Silent Hill

Description
IMPORTANT NOTE: To get the full effect of this map, you need to type "snd_rebuildaudiocache" into the console after the maps loaded for the first time. This will allow for the custom audio added to work.

This is an incredibly long campaign! 8 maps with apparently more coming! This could easily occupy several hours, perhaps more.

In general, the map is very well built. There's an excellent use of textures (many of them custom) and a few custom built models too! A lot of it is quite open, but the use of fog and night certainly make it feel smaller. However, there is a lot of this campaign that isn't lit at all. Some might think that adds to the atmosphere, but I just found it annoying. Also, the methods used to keep the player within the confides of the map seemed quite cheap (invisible walls and the road just...ending).

Most of this campaign revolves around finding things (mainly keys) to proceed, and it’s done quite well. Though, some of the non-key things that had to be collected seemed very random indeed, with no explanation given as to why they were needed.

While the design and execution of the levels are good, they repeat a lot. Despite there being 8 chapters, there's only really 4 different levels.

There’s a pretty severe lack of equipment in this. It's not until you get half way through the second level that you have anything more than a pistol and the odd medkit! This pretty much means you’re screwed if you encounter a tank before you get there (especially if you have 3 incompetent bots with you).

[b][u]Old Silent Hill[/u][/b]
A misty town. Very easy to get turned around in and lose your way. All the flat roofed buildings gave smokers plenty of places to hide, but the openness pretty much rendered hunters and boomers useless.

[b][u]School[/u][/b]
Starts off pretty much the same as the first level, except at night instead of a misty day. As the name suggests though, you end up in a school. After completing a seemingly random bunch of tasks, the exit opens. Whereupon, I hit a bug. For some reason, I was unable to actually get through an open doorway leading to the safe room. After searching around the school for another half an hour trying to find something I missed, I resorted to noclip-ing through the invisible wall in my way.

[b][u]Alternative School[/u][/b]
This is where the campaign gets weird. Somehow, and for some unexplained reason, you're transported to what I can only assume is another dimension. It's the same school, but everything is evil looking. It creates a great environment, but makes no sense to me at all. Perhaps it might have helped if I'd played the original Silent Hill. Anyway, more puzzles and a boss fight with a tank in cool looking evil lair complete this level.

[b][u]Church[/u][/b]
Back in the normal world now. You start in the same school again, and basically head back the way we came. Through the safe room at the end of the first level and through to a new bit tagged onto the side of the first level. Nothing much new here.

[b][u]Hospital[/u][/b]
More streets leading to a quite ominous looking hospital. Through a maze of corridors and rooms (yet not a single medkit in sight), and to a saferoom in a lift.

[b][u]Alternative Hospital[/u][/b]
The second trip to this weird, alternate, evil looking place. I'll confess, I had to cheat to complete this level. One of the things you have to collect to complete this level is right next to an apparently unkillable thing that can kill you in about 5 seconds flat! The first time I played this though, I died and respawned in the end safe room, so I merely needed to open and close the door to carry on.

[b][u]Other Church[/u][/b]
This starts in the normal world, and is a pretty straightforward trek through more streets, a car park and down into a basement, where you're once again transported to the alternate place. This is probably the most annoying (and not in a fun way) part of the campaign. You're heading through wide, pitch black streets with ONLY you're torchlight. When I played this, I got hopelessly lost and had no clue where I was or where I was supposed to be heading.

[b][u]Sewers[/u][/b]
The final part (for now) of the campaign. Starts with yet more of the same streets, but that's pretty quickly changed for (as the name suggests) the sewer system. A maze of mostly unlit passageways. Once again, completely disorientating. There are also a few areas you can fall into and get stuck, so I had to use noclip a couple of times to complete the level. Then, to cap it all off, the game breaks at the end when it tried to load a non-existent map.


So, to summarise. A very well built map. All the stuff set in the normal world looks pretty realistic (with the exception of the streets that just end). There’s clearly been a lot of work put into this, and I'd recommend at least trying it out. But this campaign almost certainly won't be to everyone’s tastes.

~limey98