Central Bunker - GrandmasterJ

 

    We descend into the eponymous bunker and fight aliens and soldiers in our quest to turn off the power. The map is nice enough but there is a supposedly better remake that exists which sort of makes this version obsolete.

SCMapDB page

Author: Max Helbig

Date of release: 2005

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Central Bunker

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | July 23, 2023 | 3129 characters

    This map is action packed and ammo starved. We fight our way to the bottom of a big bunker complex past an odd assortment of enemies until we kill a garg and complete the map. There are a lot of areas that connect with each other and the map opens up in a cool way, but it never gives us enough ammo.

    We start outside, be careful trying to jump down the hole or go through a door, the big door explodes and it took me with it. The hole is a shortcut that currently kills you. After the door is blown open we can go through an adjacent door to find a revolver and some ammo. This ammo is pretty much the only reliable source of ammo for a while. Pretty soon we come upon an elevator, it's quick enough but we can't send it back to the top from the bottom without getting stuck going back up with the elevator so each time we respawn we get to wait a while. We do find some more ammo and even quite a bit of armor, but the map layout and shortcuts put us far away from all that useful stuff. When we finally turned the power off and unlocked the hole short cut we sometimes opted to wait for the elevator and walk around the facility to arm up. I was a bit impatient and just threw my unarmored self with 12 revolver bullets up against the enemy and hoped for the best, I think I had about 20 deaths this map.

    Combat starts off with soldiers, later on there are aliens and even some instances of the aliens fighting each other but I don't actually know if that was intentional. Most of the enemies have standard health but there are a few with a lot more. Most of the difficulty comes from the lack of ammo, I was often just charging into enemies with a mere crowbar, a tactic that worked more often than not.

    The map looks good, there were a lot of interesting areas that helped us keep track of where we were. I noticed a lot of fun sounds and in a couple of rooms the lighting flashed red and alarms sounded, it had a great atmosphere. There was lots of detail in the level too, but I think it might have been overambitious and underoptimized because I did lag quite a bit. There is a remake that I am going to try and that makes me want to rate this map even lower, if there is a better version then why would I recommend this one?

    The map really isn't bad, it's a fun decent descent into a bunker. There were a couple of secrets along the way too, and also shotgun ammo even though I never found the shotgun. The map is ultimately hamstrung by the severe lack of ammo, shortcuts that will very often cut us off from valuable ammo and armor, and a bit of lag throughout. With a remake out there that looks like it may fix the lag at least I don't see why anybody should play this map over that one.

Pros:

• Map looked pretty good
• lots of shortcuts
• fun ambient sounds
• lots of armor recharge stations

Cons:

• severe lack of ammo
• shortcuts will cut off valuable supplies
• map lags, bad optimization

Score: 6 / 10