Black Facility 2 - GrandmasterJ
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)
This is the second installment of the Black Facility series that takes place somewhere that looks just like Black Mesa in which we fight aliens. In the first map we escaped the facility, but now we are back, starting from outside and working our way in.
Right in the first area we had some issues. We start off in a outdoor cliff hallway, my teammate jumps on a crate and onto a cactus then onto the cliff wall giving him a view out of the map. We spawn with no weapons so we start looking around. We find a friendly human grunt that explains out mission parameters and tells us we get weapons after deactivating security. We use C4 to blow up some doors (no item, just the use key on already placed explosives) and then we get to a potential game stopper, a bunch of grates. We enter a vent system and encounter an intersection with a barnacle in it, each branch ends in a grate. We have no weapons at this point, we have no way to break any of these grates. There is a small pool of water when we first enter the vents that has underbarrel grenades in it. Sven Co-op used to have the Half-Life machinegun with underbarrel grenades, but has since updated to split that gun up into the mp5 and M16, and in order for older maps to work correctly the M16 will be spawned alongside underbarrel grenades. This map was made before that change, so the M16 shouldn't be there. We used it to break the vents and progress with the map but it felt wrong.
It felt more wrong when we finally found the crowbar and triggered a message that didn't make sense unless we were supposed to come in this way. I did some investigation and there is a part of the vents that appears like it is supposed to break and drop players onto the crowbar. But it didn't work, we had to use the M16 which isn't really supposed to be there to get through.
After we got past that confusion we found ourselves in a fairly standard Black Mesa looking laboratory system. Its a bit confusing as the map is non-linear and we end up walking around a lot looking for objectives. Sometimes monitors or computer banks are buttons and don't really look like it. There are some thick doors that don't open and some that do, some have breakable glass and some don't. At the very least when we accomplish an objective we get game text telling us, without that I would have been so lost as to what to do.
At some point we get weapons in spawn and a teleporter opens up to a pretty deep point in the facility. The map grants players weapons very slowly and not with a lot of ammo. Or at least my teammate kept grabbing all the ammo and leaving me with none. I spent a lot of time with zero shells for my shotgun. There was plenty of HEV though, I remember one part my teammate and I decided to explore while waiting for an HEV charger to recharge but then we turned a corner and found another one. This map is stingy with weapons and ammo, but generous with health and armor.
At the end of running around the facility using computers and opening doors we get to a generator, turn it on, and get a to be continued cliff hanger. It's been decades now, so I think it's safe to say the series is done.
It's a fairly standard map that feels like Black Mesa. We have a seemingly broken intro sequence that we can get past thanks to underbarrel grenades and then a non-linear exploration of a confusing facility. The combat is fast and heavy and we are healthy and armored but I kept running out of ammo constantly. It's ok I guess.
Pros:
- Lots of health and HEV
- spawn updates with weapons and a teleporter
- objectives are given out and then repeated when completed
Cons:
- My teammate jumped out of the level the moment the map started
- I think the sequence where we get into the facility via the vents is broken
- shortage of ammo throughout the map
- layout was a bit confusing, doors weren't consistent
| Score: |
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