City Invasion - GrandmasterJ

 


    Aliens have invaded a city and it is up to YOU to repel them! There is one part that needs two players to complete but a community tweak that removes that part, the map does seem balanced for two people.

SCMapDB page

Author: Foofinoo

Date of release: 2017

Maps in package: 1

Map review of City Invasion

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | August 6, 2023 | 3892 characters

    The city has been invaded by aliens! Fight your way through a factory, make some friends along the way, and have a boss battle in the sewers. The map is a straightforward walkthrough map that delivers a good looking and well done experience.

    We start out with a shotgun and mp5 in addition to our usual loadout as well as armor. This is enough to take on the rest of the map and there are other weapons we can find as well like the revolver and uzi. The SAW and rpg make an appearance but they are exclusive weapons that you have to drop before changing to another weapon. The small piles of ammo and battery respawn instantly and give us full ammo and armor. It's very nice and now that I think about it my teammate and I completed this map without a single death.

    Before we started out I saw that there was a 'fix' so the map can be played solo, I didn't use that one. I did notice that there was a box that seemed like it should be pushable but it didn't go anywhere. Upon crowbarring it had the glass bullet hole decals. So maybe this map was made to be played solo, it is definitely easy enough to warrant a solo run.

    Enemies are typically placed around the level as would be in a singleplayer mod and then sometimes spawn in swarms. At one point my teammate and I had just dropped into an arena and aliens started spawning in very quickly, so fast that we would kill one only to have it instantly be replaced. We may not have died once on this map but we got pretty close here.

    In the very first room there is a big garage door open just a crack and we can see teensy little houndeye paws roaming around on the other side. This was a pretty striking visual and actually gave me Resident Evil vibes, I felt like the game was teasing zombie dogs. The map had a great layout and we didn't really get lost. There were a couple of times where the map had a path that was just barely blocked that we definitely felt we could jump past but in each time there was a detour we had to use. There are snarks and an egon gun hidden behind obstacles and I don't know if that is a secret or a mean tease. The map looks beautiful overall and despite the reliance on standard Black Mesa fare there were levels of added grit that added variation and a more horror-themed paint job. I also really liked the sprite wheels we had to turn in the sewers.

    By the way, there are slabs of floating text in three areas in the map that tell us our story. I don't really know where to bring that up. It's fun if a bit unnecessary and maybe even immersion breaking.

    The map is fun and fairly straightforward. With two players we took full advantage of the amazing ammo and armor dumps to keep ourselves armed and armored and breezed through most of the map. The combat is pretty standard except for a couple of times enemies are dumped directly on us but it was fun, we were equipped to handle it. The map looked good and I could see the attention to how things were laid out to create some fun scenes. I'm not a fan of the decision to replace straightforward paths with a more convoluted path, like the door we had to go through but were forced to go through a vent to get to the other side for some reason. The weapons held out of reach that I suspect are not secrets was also pretty mean.

Pros:

  • Great ammo and armor supplies throughout the map
  • map looks good
  • we spawn with very solid loadouts for a faster start
  • map layout created a couple of fun scenes
  • interesting limits on SAW and rpg, kept the map from being trivial

Cons:

  • I'm not a fan of weapons teased but forever out of reach
  • sometimes it felt like we were forced to take detours around obstacles unnecessarily

Score: 8 / 10

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