Hotel - GrandmasterJ

 

    Not to be confused with THE Hotel, this map is an unfinished project meant to be a Sven Co-op map and a Half-Life: Deathmatch map. The map page seems to suggest it is almost finished but who knows.

SCMapDB page

Authors: DennisG50

Date of release: 2005

Maps in package: 2

Map review of Hotel

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | May 3, 2026 | 2651 characters

    No part of this map reminds me of a hotel. There are individual rooms with a couch and table in each one, but the grey textures and industrial doors operated by buttons evokes the idea of a prison. There are two maps included here and one is a deathmatch version of the map, except deathmatch is not enabled so it is a cooperative exploration of an arena.

    The map has this abstract fever dream layout. In the regular(?) version of the map players start off in cells, I mean hotel rooms, and each one has a weapon and some ammo and a couple even have HEV batteries. One of these room doors opens very slowly as do a couple others in both maps, I guess randomly slow doors is a feature. Very early on we have to go through a hole in the floor to access the end of a dead-end hallway to get to stairs going up. Except halfway up the stairs the staircase is hovering high enough that players actually have to jump up there. Also there is a weird landing with a locked door on it that players can jump to and puzzle over. There are lots of gaps in the ceilings so we can see the sky, the textures are mostly flat stock Half-Life concrete.

    The map has a bunch of combat and clearing the rooms can be fun. But traversing the actual map was inconvenient and everything was just kind of aimless nonsense. I don't know when the door unlocked or disappeared or whatever, but at some point I noticed a door near spawn opened into a room and there was a button inside. I pressed it and the map ended, my teammate had just run into a small room with a whole gonarch in it and thought that was what ended things.

    The deathmatch version of the map is mostly the same but sans enemies, not as closed off with less dead ends, more and different weapons, but still no actual deathmatch mechanics. My teammate mentioned that it might actually be for Half-Life Deathmatch but didn't actually want to try, so maybe give that a whirl if you feel like it.

    Overall an interesting map if you like them really short, kind of nonsense, and a bit inconvenient.

Pros:

  • Had a good amount of batteries and ammo
  • lots of combat to keeps things interesting

Cons:

  • the map looks and feels bad, gaps in the ceiling and in stairs, flat textures
  • the map went for hotel and came off as a prison, I think that's a huge problem
  • map end is seemingly disconnected from any other gameplay
  • it would be nice if the deathmatch map included deathmatch mechanics.

Score: 3.5 / 10

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