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Far away on the distant planet of Taron, located somewhere north of Argento del Alma (known for its Onslaught arena) lies the mountain range Granica. Buried deep within is a dark, but not forgotten, cave. It houses a fully functional geothermal plant, controlled by a program known as "the priestess." In addition, two simple flags reside back there. And we all know what that means...
The place might be a geothermal plant, but if you expect a similar theme as in CTF-Geothermal, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Though similar in purpose, Geothermal is an old, rusty and small factory. On the other hand, this facility is new, modern and in mint-condition. Though the priestess dreams of freedom, she still keeps the machines running, takes care of the lighting and operates the doors and elevators. There are strange devices transporting boxes underneath the flag room and the center tower is pumping up...ehm...something. I dunno what; I'm not an engineer. What I do know is that these kinds of details are everywhere, which is a very good thing. Though UT2004 comes with enough industrial textures and meshes to construct just about every factory, Rogelio created a whole new set to make his level look unique (he tends to do this for all his maps). Everything is meshed in a style that very loosely resembles CTF-Chrome - only a lot better. And not just the meshes: as with many UT200x maps, there are more lights present than in the average light bulb store, and about as much variety in it as well. There are different colors, contrasts, and saturations. Shadows are still present; they are cast in a natural and beautiful way.
This kind of quality work has a drawback on framerates, though. There are some optimization effects – the most important one being that the main decoration in the center is only visible in high world detail – but it doesn't quite suffice to make this level completely smoothly. Expect Onslaught-like framerates on this map.
I must say that audio is a bit overpresent to my opinion. Waterfalls, wind, machines, the "cries of freedom" from the priestess... With all the sounds turned on it's not easy to hear the custom music, let alone concentrate on gunshots and team commands. If you're playing without ambient sounds or music (like me most of the time), you won't have a problem here, but I can imagine that a constant mixture of two or three (sometimes loud) sounds isn't exactly good either...
Gralada's main layout is simple to understand, though it has some twists that make describing it pretty hard. In any case, there are five zones, nicely placed next to each other. These are the flag room, the courtyard, the large outside area and another courtyard and flag room for the other team. The flag room is pretty basic: it's somewhat of a square/rectangle with the flag in the middle and an exit at the four corners. The two front ones lead to the courtyard, the ones in the back are elevators that lead to balconies that overarch the flag room. These routes leave the flag room above the previously mentioned exits. Things get more complicated in the courtyard, as this room has no less than nine (!) exits. To simplify things a bit, I'm using the third screenshot from this review as a reference here (you might want to enlarge it a bit). Anyway... The first two routes lead back to the lower entrances/exits of the flag room. The third route – up on the bridge – goes back to the two elevators. In this room, the bridge contains a jump pad that allows you to reach upper exit at 4. This is just a dead end in the form of a sniper window up there, however. The next route is below, next to route 1; it's an elevator going down. This route joins back up with route number 6 very quickly. Route number 7 is directly above number 6; it gives access to the top of that metal train-like mesh shown in picture number 2. Though exit 8 starts out on a high position, it drops down to the same height as route 6. The final route (number 9) is something special. It gives access to an underground route that is completely separated from the rest of the level. You can only exit this route by lifts on the center, so don't think you can sneak all the way back to your own base with the flag. It's often the best route to cover some ground with the enemy flag, but crossing the halfway point isn't easy.
I like this layout for more than one reason. It utilizes Z-axis, different routes that join and split in various ways and is still easy to comprehend. Note that the item placement discourages staying on a same path, as this will leave you with the same kinds of weapons. The link gun area (above the flag room) leads to the minigun. Flak, rocket launcher and bio rifle are around the bottom parts of the courtyard and the shock rifle is in a straight line ahead underneath the lightning gun. Even the keg room (the upper room in the center) gives easy access to the 50 armors. Basically, mix up the routes for best results. That works best for flag running anyhow. Bots travel all parts of the map nicely and attack in squads that always manage to stand in your way when you're passing by. They seem to underuse route number 9 a bit, but their clumsiness at the lifts make up for this flaw (with some bad luck, bot teammates "assist" you here by taking off with your lift, causing a crucial delay). Bots rule.
When overviewing this map, I had some doubts about what to give it score-wise. Just last week, we had two high-scoring maps, which would let me to think that our standards might have been dropping. I mean, what are the chances of three 8+ scoring maps being released at the same time (or rather: being added to the queue at the same time)? So I checked again, and quickly came to this conclusion: CTF-Gralada is a really good map, by no matter what standards. You're really going to enjoy it, so if you haven't downloaded it yet... Well, you know what to do.
Bottom Line: Contains everything you ever want from a CTF map, both in visuals and gameplay.
Score: 8.5
Average User Score: 8.5 (7 scores)
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FuzzBuster
Score: 8.5
Nice to see you're still Mapping, Rogelio. :-) Not only that, it's particularly nice to see you're still putting in the extra flair I always appreciated about your maps.
I was jut flipping around looking at unreal stuff old and new, and happened to notice your nickname on the headline map, and had to have a look at it and the others. I was not disappointed. :D
Keep up the great work.
2006-08-30 23:01:52
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SkaarjMaster
Score: 8.5
Well I might as well jump on the 8.5 bandwagon. Great layout and it keeps you guessing, nice custom music track, bots are good.
2005-10-30 00:35:36
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Cursed_Soul
Score: 8.5
love it :)
2005-09-06 12:33:27
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RichyB
Score: 8.5
I did not aspect any thing less from Desp2 then this. It hits all my expectations and is easily his best work to date.
2005-09-03 17:08:09
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Desperado#2
Wow Thanks! Great Review. Also for the map of moment. And yeah the bots were pretty much all done by Sjosz so a good hug goes to him :) I suck at bots to be honest esp ctf bots... never really went into the inner workings of them.
2005-08-24 12:30:21
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Sjosz
Score: 8.5
I'm glad you think the bots rule, Taleweaver, that's one up for me ;)
Good review, and certainly worth the score it got. We all bow down to Rogelio :)
2005-08-24 01:42:57
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MR-Jinxs
Score: 8.5
The best looking capture the flag map I have seen In a while. I love all the movers especially the one under the flag. The layout is also good here you can tell a pro worked on this map, nice work all round.
2005-08-23 13:49:58
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Virgo47
Score: 8.5
Great, nice... AVA n1. FPS great too (although lower in the middle section) when you realize what you see. :-) I have problem when world details were not on High... middle section has no surroundings (looks like empty spaces but with lights in it ;-)). It can happen :-)))
2005-08-23 13:09:56
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