Date: 17-10-99 Teams: 2 File: tiger.zip Players: 24 Game: TFC Size: Medium Briefing: Pretty!....but unfortunately, laggy...

Tiger

The control room

The tiger....tank.

Sailing anyone?

Top 'o the world ma!

Author: Arne 'cyNic' Lund | Reviewer: Borg

Objective:

Territorial Control: Take Flags from your base and place them on the Command Points situated throughout the map. Use the control facility in your base to see, who owns each territory.

Scoring:

1 point for every 30 seconds you hold a Command Point. 25 points for capturing all Command Points. 10 points for destroying the enemy base.

Evaluation:

Another effort from the author that brought us the excellent map -TotalWar-. This is intended as the sequel to the aforementioned map, and it does look most delightful. However, get playing on this thing with more than 4 people, and you'll find out just how much horsepower your system has. The author put quite a bit of work into this map, and it shows. However, I'm surprised at the amount of flaws, and degree of unfinished areas that were part of this whole scheme.

Construction was not too bad on this map, but pretty much everyone agreed that this thing looked unfinished. The fact that it's supposed to be an island helps in this area, but some attention to minor details would have helped immensely. Namely, the water has no real texture, the lagoon/bay abruptly ends at the sky near the far end of the bay, and you get the impression that this "island" is actually about 100 feet or so above sea level, which is disorienting at times, to say the least. If the author had included cliff walls, that you could fall off of (and die), and made the opening at the far end of the bay a waterfall (that you could fall off of and die), this would have definitely made the map feel much more complete. The other thing of note in the main wide-open area is this: super high r_speeds! When you're playing with 4 or less, it's ok, but once this thing gets loaded, watch out! (AKA Slideshow) The theme on this was excellent! Due to the large number of "fresh" items, and solid adherence to his intended storyline, this map will truly immerse you in it's seaside feel. Tip 'o the hat to the author here. Every once in a while, we get a theme worth talking about!

A lot of points were lost for layout on this map, mainly due to the fact that no-one knew where the command points were! Directions and signs were severely lacking, to the extreme, and the only indication you had of where the cap points were, and who was controlling them, was via the flagroom wall (see screenshot)! This was atrocious, and I hope the author remembers this point well when working on future maps. We need to know where things are! There isn't even a mention of areas in the included readme.txt file. Well, along with the layout, the mobility of this map suffered greatly as well. With no directions to follow, and some scary r_speeds in the open areas, you found yourself screaming obscenities more often than not. To it's credit, the map does offer unique areas and approaches for both teams, so things stay fresh for everyone while playing. However, with this steep a learning curve, people won't hang with this one very long.

Teamwork has such great promise on this map, but guess what? this type of map only allows for the typical scout/hwguy/soldier team-ups. You need the speed of the scouts, who will in turn need a little "heavy" escort to complete their missions. Hence, you won't have a whole lot of new ways to run this map. Good sniper opportunities here, but, again, the horrendous r_speeds rear their evil heads. As such, the strategy that goes hand in hand with this type of map shows itself again. Speed with and escort, and everyone else just trying to keep a lid on things. I'm not a fan of territorial control maps myself, but with the premise that this map had, I'm a little disappointed that this wasn't polished up a whole lot better. Having a linear style of gameplay on a map isn't always bad, as long as the map is fun. After all, this is a game, isn't it? With some further work, this map would definitely be a keeper.

Verdict:

Wait for the next installment in this series. While it looks beautiful, this map has a lot of shortcomings that need to be addressed. We definitely need more attempts such as this done with this type of map, as a truly awesome territorial control map could make converts of us all, yours truly included. I look forward to more from this author, and word has it that a another installment is in the works!

Delta Bravo Final Score: 
- 27/50 -