I will review your map!

Seeing as my last attempt to gee-up some interest in custom maps ended in dismal failure, I've decided to try another approach.

I propose to do reviews of maps made by contributors, and to post that review in this thread. This will hopefully be useful, both because it's difficult to judge anything about a map from the Steam workshop thumbnail, and to raise the profiles of both maps and mappers.

Now please note, I claim no special expertise or insight into maps, or hell, even into the game. I only want to do this because nobody more competent is already doing it. I'm also not in a position to help anyone with map design or construction, so I'm not interested in incomplete work. I'm only interested in looking at maps which are already published in the Workshop and ready for showtime.

If you want a map reviewed, please PM me rather than posting here. Send me a link to the workshop, and I'll take a look at it. First come first served.

You know I'm sure just about everyone who has participated in the map making contest would appreciate feedback. All those maps are posted on these forums and awaiting responses.

Exactly. There is little so dispiriting as putting a lot of energy into a project and never get any feedback. It is teh suck.

But for that same reason, I don't want to just spam stuff for people who may not be active or interested any more; hence my effort to tempt them out. But we'll see; maybe I'll look at those too.

The first volunteer was StanVick, who submitted their map Nevel(2).

Steam Workshop for Nevel(2)


It's quite an interesting little map. The basic structure is roads and a scatter of buildings around a road/rail crossing, nothing too unusual. Has it's little bit of signature art in the form of a train under rubble, which I was worried would be in the centre, but actually it's nicely out of the way, so full marks there.

In terms of general quality, this map shows good effort and attention to detail. It's certainly not among those semi-finished offenders you sometimes see. No complaints there at all.

The style of it though, on reflection, feels a little scattershot. It's specifically located on the Eastern front, but I'm not sure that that is really conveyed by the ambient clutter. Hard to put my finger on what felt just a touch 'off' about it. And about that clutter, a lot of it is really well placed to offer cover in fights, but in a way this felt a touch over-done, as if rather too obviously convenient.

A more serious concern is that the map is really, really small. I don't know, it could work, someone who plays competitively hands-on will have to give it the once over for that determination. But I would expect that a regular mortar will be worth its weight in gold, here; I wouldn't be surprised if you could bombard the exit from the enemy base from the central VP. Similarly, machine guns can cover a sizable chunk of terrain, although this is mitigated to a degree by the buildings and traffic routes. And some capture circles are so close together that you can stand in one and shoot into the other. This isn't a fatal flaw, and does appear in other maps, but because in this case the whole map is so small, it looks suspiciously to me that this will favour whoever first gets the upper hand.

So, should you download this map? You certainly won't suffer for it, it seems complete, and functional, and ready to party. Is this a Must Have map? Currently, no.

Is this a candidate for competitive play? I doubt it; I think it's just too small. But I could be wrong about that; if someone wants to arrange a game on it and let us know what it feels like, by all means do so.

Thanks to StanVick for the map.

Well done review, keep up the good work.