Many things strike the eye when playing through this map, the first being the buildints and various structures (organic or otherwise) around the map. There are towers, complete with portculi and spikes around the rooftops. You'll see giant mushrums, a suspension bridge, and a castle, even.
However, as you begin to wander about in the midst of your gameplay, you begin to see a few things that have room for improvement: some of the mushrooms have weird texturing, for example. And the castle is a bit boxy, perhaps. Or the lighting is a bit skewed.
I'm not downplaying the construction of the bases or anything, Heaven forbid! A lot of time and effort were spent on them, and that shows through in many places, including the suspension bridge. (which actually has a curve to the road part: very nicely done)
The Playability of the map, however, is a bit low. The distance between flags is sizeable (over 1000), and the terrain doesn't exactly favor skiing. At the same time, any convoy is pretty much doomed to failure: there's basically no place to hide (unlike Katabatic), and with the visibility set as it is, you can see anyone coming from (nearly) a mile away.
Attention to Detail is fair enough. Eye candy doesn't extend much further than the direct playing areas (no organics off the beaten path, for example), and there are trees placed well, with thought given to where they were planted. The main thing I have in this area is the lighting: it just doesn't seem to go well with the sky (which is *very* well done, in my opinion, and complete with a rainbow). Perhaps a lighter, more "green" tinted light would have done well to mesh with the overall appearence.
Balance is so severely slanted to the offense that I don't see the game not ending on a cap-out. There is no defense in place to speak of, and the single turret near the flag doesn't have enough range to touch a capper. It's concevable that a game could be over in 5 minutes or less, depending on how good a team is at training the flag. It's worth mentioning that as lax as the defense is *outside*, inside there are turrets enough to waste any casual base attacker.
Item Placement is fairly well done: the inventories are in handy places, so you don't have to go hunting, and the gens are in the "middle" of the stories, so you can't just waltz in and drop a mortar.
The Mechanics of the map unfortunately boil down to who the fastest skiier is, and how lucky the Defense can be at bringing him down; and in that, I'm not kidding. It probably *will* be luck that brings him down.
Bring your Defense, and buckle in: that mortar barely gets limbered up before you're into the load-screen of the next map..
Fairy Tale is nice to take a walk through, and I could do with more interiors like this (although developed a bit more), but once it's over, it's over. Not too much of an incentive to come back after you've seen the sights.