Black Facility 2 - Dunkelschwamm
We return to the dark pigmented facility, the first map we were a bystander and now we get to be soldiers. Visually it looks like Black Mesa but there is not a lot that the two maps have in common.
Author: Agamemnon
Date of release:2003
Maps in package:1
Map review of Black Facility 2
(originally posted on SCMapDB)
Black Facility 2 is the sequel to Black Facility. It is an action walkthrough map for Sven Co-op.
In whatever regard this is related to Black Facility 1, frankly can be easily dismissed. This is a new boilerplate Black Mesa style facility that starts in an outdoor area and proceeds into a base which players sabotage. The story, as far as I can tell, and the progression of the map, have little to do with Black Facility 1.
The beginning of the map has players unarmed through some vent crawling and going through a metal detector. This doesn't exactly happen, however, as the game gives players some very early underbarrel grenades, which in these days of Sven give the player an M16 along with it. We sequence broke through the vents, spurring a fight with some turrets and some Xen military.
Soon, players are outfitted with a handgun, shotgun, and MP5. Later in there are grenades, uzis, and a revolver as well. Most of this map is comprised of battles with Xen military- that is to say, vortigaunts and alien grunts. There are also some headcrabs, zombies, gonomes, bullsquids, shock troopers, pit drones, and baby headcrabs. Lots of aliens to kill. Actually, I'd say the map was primarily characterized by slowly opening vertical doors, and taking the opportunity to crouch and shoot under the door at an enemy before they get the chance to retaliate. The rest is standard corridor shooting, not much to write home about.
The map is brushed competently enough to pass. The corridors later in, especially, look great, with interesting use of brush entities to make a swinging sign and a teetering pipe hatch on the ground. Despite these nice touches, most of the map is a lot simpler in construction. The outdoor area easily players to stand up on the rock walls, letting us peer into null faces of other parts of the map. The vast majority is simple corridors, but at the very least work is taken to light things well enough.
The map ends in a cliffhanger that comes out of nowhere. We turned off a generator or something. I forgot what the significance of that was, but we get some cryptic message and idk what that has to do with anything. By this point we'd flipped a bunch of nondescript buttons, gotten confusing messages on our screens- I simply was not following the story.
Overall, I think Black Facility 2 is an alright map, a bit held back by its ambition. I don't know if a Black Facility 3 is in the works to finish off the cliffhanger. If you're looking for an action map, you can certainly do worse, but don't expect anything particularly fulfilling or straightforward.
Pros:
- Some fun combat when it works out
- Good arsenal altogether
- Some fun ambushes
- Handy-dandy checkpoint
- Great HEV recharging. Love HEV
- Visuals get better as it goes along
Cons:
- Sort of bland environments
- Unfulfilling cliffhanger ending
- Clunky story stuff
- The early parts of the map have clunky, sort of broken progression
- Unnecessary outdoor area was mostly confusing and weird
- Unclear objectives that we just sorta blundered through without thinking too hard about
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