Forgoing their usual Halloween Horror challenge this year, the Map Labs folks put a new twist on their Companion Piece theme for this October. In this challenge, mappers were required to use an NPC companion that actually helps you rather than hinders you, for a hopefully fun escort mission instead of the usual frustration. Horror themes were encouraged to make this a true crossover.
Here are the 4 maps entered in Companion Piece 3: To the Grave!
As always, if you’re interested in learning more about Map Labs and maybe even participate in their upcoming challenges, visit the Map Labs Discord.
- Title: Companion Piece 3: To the Grave
- Filename: sdk-2013-sp-mlc-companionpiece3.7z
- Size : 358 MB
- Author: ArctixSnowPup, .Hal9000., lukkasz323, ZEN_TURKEY
- Date Released: 12 November 2022
- Make sure you have the Upcoming branch of the Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer installed in Steam and run at least once. (Properties – Betas – select upcoming from the dropdown list).
- Copy the companionpiece3, mapbase_shared, mapbase_hl2, and mapbase_episodic folders into your SourceMods folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Companion Piece 3: To the Grave should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you decide to use the Per-Map Opinion Images, feel free to use the file below as a template:
CompanionPiece3-Review-Template.txt
Listed as they are displayed in the mod itself:
Hallowed Ground by ArctixSnowPup
Tripod by .Hal9000.
Frostlost by lukkasz323
Guns & Legs by ZEN_TURKEY
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
Each map has 5 screenshots.
1600 x 900
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874Overall
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3Today
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5Last 7 days
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11Last 30 days
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123365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 3 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 43 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 28 Mins by Coralilac
Longest: 1 Hours by Hec
Total Time Played: 2 Hours, 8 Mins
This release is currently not in a collection
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all maps are shit except Frostlost. GG lukkasz
Manually
Easy
40 Minutes
Actually I found FrostLost to be rather bad, especially due to the weird open-door-black-out effect, and the best in my opion was the one where your companion is a Strider. Granted, the map wasn’t very good either from a mapping point of view either, but at least the idea was great :)!
I’m quite surprised that this is far the shortest challenge in Map Labs.
This might be a good start, takes place in Ravenholm with Father Grigori as your companion. For me, this is getting old right now. I got bored of it easily but at least it’s still fun to play.
Now this is a very good entry right here where a strider becomes your companion. Man I love how you fight off zombies and rebels with it. It even got to the part where you ride on the strider, pretty fun right? No, not for me. The camera makes me nauseous in fact, I didn’t enjoy riding on the strider.
Frostlost is quite different from the rest because you don’t have a companion unless you count zombies as your companion. But this map suffers one fatal flaw, the darkness. I’m not saying I hate the dark, but I don’t like the way the map utilizes it. The map is so dark, you can’t even tell where you’re going. How am I supposed to go from point A to point B if I don’t know where I’m supposed to go? That’ll be like making your way to the bathroom blindfolded.
The level is blocky, enemies are zombies, the boss is an antlion guard, and then the sniper is your ally. It’s not fun at all and worse is you can skip the entire level by simply prop climbing on the walls.
Better luck for the next challenge.
Sorry you didn’t enjoy my map. What was wrong with it that you got bored of it?
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it. It was fun but to me it is getting old because of the number of Ravenholm entries from previous challenges. Yeah, I’ve played enough maps that take place in Ravenholm with creative designs but it’s the same taste, same content, nothing new.
This was a short one, and unfortunately none of the maps particularly stood out, but it was still fun to play.
G-man getting immediately blasted in the face with a shotgun upon loading definitely caught me off guard, and was a pretty fun start. The gameplay that followed was pretty fun too, just killing off zombies with Grigori. However, he kept wandering off and I had to take a few minutes looking for him at one point. The zombies outside would also frequently get half-stuck in the ground for a split second, and during the cutscenes the camera and NPC movements felt a bit off.
Also, how’d Odessa Cubbage’s house get here? 😛
While the map lacked detail, the idea was great and the gameplay serviceable, if a little rough in places. Having a strider as a companion was quite fun, and it was used in a very good way where it felt like the strider and I were actually companions helping each other out. Overall, this is probably the top pick for me.
I certainly experienced the ‘Lost’ part of this map, as I was frequently bumping around in dark corridors. I appreciate some ambient light being put next to the doors so you could actually find your way to them, but some more would’ve improved the map a lot. I also didn’t feel the ‘companion’ theme as much in this map, as the only companion is some guy you meet halfway through the map for about a minute. Different text colours for different characters speaking would also be good, as I thought I was speaking at first when I met him. I did enjoy the map’s atmosphere however, it was intriguing and also managed to deliver a couple of decent spooks.
I like the idea of a sniper as a companion, like the couple of times Alyx does it in the HL episodes, but this map didn’t utilise it as well as those. At first the gameplay is good, but the room with fast zombie torsos is a little unclear on what to do. I ran around for a minute, hit E on everything, ran around for another minute and the door opened out of nowhere. And while the idea of sniper vs. antlion guard is fun, the antlion guard’s health should’ve been reduced as it took a long time to die. The supply crates that you could only open by luring the guard into charging them was a good idea though.
Manually
Medium
28 Minutes
I guess this whole map lab, felt just like an OK Play it Later. Few 4 fast entries to kill time and have some old classic HL2 shooting fun and that’s it.
Overall I never felt this one like a Halloween-themed release, just apart from the first entry “Hallowed Grounds” and “Frostlost” which was just a weird map with some darker aura.
“Tripod” to me was the best but definitely out of the Halloween topic. And the last with the ally sniper at the end was also nice but confusing so I have to give myself weapons via impulse 101 cheat on that one at the end.
I guess this is the perfect example of how map lab summons sometimes may get many developers given enough time to dev, and very few if the time is restricted or limited.
IDK… there are best map labs apart from this one, and I hope in 2023, at least we have a nice Halloween ville which is not that restricted.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour