Captured - GrandmasterJ

 

    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 GrandmasterJ | June 22, 2023 | 3006 characters

    So we are in a jail near Black Mesa, Otis comes over and helps us break out and we go on an adventure to freedom. We start with nothing but a medkit and find a crowbar in the jail cell with us and in the next few rooms we find our first enemy, a human grunt, and a pistol with one magazine.

    Then we go to the next room with more enemies and more weapons. Right after this room we get our first respawning enemies, I think there are 15 in total but it was really worrying when we didn't know if they were going to end. Right afterwards we have to go up a ladder and when they kept respawning they would shoot us when we weren't paying attention. My teammate died at least once from that.

    The map has weird architecture, on top of this building is a pit with more enemies and more supplies. Then we have to crawl on a thin fence and over a ladder to what seems to be a sewer in a cliff filled with headcrabs and find a room with teleporters. I mean the prison looks enough like a prison from the outside but I didn't realize Black Mesa was so next door that I could walk there in about a minute. Also the map generally looks flat and bad. Some wall textures are stretched out and look horrendous and even the best texturing is the drabbest texture possible. I also noticed many brushes were off a bit, resulting in lots of razor thing raised edges on surfaces meant to be flat.

    We teleport to a battlefield and have a rather fun fight. There are some holes and trenches here and sometimes the enemies get stuck in the holes, which is good for us and means we can kill them easier. At the end of the map there is a truck, I get in and use the dashboard and it goes down like an elevator, crushes me for 1 damage, and goes back up. I excitedly usher my teammate into the truck and he uses the dashboard. Nothing happens. Oh well. He ended the map by touching a skybox wall.

    The map was forgettable. I think the first three or so rooms, excluding the hallway, was ok and the quick pace of new weapons was good. I also really liked the big battlefield, we had tons of underbarrel grenades for that and the foxholes meant to help conceal our enemies ended up trapping them. That crush-truck was also a highlight for me. But the combat came mostly from enemies mindlessly placed around, a respawning wad of enemies here, a tunnel of headcrabs there. Outside of the areas I mentioned I wasn't interested at all. The elevator truck didn't even work for my teammate.

Pros:

• Has a pretty nice fast weapon progression
• the battlefield area was great
• I really liked that elevator truck thing
• the prison sort of looked like a prison from the outside

Cons:

• Map looks very bad
• map layout could use some work
• most of the combat was not fun
• the elevator truck did not work for my teammate

Score: 4.5 / 10