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Map review of Anitalink Lobby
by GrandmasterJ | March 27, 2022 | 4432 characters
I was really dreading playing this map, I've played the 4chan and 5chan maps by the same author which is a mish mash of random stuff thrown together in a fever dream. This map is less fever dream but still looks like a scrapbooking club threw up. There are two maps here, the map description says one contains some stuff not safe for work, this is somewhat misleading, as both maps contain pornography but the wow map has a lot of it and the arcade map does not. The two maps do not seem to be much different beyond that.
Players start in a big open area with some cubes of varying sizes strewn about. Some float, some don't, all have wacky imagery on them. There is some really explicit porn right in front of spawn, some of its gross, some is kind of nice, but I don't really play Sven to look at porn. There are weapons scattered around. I found them a little hard to see but once I knew which weapons to look for I could start reliably picking them up on respawn. Enemies will start spawning here, including headcrabs, bullsquids, and shock troopers. They get very annoying.
There are a ton of alcoves with pictures of the SCMapDB page for different maps, some of these had buttons that would call votes to change the map to the pictured map. I can see where the 'lobby' part of this map comes in. There are quite a few but not all of them have buttons to call votes. There are other pictures here too, including one of a very sensual scene in Supernatural that calls a vote to change map to bluecell.
The real fun of this map comes from the arcade, which is accessed via a blue portal in an alcove on the third level. There are green portals too, which I assumed were exits until I went through one and ended up in a different alcove unable to move. Through the blue portal is a dim room, DO NOT WALK ALL THE WAY FORWARD! There is a weird XBox (the original) shaped brush with John Cena's face on it that will hurt and kill you so watch out. Turn to the left when entering to look at the main attraction, the arcade machines. These things are great, they have Tron, Snake, Pac Man, and Pong and they all worked great. There was even two player for Tron and Pong. It would have been perfect if the arcade machines didn't lock players in place forever and force suicide to get free. It really put a damper on playing any of these really impressive, totally functional games. There are more XBox shaped things here, when they break they reveal HEV and ammo.
The arcade links to a tunnel with wall textures of what I am guessing is the author, Keen's, map folder. There is a mix of dingy tunnel walls and John Cena mixed in for good measure, some of the walls are breakable and there is no real good way to tell other than to use the electric crowbar on all of them. Eventually a meat room is revealed with John Cena water that hurts. There are a lot of monsters here and they respawn, so continue until you get to the John Cena tunnel and crawl all over John Cena's tiled face. Eventually the last boss shows up, a zombie soldier with 5000 health named John Cenos. Killing him ends the map.
I have mixed feelings about the hodge podge random aesthetic. One the one hand its fine and unique and interesting to look at, but some of the stuff I see is just garish and intentionally badly done. I really love the arcade, those games blew my mind, but they also had a huge downside in completely immobilizing any player who steps up. I'm also a fan of the main idea behind the map, a lobby to other maps, I can see where the map was headed with the map voting alcoves. This map seems custom made to suit the tastes of a particular group of people on a particular server at a particular time.
Pros:
- The arcade machines were impressively done
- I like the concept of having a lobby to a bunch of maps that my friends and I play frequently
- cute final boss
Cons:
- the respawning enemies in the main area was more annoying than anything else
- the arcade machines immobilize anybody who plays them
- to me, the map looked ugly as hell
- the map would be much improved with a plethora of weapons instead of the scattered scraps we get
Review originally from https://scmapreviews.blogspot.com/2022/04/anitalink-lobby-grandmasterj.html
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