Crood Coop - Dunkelschwamm

  

    This is a nice looking map with a mixture of combat, platforming, and puzzles. A lot of the map looks well done and then there are some spots where enemies just get dumped in the level and one terrible platforming section.

SCMapDB page

Author: Headz

Date of release: 2003

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Crood Coop

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | August 19, 2023 | 3791 characters

    Crood Coop is, apparently, in its fifth alpha as of 20 years ago if the splash screen is to be believed. I wonder if Headz'll ever finish it. It's a walkthrough action/puzzle map, with a heavy emphasis on action.

    Rooms are shaped in large, nonsensical ways, which interacts well with the lighting and textures. However, I can't help but wonder if these interesting textures and scrolling electricity brushes and sprites are doing heavy lifting for what feels like mostly room after room of big-open spaces full of monsters. Most of the combat in the map is just in big cube rooms, with tons of enemies just piled onto you. It's pretty trite encounters for the most part, but thankfully the map begins supplying the players with some interesting weapons about halfway through. While it's annoying things start with players attacking a turret in spawn using just their 9mm handgun, it's really nice to finally get your hand on the egon later.

    The parts that aren't combat are the puzzles, which unfortunately are mostly bad. There's a swimming puzzle in the middle that I actually found pretty fun, but it was turned into a nuisance when a drop with mandatory damage earlier made us worry if we'd have enough health to survive the swim without somebody healing us first on respawns. The big puzzle of the map is a big crate puzzle, which I think is very creatively implemented here, even if it's annoying as shit to actually play. Pushing crates in sven is already a pain in the ass, but then rolling them into platforming in the way this does as well is really a whole other dimension of ass painery. To make matters even the worst, the map rounds out with a boring platforming puzzle before rather unceremoniously ending on a fart.

    While I do think the combat was decent enough to be entertaining for like half of this, I don't want to give the impression it was too much better than the terrible puzzle segments. Two segments of this required battling gargantuas with way too much health, and frankly I think that's an automatic negative. Gargantuas are terrible bosses: their attacks are all heavy punishments for engaging them; their armor limits your approaches as to make any attack less dynamic; because you have limited approaches the ammo necessary for it is more precious and inevitably a bigger pain in the ass to get. There's lots of things that make gargantuas terrible bosses- the famous gargantua boss in Half-Life wasn't even meant to be fought, but lured into a trap! You could say it's unfair for me to criticize this map for using the tools Sven Co-op offers, but I argue that using a gargantua as a straight-faced boss fight is a poor use of those tools.

    In conclusion, Crood Coop is a decent map with some crummy puzzles, half-decent half-shite combat, and some really pretty and interesting visuals just sorta glommed over everything with the big cube-room approach baked into the brutalist aesthetic. I'd recommend it based on visuals alone, but I don't think it's worth finishing if you find yourself too annoyed to continue.

Pros:

• Really fun visuals with great textures and lighting and sprite use
• Some great weapons for taking on rooms full of enemies later on
• I liked the water puzzle
• The shortcuts and ever-opening map were great

Cons:

• The crate puzzle was a really fun and interesting idea that was not terribly fun to play
• Some of the combat was a grind, particularly the gargantuas
• Why put a turret in spawn?
• Probably a little too much vent crawling later on
• Really, really annoying platforming that drags the whole map down

Score: 5 / 10