Retrohunt - Dunkelschwamm

 

    This map is not just Duck Hunt, it also has a Frogger section as well. Snipe aliens out of the air on one side of the map and dodge fast cars in another.

SCMapDB page

Author: LentoMan

Date of release: 2004

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Retrohunt

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | February 4, 2023 | 2940 characters

    Retrohunt is a map for Sven Co-op which aims to provide two minigames based on classic retro games Duck Hunt and Frogger.

    Players begin in a stylish lobby which is Duck Hunt on one side and Frogger on the other, each with a teleporter leading to their respective game. It's an intuitive lobby and shows right away what kind of attraction you're in for. That said, unaware that Frogger would be the featured game, I took the Frogger environment to possibly be Hogan's Alley, which I consider a more comparable pairing for Duck Hunt.

    The Frogger minigame is a bit chaotic, but not impossible to master. Players must cross four lanes on a VERY high speed street, then jump across floating platforms in death water, to reach one of four switches and toggle it, killing your player character. The cars do not kill the player on contact, but rather move quickly and smash the player against the wall they go through to simulate driving offscreen. I was able to take advantage of this by hugging close to the walls the cars came from and jumping, thereby allowing me to bunnyhop my way to victory. The next part, though, simply required crossing the water while platforms float across, which was easy. Do this four times and the game will congratulate you. It's a cute little setup, and it's neatly brushed out, but gets old fast and requires gibbing your player four times and starting over which makes it inherently repetitive. It didn't work great for me.

    The Duck Hunt game is a bit looser. Go to a shooting range in the style of Duck Hunt (quite well mapped), get supplied with a sniper rifle, and shoot headcrabs and houndeyes like it's skeet shooting as they fly up into the air briefly. This repeats slowly, which gives the impression at times that there won't be another headcrab or houndeye flying up. It feels like an extremely directionless experience, and I didn't really care for it very much. That said, the Duck Hunt environment looks great.

    Overall, I think this map has a tiny bit of charm and a whole bunch of repetitious and half-baked attempts at replicating retro games. I think it majorly accomplishes what it set out to do, but didn't create a map that's worth more than 5 minutes of gameplay for it. Take that as a recommendation as you will.

Pros:

  • The map looks decently brushed
  • Jumping around in the Frogger world was pretty fun
  • Sniping a headcrab out of the air does have some appeal to it
  • I like the exit from the Duck Hunt room

Cons:

  • Aimless, meaningless map which barely poses gameplay to keep a server entertained
  • Duck Hunt is barely stocked with ammo for a larger server, which wouldn't be a problem if it weren't one of the only draws
  • The Frogger minigame demands repetition
Score: 5.2 / 10

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Absolute State of this Blog

Image
   I'm a big fan of Sven Co-op, so much so that I was only half joking when I presented the terrible idea of playing and reviewing every map to my partner in crime, Dunkelschwamm. Much to my surprise she agreed and now here we are, 371 maps in to the 1558 maps currently on the Sven Co-op map database . It was done primarily to get people to stop leaving reviews in the comments and to actually put them in the review section. Let me just check the reviews on the map database. . . . yeah, I think it sort of worked. Then we got nervous that wikidot might die and take the site with it so I created this blog as a mirror.      Dunkel was unemployed at the time and my fiancé still had tons of patience for me so it went swimmingly, I think we averaged something like 15 reviews a week. I did the math but circumstances keep changing and so do the numbers, so that's a very rough estimate. We both dabbled in making maps for Sven long ago when the game was relevant and popula...
Read more

Swiss Cheese Halloween - Dunkelschwamm

Image
        Swiss Cheese Halloween is a conversion of an ancient Half-Life mod of the same name. It was made back in the whimsical time of 2002 by an author who goes by Swiss Cheese, hence the map name. SCMapDB page Original mod author: Swiss Cheese Conversion author: Garompa Date of original mod release: 2002 Date of final Sven map release: 2020 Maps in package: 12 Map review of Swiss Cheese Halloween (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | November 27, 2021 | 6988 characters      A classic Halloween mod that's great for nostalgia and festivity, but frequently trips over itself.      Some information: Swiss Cheese Halloween is an old Halloween-themed Half-Life singleplayer mod. It was one of the first Half-Life mods I ever played, years ago. I was excited to play through it with a buddy in Sven, so I got this port. This review is following our finishing of the mod together.      The mod as a whole offers many m...
Read more

Civil Defence - Dunkelschwamm

Image
       Kill a bunch of soldiers and aliens in some generic warehouses and offices somewhere in a red brick city. It's a pretty straightforward map that requires at least two people. SCMapDB page Authors: Daniel Plant Date of release: 2004 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Civil Defence (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | January 7, 2024 | 3588 characters      Civil Defence is a very simple sequence of gunfighting arenas in a warehouse district setting. Players fight their way out of a building by escaping along its fire escape, then through the district, before moving through a sewers area to the final battle. The first third of the map sees players fighting blackops grunts and assassins, before things take a sudden shift and see the players fighting an odd combination of vortigaunts, gonomes, and shock troopers (with a few itchyosaurs, and eventually a voltigore, thrown into the mix).      The battles in this are intense. W...
Read more