Dial "A" for "Arson" - GrandmasterJ
Based on a level in Gex by the same name, this map features a rooftop battle in a wacky city that players traverse through platforming and ladders. There is good music but also constant annoying sound effects.
Author: Agent Zero the Koraa Hunter
Date of release: 2018
Maps in package:1
Map review of Dial "A" for "Arson"
(originally posted on SCMapDB)
by GrandmasterJ | March 23, 2023 | 5903 characters
I played this map and reviewed it a long time ago. I remember it was late at night and my teammate was falling asleep, neither of us had fun and I tore the map to shreds. My teammate didn't review because he remembered none of it. Well, after a revisit I can say that I was wrong. Playing this map while awake was definitely the way to go.The map starts with a sweet camera flyover of the level, it's based on Gex, a platformer, so there is a lot of platforming showcased. Players pop into existence in a little room above a pile of HEV and two boxes of 9mm, we start with just a pistol and 25 armor. Then we open an elevator (we have to jump over a lip on the floor, can't walk straight out) and see four bodyguards with one health each in a row facing away from us. That's the last enemy with health below three digits, right outside this room is a crazy collection of rooftops filled with various enemies. Below the rooftops is all one big death pit.
When we first played this map we jumped to the roof right in front of us, boosted off each other to get to the higher roof, then used the pushable water tower top to allow the other player up. Then we climbed a rail that ran right against the skybox, a problem I was particularly unhappy with when I first played, then onto a rooftop in clear view of a bunch of enemies. That was where we quit, we never found a single weapon and used pistols the whole way.
But this time, with my teammate fully conscious and myself not in a big hurry to wrap things up, we followed the ledge to the right of spawn. My teammate went straight up a wall and said "you can climb walls in Gex". This is the secret to this map, some walls are ladders. Like, entire walls are ladders. This is cool sometimes but in later sections these wall ladders are combined with tiny ledges for platforming and things get difficult.
We also discovered that some large grey boxes are destructible and were full of weapons. The first time we played we never thought to try to break these things. This map suffers from not being intuitive. The walls are sometimes ladders and there isn't a way to tell which is which, at least not that I can see. Weapons are all hidden in these boxes that aren't clearly destructible. There are also these hedge boxes throughout the map that has one illusionary wall, but it's also got something else going on so it's not easy to just walk right in (I thought it was a lip at the bottom that I had to jump over but on reflection I am not sure). I thought we couldn't go inside those hedge boxes until I accidentally did. There is a wrench and HEV in there, in all of them actually.
Armed with knowledge of how the map works we had a pretty good time. We went the correct way this time and actually ran into checkpoints. But alas, the checkpoints put us past the weapons and spawn's supplies don't update with what we find. So once we hit the checkpoint it's back to pistols for us. Just kidding, we cheated. We've played this map with only pistols once before and it sucked. Losing out on our unlocked weapons is a huge blow to players, the sniper rifle and crossbow in particular.
One really good thing about the supplies is that items we find are usually accompanied by batteries so we were flush with armor most of the time. The map also supports overcharged armor so we hit 200 armor pretty consistently.
Oh, the sound effects are still pretty bad. The map has some good music, music I am guessing comes from Gex. But there are also a bunch of sound effects from Gex doing pop culture references. The music is good but the random sounds started to grate before long.
Killing the three voltigores at the end of the map unlocks the end of the level. Killing a bodyguard with a minigun above the first checkpoint unlocks the mafia area, we didn't look for the mafia area so I can't comment on what fun that place is.
The map is all right. It's a ton of platforming and sniping, mostly sniping with pistols, and all the enemies have pretty high health. The platforming is mostly all right, I'm not a big fan of first person platforming anyway. But the map suffers badly from poor readability. It was not apparent that some walls were ladders, which caused my teammate and I to go another way that I don't think was meant for players to traverse. I mean, that path works out and players can absolutely take it to the end of the level but there are no weapons, it skips the first checkpoint, and it sucks. There needs to be something to indicate what stuff does, if boxes are breakable make them look breakable. There are some minor things that can give the wrong impression to player, like how it was weirdly difficult to get into those hedge boxes. Once we fell into the groove of things it went well enough. The second half of the map is drastically worse due to how the checkpoint drops us off away from the sniper rifle and crossbow, the best weapons for this map. We can find the SAW and spore launcher here but only after clearing most of this area out and its just not the same.
Pros:
- Fun intro cinematic and good music
- tons of HEV, absolute scads of it
- some checkpoints to help things along
- it's a sniping map and we get a sniper rifle, all is right in the world
Cons:
- a lot of the map is pistol sniping with beefy enemies, it was consistently not fun
- the map was terrible readability, walls are ladders and the gray metal boxes are hiding all the weapons
- The way to go is not apparent and some players, like us, can take a terrible path
- repeating sound effects get old fast
- the checkpoint drops players past the good weapons
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