Blastcorpse - GrandmasterJ

 

    How the tables have turned! Play as a captured alien and escape the human holding facility. This short walkthrough map leads players through holding pens to freedom.

SCMapDB page

Author: John Cable

Date of release: 2001

Maps in package:1

Map review of Blastcorpse

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | March 25, 2023 | 3058 characters

    Here we have an inversion of the typical Sven Co-op map, we are the aliens (in story, no custom models, although we do lack flashlights so is that alien?) fighting our way out of a military installation to freedom. We do this by using all human weapons, mostly uzis.

    We start off in a cell where our military overlords have handed us a pile of uzis, single uzis so players have to wait 15 seconds to get a second one. There is a ladder to a room full of ammo. Also of note here are these weird blue rectangles on the walls next to the health chargers, those are HEV chargers.

    We burst through a wall and enter a hallway where some soldiers spawn in mid air in front of us. Get used to that. The combat is not hard, even if it drops soldiers behind us many times. We get plenty of HEV in spawn and there are batteries around and plenty of ammo for our uzis. My teammate and I watched each others' backs and managed to get through the whole level with a minimum of deaths. At one point we fought an ichthyosaur but every other enemy was a soldier or a turret. At one point we rescued an alien slave (not OUR slave!) who fought alongside us. I had to bring it back from the dead at one point and we lose him past a ladder.

    We do get more weapons eventually, a crossbow most important of all since it allows us to fight the ichthyosaur and blow up any humans who stand in our way. We don't get much ammo for it later in the map though.

    Most of the time we find our way through the map by breaking something, I think we pressed one button total in the whole map. This is not always apparent but standard Sven gameplay demands the crowbar test of every prop so we managed to get by. The map isn't always linear, but there are goodies to reward exploration and the map is fairly small so meandering around isn't a problem. If you get stuck then shoot stuff.

    The map looks pretty bad but it's not eye searing. Some wacky proportions, textures that don't really look like anything, some flat environment lighting, and blocky simple architecture all make this map look bland. There is a drawing above spawn that is interesting to look at.

    I had a good time. I found my way easily enough as long as I was trying to break stuff. The combat was nothing special but mowing them down a they popped into existence with my teammate was very satisfying. I like the idea of being an alien and escaping and the addition of an alien friend was very cute. It's a decent action map that has ups and downs.

Pros:

• cute idea, and I like the friendly vortigaunt even if it didn't help much
• good amount of HEV and ammo around the map
• fairly straightforward map, we didn't get lost
• the crossbow was a good secondary weapon

Cons:

• map looks pretty bad
• sometimes it is not apparent which thing needs to be broken
• crossbow ammo is a little scarce

Score: 6 / 10