Civil Defence - Dunkelschwamm

  

    Kill a bunch of soldiers and aliens in some generic warehouses and offices somewhere in a red brick city. It's a pretty straightforward map that requires at least two people.

SCMapDB page

Authors: Daniel Plant

Date of release: 2004

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Civil Defence

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | January 7, 2024 | 3588 characters

    Civil Defence is a very simple sequence of gunfighting arenas in a warehouse district setting. Players fight their way out of a building by escaping along its fire escape, then through the district, before moving through a sewers area to the final battle. The first third of the map sees players fighting blackops grunts and assassins, before things take a sudden shift and see the players fighting an odd combination of vortigaunts, gonomes, and shock troopers (with a few itchyosaurs, and eventually a voltigore, thrown into the mix).

    The battles in this are intense. Without a third player, we found that approaching each arena meant escaping focused fire from multiple enemies. As such, escaping the initial building is probably the hardest part of the map. Taking fire from multiple snipers, M16 wielders, and assassins as you enter into an open battlefield with few ways to field shots before getting into the thick of it, sees player health near instantly obliterated. Once this segment is complete though players have some access to grenades, HEV, and ammo respawns, which makes everything that comes after far more manageable.

    The battles moving forward are quite a bit of fun. Each arena is set up for good ol' fashioned Half-Life arena combat, in the same vein as We've Got Hostiles or Apprehension. Hallways lead into arenas, lots of grunts and assassins to kill. That is, until the aliens start spawning in.

    The alien encounters are extremely haphazard and random. Lots of shock troopers and vortigaunts tend to teleport in, sometimes right behind players, and each trigger will populate damn near the entire map. This serves to make the respawn walk of shame a little more eventful, but more importantly it makes it so when players get split up by a respawn everybody is horribly inconvenienced and those who respawned must spend lots of time working their way back through repetitious battles in warmed over arenas.

    Despite this niggling annoyance, moving forward things are simple and sweet, with crushing big rooms full of beefy shock troopers and gonomes barely getting old by the time we finished.

    The description says the map is really dark and dull. I wouldn't say it's on the darker end of maps I've played, but the environment absolutely does little to shake things up (and when it does it's a brief sewer :/ ).

    Overall, civil defense is a very simple assault map that will keep you entertained as long as you like blowing away blackops and aliens. I'd recommend it, especially if you have more than only a couple players lined up. If you have a big group pushing forward, it's unlikely speeding through it will mean anything important is missed while ensuring everybody stays engaged.

Pros:

• Lots of intense action
• Some decently plotted out arena areas
• Things really pick up once grenades and HEV become available
• A shortcut opens near the end, which is very welcome
• The map is not ugly

Cons:

• Teleporting ambush enemies filling the whole map are more annoying and inconvenient than anything
• Before the availability of grenades and HEV combat is a slog
• The first arena is really poorly set up in terms of cover and combatant placement
• A lot of the map is spent waiting for ammo or HEV to respawn because very little is offered. More players will make combat less of a grind, but will make waiting for pickups more of a grind

Score: 6.8 / 10