City Rush - Dunkelschwamm

 

    Drop into a blocky city and start killing hordes of monsters. Eventually through some arcane invocations (breaking the right stuff) the enemies will cease to appear.

SCMapDB page

Authors: Agent Zero the Koraa Hunter

Date of release: 2018

Maps in package: 1

Map review of City Rush

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | October 16, 2023 | 4583 characters

    City Rush is a horde map set in a modestly mapped block town. Much of the map is spent wandering around wondering whether you're doing the right thing to make the map proceed.

    You could say the map is broken up into two acts: the first is getting to know the map as it is desolate save for players. There are three buildings of interest at any given time: a building at the start with your starting weapons and a small table full of ammo (impossible to not be a greedy grabber here on more populated maps), an armory with extremely durable windows which must be shattered to enter, and a skyscraper at the edge of the map with a mysteriously glowing uzi behind it. The starting weapons building and the armory both have ladders which lead to non-replenishing sniper rifles, though frankly I found the sniper to be a mostly inept selection for the map to come. There are a bunch of explosive crates which are great for teamkilling your friends before the action ever begins because you're unsure of what to do next.

    Exploring each building during this section triggers a small cutscene which gives some guidance on how to proceed, but the durability of the windows left my teammate and I wondering if the suggestion to break through them wasn't the way forward. We almost gave up on the map before the action even began.

    The second act is after breaking into the armory, which triggers the invasion of zombies and gonomes. The zombies aren't much of a hassle, but the gonomes are a nightmare. Each one spawns with 1500 health and their presence forces players to hunker down in the armory or die at the hands of their superior speed and extreme reach. Once this phase begins, the doors to the skyscraper open, leading to a really strange boobytrapped lobby in which more gonomes will spawn. There's a couple spaces players can attempt to hide in here, including a bar and the area just above it (which I got into by boosting off of a zombie). This boostable area houses a barnacle weapon that serves little purpose. but the vantage point isn't terrible for hiding from gonomes.

    It is in this phase that using an elevator warns monsters must be killed before we can proceed. The way it's phrased led us to believe that we only had to kill a boss monster which spawns in, as a baby garg does indeed spawn at this point. After killing that, a voltigore spawned to take its place. After killing that, we found ourselves whittling down all of the zombies and gonomes until the elevator finally opened. Entering it ended the map.

    The weapon selection is pretty fantastic. The beginning area houses an uzi, a crossbow, and I think a wrench. The armory houses a shotgun, MP5, tripmines, desert eagle, and a revolver, as well as some armor. There's also the aforementioned snipers, but they're really only good for sniper battling rooftop gonomes and it's hard to find safe areas to implement that. I found the uzis, shotgun, and tripmines most effective personally, though I did do some sniping with the desert eagle.

    This map does very little to decently stand out, and funnels players into mostly the least fun hunkering strategies. At both the bit where we needed to breach the armory and the bit where we had to kill all the zombies, even with the direction we were given we felt like we were performing a Sisyphean task with constant worry it would never end or that we were doing something wrong. There's also the glowing uzi behind the skyscraper, and with the map complete we still don't know what that was all about.

    Overall, the map is kind of a slog and it reads super strange. I think there's fun to be had here, but it's the type of fun that comes naturally from throwing players with a bunch of weapons into a cube town with zombies and gonomes. What it presents is super basic, but it's mostly complicated by overbuffed gonomes and little else.

Pros:

• Good selection of weapons and good armor replenishment
• It's always fun laying tripmine traps for zombies
• The inside of the lobby was bizarre
• I like that you can climb on top of some of the buildings

Cons:

• Overbuffed gonomes are a grind and unfun to battle
• Progression reads poorly
• Pretty ugly, blocky map
• The cutscenes were just another thing slowing the map down
• Overall just a very grinding, slow burn for something with so many weapons and so many enemies rushing the players

Score: 4.7 / 10