Hush was one of my favorite maps in the Frontlines Map Contest. The map is pulled straight from a James Bond villain’s lair, and is fitting for an ONI complex hidden deep within the a mountain landscacpe.

Gameplay

The flow from the campsite into the base is, overall, fantastic. While there are a few nooks and crannies that you can lose players in (such as nearby grapple), the flow of the map is not interrupted overall. It feels difficult to break into the base, and that attackers need to time their push with their teammates to get the flag off the stand. At times, it felt like the map was heavily dependent on the cave side of the map, and that the Snipe side push was not effective. For one game, one team pushed Snipe side exclusively, and did not come close to pulling a flag. The map is not necessarily worse off for this, but perhaps something could be adjusted. I also have a feeling that players did not know they could use player momentum to clamber up the front of the base above the garage doors, which may have made that specific push more effective. Outside of Sniper spawning timeframes, the Snipe / satellite dish area also felt a bit abandoned at times, largely for the same reasons. The bridge route also felt underutilized as it was so open, but given the cover the railings offer, did feel like a viable route.

As a minor note, the area where Rockets spawn feels particularly cluttered with hard-to-see rocks and was difficult to navigate in a way that isn’t immediately visually understood, which may have the potential to frustrate first time players, but is easy to adjust to once you know where to leap, skip, and jump.

Running the flag back home is chaotic and wonderful. Navigating the caves, juggling through the ice, grappling flag, it was a lot of fun, and led to heart-pounding flag runs.

Art

The art style is fantastic, and immediately reminded me of a James Bond villain’s lair in the alps, and fits the ONI narrative perfectly as a result. The industrial base runs a stark contrast compared to the snowy mountains and modest campsite, and creates an immersive environment and experience. The caverns were particularly well done, too.

Technical

The Out-of-Environment boundaries are largely well done, especially considering the creative grapple routes that are available to players. I do wonder if the upper snowy areas above the base corridors would be easily exploited with a grapple (grapple to an out-of-environment area, grapple the flag once pulled) - these did not occur during our sessions, but I imagine they could be very hard to defend against. No points were deducted for this, just an observation and curiosity - in short, I want to play more.