Central Bunker Remake - Dunkelschwamm

  

    This is, of course, a remake of another map by the same name. While it does offer many improvements over the original it also has an unfortunate area that we had to cheat past.

SCMapDB page

Author: GiGaBiTe

Date of release: 2016

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Central Bunker Remake

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | October 9, 2023 | 4758 characters

    Central Bunker: Remake is a ground-up remake of Central Bunker, which we have previously reviewed. How does this hold up?

    This plays almost exactly like I remember Central Bunker playing, but without the lag. The short narrative of gameplay is: you start outside, with far too few weapons and ammo fight your way through a lobby full of Barnabus/Ottos and ceiling turrets, grab some new weapons, go down an obnoxious elevator, fight a great battle with aliens and grunts beside an electrified pool of water, work your way through many more grunts until you find a big railway bunker full of shock troopers and pit drones. Move through a slightly mazy tunnel system to find the power to the rail, shut that off, swim across the no-longer-electrified water (fight a kingpin on the way), clear out more grunts, navigate a frankly ridiculous fan puzzle, and fight a gargantua after destroying his power crystals. Mazel tov, you beat the map.

    We'll come back to that frankly ridiculous fan puzzle in a moment.

    This map looks great. The outdoor area looks immaculate, the indoor areas look as good as anything in Half-Life did. Some great standouts include the room with the electrified water (which just has a really neat look to it), the big power generator for the rail, and the tunnels which contribute some nice spooky atmosphere. There's a puddle with water dripping in it that's a real nice touch, but frankly the texture for the water looks like static and it was something I made at least two jokes about while playing.

    The combat is fantastic. Each grunt encounter was a blast, and we felt really well equipped to deal with them, unlike the original. The start was rough since we only had starting equipment and a 357 with a single respawning ammo pickup, but as soon as the initial lobby was cleared, we had MP5s and shotguns. Equipment was rarely a problem after that, especially when halfway through we got a SAW and some great weapons. Also, there are tons of HEV and health chargers on the walls which helps us from being quickly liquified during the grandiose battle scenes.

    So, the fan. The original map had a cosmetic fan in a vent that was blocked by some bars which you quickly move around, late in the map. In this remake, the fan pulls players into it and kills them. There is a visible fuse box, but after hitting it with every type of weapon and trying to use it a bunch, we came to the conclusion that the fuse box was a solid world brush. This was, as far as my teammate and I were able to tell, an unsolvable puzzle. The current from the fan is too strong to crawl against, and you cannot stand to move faster in the vent. Because of this, the map seemed to be totally broken. The switch to disable the fan is on the other side of the obstacle, and there is no way to reach it without noclipping, and it isn't triggered by damaging it with thrown explosives or whatever. I looked up the only video I could find of somebody else playing this, and they noclipped around it as well.

    Edit: Upon further questioning in the SCMapDB discord, SV Boy and Meryilla revealed to me that spamming use on the fusebox will very temporarily disable the fan for roughly one second, giving players time to proceed. Big thanks to those two for their help, especially SV Boy who grabbed footage for me to confirm. Before this revelation, I had given the map a 4.7/10 for being broken. Instead, I'm going to have to chock this up as a hard-to-read and highly annoying puzzle that mostly adds confusion and frustration. For what it's worth, SV Boy also demonstrated a way to simply bunnyhop past it, but that's definitely more of an exploit rather than a proper solution.

    It's a shame. This map is, almost in every way, just a better version of Central Bunker. I recommend it, but keep in mind the solution to the fan puzzle to not mistake the map for being unwinnably broken.

Pros:

• Beautiful map
• Great combat scenes
• Great equipment
• Fun secrets and shortcuts that open over time
• Great variety of scenes that naturally flow together

Cons:

• The fan puzzle's interactivity was so nonresponsive and hard to read that we gave up on beating it fairly and presumed the map broken.
• Sloppy equipment for starting area
• Until shortcuts open, the elevator in the beginning is a major annoyance
• Some enemies are made to be bosses with just a trivially large amount of health which slowed things down more than ever presenting a decent challenge
• Some progression was not well signposted, especially the wall that must be blown up

Score: 7.6 / 10