Captured - Dunkelschwamm

  

    We've been Captured! Now we must escape the prison with the help of Otis and go to Black Mesa I guess? The map is pretty simple and straightfoward with a storyline that screams 'early Sven map'.

SCMapDB page

Author: pcgamer58

Date of release: 2003

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Captured

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | June 22, 2023 | 2742 characters

    Captured is a pretty simple and functional walkthrough action map. Players fight from a cell through some wacky N64ish-surreal landscapes against soldiers using some pretty boilerplate weapons.

    There isn't much to say here. The map doesn't look great, doing the bare minimum to evoke each environment. The indoor areas benefit best from this, but the more natural environments, as mentioned early, really come across as surreal and wacky. Structures exist with little purpose, with wacky random hazards strewn about. It all serves the function of the gameplay.

    To that end, the map isn't horrible. There are moments where players approach battles from, say, a teleport into a mostly open battlefield with machinegunning soldiers and robots all with visuals on you. There's a weird moment where players have to crawl into a cave somewhat sideways to fight a bunch of soldiers- though I can't bemoan that moment too much because I pretty satisfyingly juiced the fuckers with an under-barrel grenade. And that's what I meant at the beginning of this paragraph- while things are a bit awkward, the broad-enough (if very vanilla and safe) loadout allows players to approach soldiers in a way that's usually fun. I think when players are fighting soldiers things are usually feeling engaging enough that the map justifies itself.

    There's a bit inbetween soldiers with headcrabs that is annoying. There's also a garg fight at the end, which is, you know, a token garg fight at the end of the map. Once we'd whittled it far down with underbarrel grenades we found an RPG and quickly finished it off. Again, sort of an awkward approach to the battle. There was also a mortar in the battlefield that I didn't notice came in handy at all (my teammate assured me after reading this review he used the mortar to knock like 1000 hp off the garg lol).

    I will say- there's a couple parts where enemies just respawn in place over and over again. I understand this is a standard practice thing in a lot of maps, but it makes combat tedious.

    Overall, I think captured is a short, simple, mediocre map with pretty trash presentation. If you're looking for quick stuff to cram in a server rotation, you can do worse.

Pros:

• Fighting the HECU and blackops with the loadout given is generally fun
• Short and simple action map with unmissable progression
• Pretty decent weapon loadout that expands satisfyingly

Cons:

• Visual presentation is not given much care
• Some battles have awkward approaches
• Respawning enemies are tedious

Score: 5.8 / 10