So I was up early this morning and got to thinking, "hmmm, first strike is coming out today. I wonder if its dropped on live yet...". Lucky for me, it had! Shitty side, I had thunderstorms all over town so my internet connection was a piece of shit and I did nothing but eat lead and die all morning (fxxxing hick state... anyone ever heard of 'communication hardware upgrade?!). All drama aside, i'll get right into it.
Stadium: Since this is the one that pissed me off, I'll put it first and get it over with. I try to play up close and personal as much as I can, and this map just put a crimp in my style (lack thereof? whatever, moving on...). The whole urban setting started out looking cool, but when I started really playing through it I noticed how open all the indoor and outdoor spaces are. I mean seriously, its a sniper and camper playground. You sit and camp in one corner, and you command a whole hallway and a number of doors and windows. Pissed me the hell off. I got the feeling they where trying to duplicate the success of Nuketown by adding the big central courtyard, but the lanes leading up to it are so open that there's always some 12 year old with a fxxxing uzi sniping you from the other corner of the map. So much for trying to reign in the campers... thanks treyarch [eye roll].
Kowloon: Two words;
Bad Ass! I went into this thinking that Kowloon would be a bloody massacre and, well, it is. But in a good way. The zip lines are kinda of superfluous in my opinion, but I'm sure someone will get a youtube hit with a zip-line super jump, double back flip fakey-to-backstabber or some freaking thing. Anywho, the map is great. Very close in, lots of room-to-room and courtyard-to-courtyard, just the way I like it. There are a few long hallways and shooting lanes to keep the long-gunners happy as well. Shitty part for careless players is there are no walls on the edges of the map, and theres a giant fxxxing bottomless pit in the middle of the map. At worst, it will seperate the men from the boys in terms of situational awareness (oops, was that a cliff? shit, shouldnt have strafed sideways...). Still a lot of nooks and crannies for the campers of the world, but overall good map.
Discovery: This map is a good balance of close quarters fights on the perimeter coupled with wide open spaces through the middle of the map. The little "ice bridge" that so many people raved about in the pre-release turns out to not be so much of a game-clincher, as a novelty. I admit it was a good idea, but just don't see it being a very big tide-turner. On the downside, this map will be a nightmare for trying to pick out snipers and campers (think Jungle from the original release, but in the snow). Still, overall good variation of different indoor/outdoor terrain and elevation. Very cool map.
Berlin Wall: Thus far, my odds on favorite. Dunno what to make of the auto cannons in the middle yet (to be honest, it would've been cooler to make them player-interactive instead of "kill the first mother-fxxxer who moves" mode" but that's just me). The wider avenues around the middle corridor offers a lot of angles and hiding spots for snipers and campers to do their thing, while still having a more close in route through the buildings at the perimeter. What does this mean for you? Now, the campers can do their thing while the rest of us can play like big boys around the rest of the map. Is it a final fix for the electronic virus that is camping? Duh, of course not, but it will make it easier on the rest of us who have learned how to actually use the left stick on our controllers.
So that's it. My $.02. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming months, but so far it's looking promising.
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