Dark Seekers - GrandmasterJ

 

    Inspired by 'I am Legend' players fight the eponymous Dark Seekers in an abandoned city. Solve puzzles, find a way to escape, and beware the large amounts of high health enemies!

SCMapDB page

Authors: Goanna

Date of release: 2008

Maps in package: 2

Map review of Dark Seekers

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | January 7, 2024 | 3574 characters

    The short version is that we fight a bunch of fast zombies in spooky derelict city and subway levels. The eponymous Dark Seekers are inspired by the vampire things in I Am Legend and they definitely do resemble the things I saw in the movie, bald, pale, and fast. A big list of objectives is at the start of each map and it is immensely helpful as both maps are pretty big and it can be a pain figuring out where to go.

    We start off in a city and on our first steps forward we find the dark seekers, all sitting on the ground and as one they turn their heads and rise to their feet. Each one has 250 health so then it was a lot of shooting while running backwards. That pretty much describes every combat scenario. We tried our best to thin the horde by luring one or two away and picking them off from afar. Sometimes we get shoved into close quarters with enemies to shake things up a bit At one point early in the first map we went into a warehouse that had some weapons in it, we killed all the enemies but then it started spawning these bugs (headcrabs) in large numbers and it made it suck to be in that room. But we had to go through there for map progression and to pick up weapons and ammo.

    The maps were both expansive with lots of hallways, especially the second one where it was a subway. The first map was a street with teleporters for the interiors of most buildings and I only managed to get telefragged once! It's a good trick to cut down on map load time and it makes the door shrouded in darkness. Lots of places, but not the apartments, were labelled or indicated in some way. this, coupled with the big board of instructions at the beginning of each map made a somewhat mazey scavenger hunt far less annoying. There was one window we were trying to jump out of that triggered game text telling us not to until we did another objective. Although there were also a couple breakables that did not read on breakable and only found them due to defaulting to crowbar when lost. In the second map we just followed a subway tunnel and all our objectives were on a straight line before we got to a city wide scavenger hunt.

    The maps looked pretty good. There was great use of electrical effects, lots of good lighting, a nice spooky paintjob. The combat was really grindy and annoying in a lot of places. While enemies do respawn in the warehouse and that really sucks, the only other spot they respawn forever is in combat with soldiers conveniently on a path for a truck to drive over. There was plenty of ammo in the first map for those brave enough for the warehouse and the second map has a great gun store we can unlock. The map may be a bit mazey and dark but there are plenty of things to guide players on their way. It's a map with problems that fade away when played with more than a few friends.

Pros:

• really helpful map hints and objectives list
• pretty decent looking map with some nice lightning effects and lighting
• I think the door teleports were done pretty well
• the main enemies do resemble the I Am Legend vampires
• gotta love that func_vehicle
• good ammo supply, if you can brave it

Cons:

• wading through a crowd of high health enemies is a drag
• the warehouse is the sole supply area and it is covered in respawning enemies
• the map can get mazey despite the directions
• I wasn't a huge fan of the subway tunnel

Score: 6 / 10