientist AI is dumb as rocks and the snark nests have big IQ. The scientist will run straight toward the snarks at the first sign of danger, and he's unretrievable from that point as he panics. After getting the scientist killed enough times, the map takes pity on us and gives us a scientist with 5k health. He still dies once. We found the best way to get him to the location he needs to get to is to die close to the end and let him come attempt to revive us, which is one of the only things in the whole world which will take precedent over running straight toward danger. I don't like puzzles like these because they rely so heavily on the ever shifting AI of Sven Co-op NPCs, which change with the whims of the man holding the code. Maybe this puzzle was once playable. Now it is only so with fuckery, which is a black mark on Ragemap2012 as a whole. Similarly, a segment later is very annoying where we must rely on Tor launching us in to the sky to land where we can access switches which help us proceed, but the alien grunts he nonstop spawns would often kill us in midair. I wouldn't say it doesn't work, because we did eventually overcome these puzzles, but we had them figured out and understood them long before we frustratingly crawled our way back. There's another bit where players must man turrets to battle zombies but we found the turrets severely lacking compared to our standard boilerplate weaponry.
It's not all failed experiments, though. There's a few bits where the player has to defend a stationary target (or more than one) from oncoming waves of enemies. Normally I find these bits tedious, but with just two players I found we could maximize our strategy around healing friendly turrets, or placing ourselves physically in front of what we were meant to protect, we'd make it through just fine. Additionally, there were some platforming bits which didn't overstay their welcome. There was a bit where the floor was some strange kind of water that made it hard to navigate, while ichthyosaurs respawned at us, but it was over shortly and helped along by a comedic dongcopter (ah, I remember 2012). A major help with the map is a tendency to throw the player a bone- like the aforementioned scientist suddenly becoming much healthier, or creating shortcuts or checkpoints the moment a player gets ahead. I think this does a lot to mitigate issues throughout the map.
There are some moments where the map really shines. Later in, the map gives us lots of weapons and throws us at a rocket launch site with respawning grunts. It was chaos, and nonsense, but it was great fun and we had tons of weapons to deal with the situation. Another bit had us killing respawning zombies of different colors which correspond to different directions to push a block through a maze. I love the color zombie maze game, and wish I could play a bigger maze like that, great gimmick.
Overall, I think much of the map is just kind of strange bits that I scoot through slow. There was a quiz at one point that's sort of a weird downer about alcoholism, abuse, and rape that was informative, I guess. Right afterwards the players fall through a super long descent of "LOL LOL LOL LOL" which felt a bit tasteless, in more of a tonedeaf way than a haha way.
The final bit is great. I don't even want to say what it is, but from the brushwork to the modeling to the idea to the gameplay it's a fantastic bit. I highly recommend the whole map just for that.
Anyway, yeah. Ragemap 2012. It's an extremely mixed bag, but with so many names attached you're guaranteed to run into something interesting along the way.
Pros:
- Some pretty tense and fun defense sections
- Great gunplay, especially later on
- Loved the colorful zombie puzzle
- Constantly changes up gameplay so you don't have to worry too much about unfun bits
- Fantastic ending, good humor throughout
Cons:
- A couple segments grind things to a halt, in particular the snark scientist escort and the Tor platforming
- This map often strips the player of their weapons and it's never necessary and always annoying and usually leads into a section where you need a weapon anyway
- The quiz bit is really tonedeaf and strange in the middle of a funny haha shooty penis map
- I kept getting stuck in the world geometry, especially in the first map
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