Black Mesa EPF - GrandmasterJ
Whenever a map comes to a close and transitions to the next map we have a good chance of that next map being Black Mesa EPF. It's a well made if not boilerplate Black Mesa adventure easily accessible to all players. I don't know what EPF stands for.
Author: Mutant
Date of release: 2011
Maps in package: 1
Map review of Black Mesa EPF
(originally posted on SCMapDB)
Here we have a classic, and official, Sven Co-op map where we teleport to Black Mesa and then escape. We fight plenty of aliens, mostly the ones from Opposing Force like pit drones and shock troopers.
Players spawn in on teleport pads and then cross a bridge to a supply room. Weapons and ammo are on big shelves and we have to crouch in them to suck up all the good stuff. Then we go downstairs and fight some stuff. Across the hall is a room that has a security office with an HEV station and a sniper rifle. The map opens up around this central point so these are our supplies for the entire map. We have a central hallway that enemies will appear in frequently and that's actually where the bridge from spawn the supply room is, so we can sometimes take fire just walking out of spawn. It's not that big of a deal but it is annoying to take a pot shot and have 40 health on a respawn.
Objectives are spelled out with game text and we have some cutscenes that show us where to go. Although at one point we were told to wait in the reception but we didn't know where that was so we mined the wrong set of doors. In hindsight that room did look like a reception area but a cutscene there would have been nice. The doors themselves had no visible way to tell if they are locked or not. Unlocking doors became a guessing game and so when my teammate and I were lost at a certain point he jumped off my head onto a ledge and explored a new area only to discover it was behind a door that had unlocked at some point. Or maybe the door could have blended into the wall and we never saw it. Or we had to go around the door to unlock it from the other side. Despite the map giving us directions we still did manage to get stuck and lost sometimes.
The combat was fine. It's some standard enemy teleports when certain triggers are hit, so expect lots of fighting through the map and enemies appearing in cleared areas. We have a pretty good arsenal but I sorely missed grenades. All together with the standard loadout we had the revolver, uzis, mp5, shotgun, sniper, and tripmines. A solid group of weapons but it was difficult to use the tripmines effectively and we lacked for explosives.
The map looked really good. We did have some weird stuff going on, like the shelves with all the weapons were weird looking. But there was some nice detail work throughout the whole map. Plus there was a lot of different lighting in the rooms to help break up the monotonous Black Mesa tone. It really helped elevate the map and kept an old look still looking good.
There was one spot of trouble we had, in the laser grid. The map tells us outright that if we get through the lasers we can get robogrunts on our side, or we could blow the fusebox and get past the lasers but have to fight the robogrunts. We both died on those lasers many many times before deciding to just blow the fusebox. I guess we'll never experience the thrill of achieving friendship with the robogrunts.
The map was good even if it had it's quirks. I don't really like how I can get dinged by enemies when I dash out of spawn but I can overlook that after we move past having enemies appear there. Collecting weapons can be a bit of a pain too. But get past that and we have a decent shooter where the map guides you from end to end shooting a bunch of stuff and pressing buttons to progress. The environment looks great and has some fun arenas, the lighting in particular makes some areas pop really well.
Pros:
- The map looks really good
- its got ample supplies and some HEV
- the map offers in-game guidance on what to do
- I'm really glad the laser grid was optional
Cons:
- despite the map directions sometimes the path of progression was unclear
- the shelves with the supplies was badly shaped
- the little bridge out of spawn was a bit annoying to get hit at
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