Bossrush - GrandmasterJ

 

    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 GrandmasterJ | April 17, 2023 | 4276 characters

    The whole idea behind this map is fighting a handful of enemies with really high health and that's pretty much it. After all the enemies are dead we get to fight some boss waves before the map ends. There is also a bonus map, I think we can get to it via a secret in the first map, but we didn't find it and instead manually changed level to it. The bonus level is much the same as the first, but all on one flat expanse of land.

    So players start out in a room with a hallway we can't enter with a button above the doorway, and a locked door. Players have to boost off each other to use the button which will open the door. But the door closes very soon after it opens and it absolutely requires two players. This is a huge problem, I died once and then just sat in this room until my teammate cleared the area and was able to turn on cheats. We cheated through this entire map and it was because of the way the spawn area is set up. Why require two people to open the door? All it does is serve as a very good reason not to play this map.

    When you get past the co-op required door there is a teleporter and past that there are eight more teleporters. These are the arenas to fight the enemies. The thought occurs to me that this map is called bossrush yet we have all the arenas open to enter at our leisure and there are no actual boss monsters in the map. We mostly fight reskinned zombies and male assassins, although it is hard to tell what they are because the map uses tons of custom models and have tweaked their animations so they behave slightly differently. Each and every fight in this map takes place in a box room, there is absolutely no variation in arena, even the boss fight takes place in a slightly different colored box.

    After we beat the map we breathed a sigh of relief and started typing this review, but wait! We have a bonus map to try as well! Let me give you a quick rundown, it's a big flat expanse with a pile of weapons and ammo in the middle (one of each, with two players I was constantly low on ammo, health, and armor) and enemies spawn in a big circle around us. We get multiple waves of each enemy followed by multiple waves of a bunch of enemies. On the second to last wave I was so intensely bored and exasperated I turned on godmode, bound 'impulse 101' to the '/' key and then started carpet bombing the arena with banana grenades. I remember at one point my teammate remarking the bonus level was better than the regular level, I agreed when he said it but I think I disagree now that it is over.

    There was a lot of game text as well as sound effects and music, I couldn't read the game text since it is all in what looks to be Japanese. So I can't tell you what the story is. The bonus level had constant epic music in the background but my teammate was literally singing a completely different song so I couldn't really hear it.

    Overall it sucks. The co-op required door in the regular map is a totally unnecessary roadblock to fun, needlessly keeping single players out of the action for no reason. There isn't a way back to spawn once we go through the teleporter so there is nothing these players can really do. Then we get to the gameplay and it's just high health enemies we fight in boxes. At one point we fought tiny hands that replaced headcrabs, cute but not fun to fight. The bonus level was better in the beginning, we get more reliable supplies, a much bigger battlefield, and spawn right there where we need to be. The problem is that it's just dumping these high health enemies on players all the time. It got real old. I don't often want to just quit maps without finishing them, but I was seriously tempted with this one.

Pros:

  • cool and fun model replacements
  • great music

Cons:

  • The door in spawn that requires two players single-handedly keeps the map from being playable
  • 100% of all arenas in this map set is a box
  • the gameplay loop is running backwards while shooting at enemies with tons of health
  • the bonus map just went on and on, as if the combat wasn't tedious enough
Score: 3.5 / 10

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