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BROADCAST

What Ash thought:
The famed two-floor single-player TV station that everyone thought "hmmm...wish that was a multiplayer map" has been included in the new map pack. The station has been opened up greatly with the inclusion of the main news room, the entrance lobby area with the balconies, the roof including a skylight looking into the station below, a large street area in front of the station and a fair amount of smaller rooms that are all linked by a rat run of corridors. For a map based on a single building you would be forgiven in thinking it is solely close quarters battle with shotguns at the ready. Apart from the few small rooms and a couple corridors it is a very open map. The news room is an absolute stroke of genius. As you would have found from the single-player it can get very heated and this is definitely reflected in this multiplayer map. There are great opportunities for objective games with a fair amount of alternate routes to each separate large area. This seemed a very fast map every time it was played, with little room for camping as players will constantly need to watch their backs for enemies emerging from the multitude of different doors and rooms. With such large areas to cover this could tax the communications of a team.

Matt's Opinion:
As Ash said, this is basically the same map as in the single-player level Charlie Don't Surf, however, more rooms have been opened up and there are a few tweaks. The news room is huge and is brilliant for all out fire-fights, tons of cover and tons of stuff to wreck; it is also very easy to get head shots as you can set the reticule to head height and only the upper bodies of enemies are visible over cover anyway. The outside roof area is quite small but enables you to fire down into the main building or the grounds outside to stop anyone assaulting the main entrance. Which brings us onto the main entrance itself; it is the joining area in the single-player game when you have completed the news room and are legging it up to the room that covers the streets outside. The main entrance is a massive two tiered room that provides a lot of open ground and some good sniping spots to cover the fuel station outside the main building. Running across the main entrance is totally suicidal as it really is completely open. Lastly the area outside is also good fun for fire fights, as most of it is semi-open ground with vehicles to cover your approach to the main building. There is also one house at the back of the area that you can get up onto the balcony of and snipe into the main building and the rooftop area.

CHINA TOWN

What Ash thought:
This is definitely what COD4 players have been looking for. With multi-storey buildings looming on each side of narrow streets, open doorways and menacingly positioned windows that allow players to sweep the tarmac with gun fire. This map is a dense suburban town area, with most buildings being accessable and includes some very interesting interior details. There are several fixed machine guns mounted up in windows and on the streets for when constant heavy fire support is required, and this map does have a habit of providing whole team directed assaults that many of the previous maps just do not encourage. It also encourages shotgun use as even the open streets turn and twist so often that weapon ranges will not play such a large role in open combat. This is another very good looking map that is of a large size with many avenues of attack for all play styles. The only problem that I could see is the relatively close spawn points in large free for all games. I recommend keeping the total number of players to around 10 in free for all.

Matt's Opinion:
A fantastic CQB map with tons of building to building fire fight opportunities and a map where precision grenade play is definitely worth specialising in - you can easily rack up a lot of kills as the streets funnel players into tight groups with little cover other than ducking into an adjacent building. I had a lot of fun in one building room providing covering fire for my team as they advanced down a street, my height advantage meaning I could see the enemies coming from all angles and my kill score was only capped when I ran out of ammo. There is also one area with a mounted machine gun covering the street. This is really well balanced because just as you can sit there mowing down wave after wave of enemies, anyone can pull a sneaky move and come right up and slice your jugular without you realising they were there. All in all it is a very good map and one that is actually compatible with the sorely undervalued shotguns of the game.

Read on for details on the Killhouse map.

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