Another Friday Night Fights, Custom Map Night is on the books. With nearly 20 players for 6 hours, I would say this was a success. Of course, we would not of had that many people if it wasn’t for great support from our own Gamers Radio Battaltion, Isamu and the ATF clan, Ringo and the {HSC}clan, Tman and the {PDX}clan and GreatXScott and Cipher from 304. I would also like to thank Evil Homer from PlanetBattlefield for helping us promote this event.
As always, I have put together my opinion of the maps. Please keep in mind; we at Gamers Radio appreciate the hard work custom map makers put into building their maps. Please understand, we only pick those maps we think are worthy of playing. Even if we say things that seem negative, you should be proud of your work because there was something that caught our attention to begin with. With that said, click Read More… for the full reviews. Rabaul – Rabaul is based on the pacific theatre of WWII. There are 2 main islands with an airfield at one end and a small village at the other end. Between the two islands are 2 smaller island, each with a capture point. There are no uncapturable points on the map. Each side starts with an airfield. There are also ships and subs available for each side. Overall, I enjoyed playing this map. Nothing stood out as being exceptional, but it was fun. The action was a bit slow due to the separate nature of the islands. Taking the other sides airfields gave you a huge air advantage. Because of this, the main fights appeared to be over the airfields. While I think the map was cool, I can’t say it was a map that I would keep playing. The action seemed to miss something. While having multiple islands sounds cool, I feel they slow down the overall play of the game.
Battle Mountain – Battle Mountain is a tank/soldier fest pitting the Americans against the Germans. It is a somewhat small map, based on a square configuration with a capturable flag on each side and another capture point in the middle. There are no uncapturable points. Each side starts on opposite ends with plenty of tanks, but no planes. The tanks are only good on the outside square as the middle has barriers preventing vehicles from coming into play. I found this map to be a very good design. The middle had incredible trench work that made it very fun to play. The towns left to capture were both on higher ground and made a good mix of terrain. The action seemed fast paced, with lots of room to play any class. Overall, I would say this was my second favorite map of the night and one of my top 3 maps since we have been doing custom maps. I would definitely consider playing this map again.
Sacrifice – This was a huge map. When I first tested it, I was not sure if I was going to include it. Since it had plenty of planes, I decided to add it to the rotation to keep a balance for all types of players. In hindsight, that is all this map was good for. This map had two uncapturable airfields, with several other vehicles. Each side was on a high island connected to the central island by two bridges. The central island had four capture points.
I watched some incredible dogfights on this map, with one fight having 5 planes all encircling each other. From the ground, it was an incredible sight to see. The downside to this map lay in the design of the four main capture points. There were no vehicles in the central island. If you were on foot and captured a flag, you had to high tail it to the next location on foot. To be honest, I found this to be very, very boring. It seemed as if each side spent most there time flying or running to spawn points. There was little to no ground action, but plenty of air action. Overall, this map still needs some work to be good. The lack of vehicles needs to be addressed for this to become a great map.
RatPatrol – This was another huge map. It had a great looking design with two flags located in a central town and several flags on the outskirts of each side of the map. It had plenty of vehicles for the Allies, but seemed to lack an equal amount of vehicles for the Axis side. This became very apparent based on the 6 planes the Allies had, versus the 3 planes the Axis had. For the most part, the Allies had a huge advantage based on the air power.
The central town with 2 flags was great fun. Most of the action seemed to take place here. The four flags on the outskirts seemed to be captured once, then ignored. Just beyond the central town were some incredible hills. They seemed to be designed very well. The disappointing part was they did not come into play at all. I think this map needs to be reworked to even out the vehicles, especially the planes. The outside spawn points need to be rethought to make for better battles and the mountains need a spawn point to become part of the action.
While I had fun playing this map, I would still like to see a reworked version before playing it again.
304’s Fields of the Fallen – Let’s just say, I was saving the best for last. When I initially reviewed this map, I was very impressed by the layout, and level of detail put into this map. It was not only interesting, but it was different than anything I had ever seen on a map. (That’s saying something considering I have reviewed 70+ maps) This map did not have tanks or planes, but did offer jeeps, motorcycles and dingy’s from Liberation of Caen. The map has a flag in the middle of a pond, and a flag at the top of a high point right in the middle. The cemetery with all it’s crosses reminds you of Normandy. There are tree stands and even a tree that you can climb (although I never found it). The layout and placement of the flags was perfect.
My initial reaction to this map was concern with the lack of uncapturable points. Considering this was a small ground based map, I was worried that would make the games too short. Boy, was I wrong. Since playing Battlefield 1942, I can say that I have played only a few games that approach a Zen status. You know what I am talking about. The game where the whole game is nothing but intense action and at any given moment, the match could go to either side. You forget everything around you and your whole focus and attention is on winning the match. Never before have I experienced this in a custom map. Not only did I experience this moment on this map, but I experienced it twice. I will never forget those two games and I can not wait to play this map again. Considering how poorly BF42 supports custom maps, I have a feeling I will need to include this map in another Custom Map Night so you too can play this great map.
For the record, while playing this map, the 15 or so people in TeamSpeak all had the same thing to say. Everyone thought it was an absolutely incredible map. Not once did I hear anything negative about it’s design or playability. To the guys from 304, who designed this map, I say thank you for designing such a great map and a great time. Oh and they were even playing the map with us. How cool is that?
Our next custom map night will be March 26th. Keep an eye out on Gamers Radio for all the details….