Canyon | Single | Author: Mister Sinister | Download
Description: A medium-size outdoor map where you spend more time shooting at things than doing anything else.
Design: Generally speaking Canyon is a well-designed level; there's plenty of vegetation and the y-dimensional terrain looks convincing. However, the level suffers from too much repetition. After five minutes you've basically seen all there is to be seen. The environment gets so repetitive that you're glad just to come across a small piece of road. Visits to caves are short and there's only one hi-tech location which looks dull thanks to poor lighting and uninspiring textures. The otherwise great outdoor areas are lacking in lighting as well.
Gameplay: This is one of those WG-like maps where you cannot go anywhere without having to kill tons of enemies. You might actually save time by holding your fire key for the whole duration of the map. So, repetition is the problem here as well. You have little time to marvel the environment as someone is constantly bugging you. Way too much time is spent around halfway through the map near two blue keys. Too many enemies and respawns needlessly extend the map's duration. Item/monster balance is good but a map like this begs for tons of devastators, rpgs and pipebombs but you get next to nothing instead, having to spend a huge chunk of your pipebombs blowing up cracks instead of enemies.
Conclusion: Both design and gameplay suffer from repetition but the map is actually better than reading the above paragraphs might imply. The repetitive environment is easier to forgive (since it still looks good, repetitive or not) than the repetitive gameplay which really kills the map (although some find this kind of gamelay to their liking). The map comes with a good & fitting music track; just too bad you don't get to hear it that often with all the action going on.
Rating: 86
