Bossrush - Dunkelschwamm

    The title gets us ready for boss after boss in some sort of a rush, but instead we have a bunch of teleporters to arenas filled with normal enemies with lots of health. There is also a button that needs two people to press it and that completely neuters the map.

SCMapDB page

Author: enuze

Date of release: 2017

Maps in package:2

Map review of Bossrush

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | April 17, 2023 | 4119 characters

    Bossrush is two maps: the bonus map, and the map that is not the bonus map.

    The map that is not the bonus map gives the player 10 boss battles: 8 to choose from a grid of portals in any sequence, and two at the end. These boss battles take the form of enemies with extremely high HP in cube rooms fought with shotguns, MP5s, pistol, and revolver. Sometimes a clever spin is put on the battle, such as some invincible enemies aiding the main target enemies. For the most part, though, fighting comprised of running backwards from enemies while firing guns madly backwards at them. They had fun models and names, but fighting them in their cube arenas was largely the same experience (with a few exceptions, that I'll get back to). The battles are further handicapped by requiring a co-op button to be pressed every time a player wants admitted back into a battle- you either die in pairs, or somebody's just gonna be sitting around waiting. When a battle ends, you get a bunch of ammo and HEV pickups spawning around a teleporter back to the grid. It feels like doing chores, though I admit they are charmingly presented.

    The bonus map is a significant upgrade. Instead of multiple cuboid arenas, there's a singular giant cuboid outdoor arena that players spawn in the middle of with a far greater arsenal: full 2-3 slots and a SAW. Enemies spawn in waves, and are mostly the enemies of the first map. They spawn in a large number, and sometimes spawncamp the players, but it's preferable to the co-op gate in the first map. Sometimes waves are repeats, but they usually introduce harder and harder enemies until you're fighting massive combinations. The next wave begins immediately when the previous ends. After a garg boss, the map ends.

    So, most of the enemies are just high-HP zombies or gonomes or male assassins or whatever. But, there are a couple stand-outs. For the purposes of this review, I'm going to focus on the skeleton enemies. The skeleton enemies are the worst part of both maps. They spawn in large numbers usually, are extremely hard to hit due to fucky hitboxes, and have fuckier animations which involve them either standing as narrowly straight as possible, or falling down on their back. They are extremely hard to hit with a single bullet, and yet spawn with roughly 2000 hp. After minutes of picking away at a group my teammate and I would find that some still had nearly full health. Slowly picking away at enemies with huge amounts of health is already dumb: there's no way to balance a co-op game which can have any number of players with any combination of skill levels against a number gate. This is even dumber, because now you also don't even know how effective your shots are being. It slowly discourages you from playing until you're just grinding through sunk-cost to see the map end. It's moments like this that ultimately led to us turning on cheats to joylessly finish the map, really near to the end too.

    The maps looked fine, were charming, but the bulk of their gameplay is grinding against high-HP nothing monsters. The SAW in the second map makes that more manageable, but I can't say it ever makes it more fun. If you have a server that you can load with people, I'd recommend these maps. Under no other circumstances do I recommend.

Pros:

• They look fine
• Lots of weapons, especially in the bonus map
• Cute monsters and models
• Charming presentation, inbetween text, cutscenes
• A couple interesting ideas, like the invincible guard monsters

Cons:

• Running out of ammo is a real problem in both maps for different reasons
• Most of the combat is utterly tedious
• Boring arena layouts
• For any differences between the battles, they all play the same, because all the player can be expected to do is run backwards and fire and hope they don't get cornered. Lowest common denominator gameplay
• Respawning is a hassle in both maps for different reasons.

Score:

4.8 / 10