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Review:
This is a creepy map that lends itself well to the premise set by the title name. Woods of the Dead, tho' it tends to conjur up images of dense, wooded forests, a thick carpet of leaves and ghostly phantoms, does end up describing a map which has none of those pictures.
To start off with: The "ghosts" mentioned are sentry turrets hidden in smoke emitters. You really don't know where they are until you've played for a bit, but soon the smoke starts to jump out at you.
The turret "ghosts" are quite liberally scattered around the map, leading to two things: The necessity of having control of the turrets, and lag. Yes, unfortunately.. both the emitters being on-screen, and the sheer number of the turrets makes for a laggy game, unless you have a pretty powerful machine.
The Flip-flop has no waypoint, but a quick glance at the CC shows it up clear. Again, there's a little difficulty here, because this Flip-flop lies in a valley of the terrain, making it hard to get to, yet easy to defend. If one team details a few players, they could theoretically hold the turrets forever, and make life impossible for the other team.
The terrain presents another issue. It's very steep and hilly, and with no vehicles, you have to be an expert-plus-one at skiing to make any headway at all. Even then, it's slow going, but when you add into the mix the myriad of ghost turrets that could be shooting at you.. that makes it even slower going.
Playability takes a hit on these factors, and isn't as high as it could be. The absolute travel-unfriendliness of the map makes it hard for anyone but an expert. I think that vehicles alone could have made it better, even just an HAPC allowed, or something.
Attention to Detail is good, however. The carrying out of the "ghost" idea is very impressive.. it's kind of weird seeing these hovering, black clouds shooting at you with such accuracy.
Balance is given over completely to two sides: Flag defense, and to whoever holds the turrets. Pitty the one who grabs the flag.. he has the inhospitable terrain to conted with, a waypoint marking him clearly for the willful destruction of the enemy, and if his team doesn't hold the Ghosts, he has a million turrets tracking his every move.
Item Placement is fair, here. The inventories are at hand, and the Flag-Defense turret (as if the flag needed any help in defense, tho') is a reasonable distance away.
Mechanics are a bit above average. The idea drawn up and its execution are of note. Concealing the turrets so you can't see them was a problem, but using ghostly smoke emitters was a very smart move. An idea would have been to scale the turrets very, very small. I do not believe this would mess up the projectile, but as it is, I think that if you are patient, you could go around blowing up the ghosts, just so they wouldn't annoy you. Sentry turrets don't shoot if you stand still, so just pull out a plas-cannon and blast away.
I'd give this map high ratings on creativity and inventiveness, if there were such categories. As it is, I suggest pulling out a LAN game, throwing in some bots, and making sure your computer can handle the game.. then just have fun, and overlook the few shortfalls.
To see the rest of the map details, including the map author's
description of the map, and user-submitted comments, go to the
map detail page.
To see all reviews from DrPimento, go to DrPimento's bio page.
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