Black Facility - Dunkelschwamm

 

    Welcome to a scientific facility that looks and feels like Black Mesa but isn't, probably. Fight and scavenge your way up the elevator shaft to an eventual escape.

SCmapDB page

Author: Agamemnon

Date of release: 2003

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Black Facility

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | March 5, 2023 | 3104 characters

    Black Facility is a Black Mesa style walkthrough map for Sven Co-op. It is mostly action-oriented, with basic goals delivered through dialogue with scientists, as you make your way to escaping the Black Facility.

    The map begins with players at the base of an elevator shaft with some busted up elevators. Through dealing with the scientists, pushing buttons, shooting aliens, and fighting the military. Once you start ascending the elevator shaft, most of the map is hallways, occasional simple arena rooms, making up experiment chambers and living areas. Locker rooms, a cafeteria, console rooms, the works. You fight about equal amounts of HECU and aliens throughout. There's lots of vent exploration as well (and one vent that is visibly identical to the rest of the vents, leads to an easily accessible place, but is unbreakable for seemingly no reason?). By the end, players get to the surface and finish up with some fun gunfights with snipers and HECU grunts, culminating with a tank battle before the players seem to escape.

    Despite much of the way forward being spelled out by scientists, my teammate and I often found ourselves scratching our heads as to what we should be doing next. The dialogue is delivered with the presumption that the player already knows what to do, with scientists referring to objects and places using terms we must intuit without necessary information. We at one point broke the map by boosting up in a ventilation shaft, which we thought was the correct way forward at first. I ended up spending part of the map with a minigun I definitely shouldn't have had.

    The brushwork and textures are good, and the lighting always looks pleasing. The landmarks of each area is just enough to keep the whole thing from blending together, but there is the Black Mesa mélange effect creeping in. Thankfully, the map manages to keep each of the three floors distinct enough from each other that the map doesn't get stale before it ends.

    The map supports the players in various ways. We spawn with a decent arsenal to begin with, but by the third floor we're toting all of the boilerplate weapons, a hive hand, and almost all of the explosives. Moving through hallways densely packed with enemies can be a lot of fun when you're liquifying them with automatic weapons and explosives.

    Overall, I think this is a really solid slice of what Half-Life is known for- run, shoot, think, live. It's a bit corridory, but if you're fine with that, you'll find a fun time in here.

Pros:

• Fun gunplay, especially once the players get heavier weaponry
• The map looks pretty good!
• Good arsenal
• Good checkpoints!
• A couple fun setpieces, especially the final boss

Cons:

• I sequence broke the map once by boosting in a vent area
• Bad conveyance, especially when backtracking is necessary
• Enemy in spawn
• The map looks pretty good, but rides the line of looks bland

Score:

7.3 / 10