Carnival - Dunkelschwamm

  

    It's all fun and games here, except for a short walkthrough section at the end. But besides that there are three different games to play and they all give prizes! Be careful pressing that yellow button though.

SCMapDB page

Author: Kune

Date of release: 1999

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Carnival

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | June 22, 2023 | 3065 characters

    Carnival is an action carnival game map. Players play carnival games which revolve around using weapons, fight aliens by using weapons, roam around in an underground playground, take an underground tram ride, and fight more aliens.

    Okay, so let's break things down. Things start with three main games: throw a grenade at a perfect arc through three panes of glass to a target (the most challenging as the grenade bouncing back is most likely to harm the players); throw satchel charges into chutes to explode tiny triggers within; and use mounted sniper rifles (with terrible accuracy, wtf?) to shoot targets. Completing these games unlocks weapons as far as I can tell. They're not mind-blowing, but they're cute. I dislike the mounted gun game for its terrible accuracy removing any aspect of skill. I think the grenade game in particular was a lot of fun. The satchel charge game I broke by climbing on the tubes and throwing the satchel charge in at point-blank range.

    By this point players have a ton of ammo and weapons- shotguns, crossbows, egon guns, smgs, revolvers, m16s, grenades, satchel charges- the works. Well, slap the big yellow button to spawn a bunch of aliens to mow down in a glorious frenzy. You can hit this button sooner- and that would be a mistake (unless you're a troll)! Being fully equipped for this makes it a pretty thrilling battle, but being underequipped can make it pretty nutso. A ton of aliens come out at once, and it requires a lot of crowd control to not be totally overwhelmed.

    After this point, players go underground, fuck around in a jungle gym, ride a super-deadly electrical railcar to nowhere, and then fight two gonarchs and a garg and bunch of support aliens. Killing the garg ends the map.

    Overall, I would say the map functions for what it offers and a little more. I think it could offer more in the carnival department, and currently leans on the combat as a crutch for half of the content. I think the idea was to have combat so the weapons given as prizes in the carnival games would have some palpable value. I think it ended up as a combat map that happened to have carnival games to earn weapons on the side.

    I recommend. It's cute and fun. Play with a friend, throw on a server. It'll probably be over in a jiffy. It's much more fun with a friend so if the alien invasion gets rushed it's because somebody goofed and not because a troll on a server wanted to fuck with everybody.

Pros:

• Cute carnival games, especially the grenade one
• Great arsenal and way for unlocking more
• Great enemy resistance for the arsenal unlocked

Cons:

• Bullshit railcar
• Why have a mounted gun carnie game and then make the gun inaccurate?
• Progress is often unclear
• I feel like, for a map named carnival, it offers very few carnie games and almost nothing in terms of a carnival environment

Score: 6 / 10