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Map review of Damned Forest
by GrandmasterJ | June 6, 2026 | 3576 characters
This is allegedly the author's first map and if that is the case I can see why a lot of the map was the way it was. The map features a heavy use of cutscenes, which are very impressive if this is the author's first map. Ultimately it was never finished so all we have is a demo.
We start in a black room with a button that starts very long introductory cutscene. Don't read the message of the day unless you like slurs. There is some nice music and really nice credits with floating text and pictures in some sort of prison as the point of view floats through it. It's doubly impressive considering it is the author's first map.
The cutscene ends in a foggy forest while somebody whispers important information to us and we are given control. Watch out for pits, there is a pit we have to walk through early on so I didn't think anything of walking into another and then I died. Past all this and we fade out to teleport to another forest area where we do much the same thing, except this time there is a big alligator and we can get a crowbar with an ambiguous model replacement. The pits here are denoted by slightly different colored ground textures, watch out for those pits. Behind a wooden barricade another cinematic teleport puts us in what the map tells us is our house and another forest where we finally get a shotgun from the merchant from Resident Evil 4. Once we grab it the zombies show up. We end the game by jumping into a pit, so that's three pits doing three different things, watch out for pits.
Contrasting the impressive cutscenes is the blocky and simple geometry of the level itself. There was a lot of outdoor areas and the slopes were steep and sharp, not very natural looking. I know its hard to get natural looking environments in goldsrc of all engines, but I still think the overall level architecture for outdoor areas looked pretty bad.
We actually played this map twice to really understand what was going on (and it was so short anyway) so a few things became apparent on our second playthrough. The button to start the first cutscene was a standard Half-Life button on first playthrough but on the second it was a custom texture, my teammate only saw the custom texture. I think the custom texture is named the same as the default texture so what button you get is random. There was also an enemy that jump scared us in a hallway that didn't trigger the first time around. Also the whole map was much shorter when we just ran to the triggers for the next area.
The map is definitely cinematic but lacks in actual gameplay. It oozes ambiance with great use of fog, sounds, lighting, and textures in every part of it. The cutscenes are the clear highlight of the whole map. Fighting the alligator was actually unnecessary and on the second playthrough we went through the map so fast without really killing much at all. I died the most to pits and once to an interesting bathroom sequence. Once I knew what to expect the map was over before I knew it.
Pros:
- The cutscenes are all amazingly done
- incredible atmosphere
- good use of music
- lots of model replacements
Cons:
- I don't like the pits so much
- this is just a demo and on a second playthrough it really shows how unfinished everything is
- The cutscene that puts us in the foggy forest has somebody speaking too quietly
- not sure the slur was necessary
Review originally from *
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