Black Haze - GrandmasterJ
Players get dropped, quite literally, into a wreck building and must kill hundreds of zombies with a lot of health. New areas open up at certain milestones and then there is a boss.
Author: Ice Box
Date of release: 2011
Maps in package: 1
Map review of Black Haze
(originally posted on SCMapDB)
Both the map description and the message of the day is somewhat vague on what is expected of the players. This map is a wave defense map where players have to kill a set number of zombies to unlock the next stage. This particular map has three areas and ends after a boss.
I played this with one other person and it was slow and boring. The zombies have 1000 health each and are extremely fast. With a lot of players I can see fun gameplay with people gunning down zombie swarms but all the weapons were scattered around and there was a shortage of ammo. Most of the time when I would spawn in I would run to the nearest weapon, or the sniper rifle since it is pretty good, then I would go find a spot that zombies would find it hard to hit me. My teammate found a spot on some boxes where the wrench spawns. I stood on a rail near where the crossbow spawns and that was a pretty good sniping spot where zombies had trouble pathfinding to me.
After about 20 minutes I was over it. We have to kill a lot of zombies to progress. With just two of us we were constantly low on ammunition and died a few times after running out of ammo. We do spawn with HEV but also sometimes we take fall damage from spawning that left me with 27 health. We're given a lot of stuff to help us, but also there is a lot of support withheld. It results in a rather slow, somewhat frustrating game.
At the end, when the 240th zombie falls (assuming a commenter is correct about the huge number of zombies we had to kill) a boss spawns, a gonome. I was afraid the gonome was going to eat us and regain its lost health and be a long drawn out boss battle. But no, we both poured all our SAW ammo into it and then it died. Best part of the map right there.
The map looks like some sort of mall, but the zombie infestation kind with gurneys filled with bodies hanging out in the rooms. The map has a bunch of details, there is lots of trash strewn about the place which really gives it an air of gritty realism.
Maybe the map would be better with more people, but there will also be less in the way of supplies to go around. The map is really drawn out with fighting boring zombies. There are lots of weapons, HEV, health, and some ammo, but its all scattered about and was stretched thin between two people. Both of us just jumped someplace difficult for the zombies to reach and took potshots at them from relative safety. The map did look pretty interesting, but I stayed in the main area mostly. It just all comes down to how it was no fun killing the zombies and how much of it I had to do.
Pros:
- the arena looked really good
- there was a lot of HEV and health scattered around
- player spawned with armor
- the boss was solid
Cons:
- we sometimes take fall damage on respawn
- barely enough ammo for two, more players will put a strain on supplies
- gameplay is just 240 zombies drip fed to us
- the combat was easily cheesed with the level geometry
- fast enemies with 1000 health are annoying to deal with
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