The gameplay mechanics of Woods of The Dead3 aren’t anything breathtakingly original, though, in this case, they certainly don't have to be. If there's anything that this map shows brilliance in, it is in creating atmosphere and mood. Every T2 mapper can attest to the irritating wall that is the barrier between serverside and clientside mapping and the eventual sacrifice in mood or popularity that results. Woods of The Dead3 tears that wall clean down.
Using some clever tricks (some of which, to the best of my knowledge, have only been exploited a handful of times at the very most) the map's author does a brilliant job of creating an eerie and haunted feel. The terrain is dark, a heavy fog hangs in the air and dead trees are scattered across the barren terrain. What truly gives the map a life of its own is the sound, however. There's nothing creepier than utter silence, broken only by the faintest whisper of howling winds. Even the loading screen helps crowd the player into this haunted land. A poem describes the apparent solitary death of the map’s author – a death that the player actually sees in a neat Easter egg. Appropriately, you find a corpse propped up against a tree, equipment scattered around it and the sound of flies buzzing in its wake. A shrike and some smoking wreckage sit nearby, testament to the violent death this person suffered. This is just a bite of the effectiveness with which Woods of The Dead3 conveys its mood. And it’s a great bite, at that.
Gameplay-wise, Woods of The Dead3 doesn’t disappoint either. The flags are about 740 meters apart, a fair clip, though an easy one considering the good skiing. The flag stand works well, allowing (though somewhat limiting) shrike capping and making great routes on foot practical and relatively easy to pull off. There are two other buildings per team as well – a bunker houses a lone inventory station while a tower holds the generator and several other assets. A vehicle pad with a single inventory station lies off to the side of the tower, though it remains very exposed to attack. The map’s design is simple but incredibly effective – in many ways, it epitomizes the balanced CTF gameplay you’d expect to see in a competition map. There are some downsides, however. The lone turret off to the side starts out with a mortar barrel – it would have been preferable to encourage teams to use their own approach by going with the default plasma and not making moot choices for them. Also, the vehicle pad selection is completely unrestrained. One would expect that a map which functions so well without vehicles would try to restrain the impact bombers or tanks might have on gameplay balance. In fact, even if just the Shrikes were left in, the great base layout is already potentially disturbed by the relative ease that comes with Slapdash-style rape. Regardless, this is more of a trivial complaint than anything. What is truly unfortunate is that there is no repair pack anywhere on the map. One has to wonder what would happen if the few inventories the map sports were all destroyed.
On the visibility side, the fog tends to make things interesting. While its benefits to the map’s mood are enormous, it also complicates gameplay. Though limited visibility can be both a good and a bad thing, I would have to say that it has been pulled off significantly better here than even in competition maps.
If you’ve been looking for an underrated map that combines excellent gameplay and superb atmosphere, then Woods of the Dead3 is it. Despite some drawbacks, which, if the map author’s words are to be believed, will not be fixed (this was to be his last mapping effort), the map shines through as an exceptional effort. The next time I find myself thinking the word cliché, I can only hope I’m as pleasantly surprised.
-Celios