City of the Dead - GrandmasterJ

 

    Fight waves of zombies in a city themed arena. The map description makes it seem like fighting waves of zombies is all that happens but there is a nice exploration aspect as well.

SCMapDB page

Authors: Searanger, EdisLeado

Date of release: 2007

Maps in package: 1

Map review of City of the Dead

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | October 16, 2023 | 3192 characters

    I wanted to play a scary map for October and I thought a zombie horde would fit the bill. Instead of meeting a brain dead map with a wad of zombies in an arena I was met with a small facsimile of a town with strategically placed weapons and ammo. In the second half of the map I was really scared of running out of ammo, that is the true horror.

    The game starts us off in a pure white hallway that is really blinding. Then we have white text that tells us how many seconds until the round starts, it is almost impossible to see. Go through a doorway to end up in a spawn room, health and HEV along with a crowbar (we have nothing else) and up a staircase to the weapon room. Jumping into a weapon bin will immediately teleport a player outside the spawn room with the chosen weapon, only one chance. We find other weapons in the map but none of them respawn and even most of the ammo doesn't respawn. The precious few areas with respawning ammo are vital to this section because there are a lot of zombies.

    The action was pretty good. There were a lot of zombies and they really did a good job swarming up and inconveniencing us as we explored the level. Most of the areas we had to go were breakables that didn't immediately appear to be breakable and had just enough health for us to second guess whacking them. We have to break lots of metal doors and there are some metal doors that don't break so we have to take our time and revisit some areas before finding our way to the next section of the map. There's also a big generator thing that turned on after I used something that in no way looked like a pressable button and it did something somewhere, probably.

    We fight soldiers with a lot of health in a maze. There isn't a whole lot of ammo here and my teammate and I were hard pressed the entire way through. Eventually we reach an ok boss fight, I hope you unlocked the right weapons for this and didn't drop it, losing it forever and making the boss fight drag on. That didn't happen to us but the way the map is set up means it is a distinct possibility. I climb on a helicopter and presumably leave my teammate behind as the screen turns to retina-searing white.

    I really liked the map and I had a lot of fun. It presents as a boring horde map at first but opens up with exploration and even the very restrictive weapon system came together in a positive way. The map description notes some display issues and I have to confirm, before breaking all the windows there were a couple big game stutters.

Pros:

• Well balanced weapon and ammo system, at least for two people
• This map had the right amount of zombies
• great explorative aspect
• I enjoyed the change up from fighting zombies to soldiers

Cons:

• Lots of the breakables don't look breakable and take a bit too much time to break with a crowbar
• map has a readability problem in general, that generator in particular
• It is possible to lose weapons forever with the weapon system
• mazes are lame

Score: 8 / 10