After playing some Search and Destroy on all of the maps, it seems as if the only suitable map for competition so far is Castle. What are your thoughts on the beta maps, and do you think map selection will become a major issue for the competitive success of the game?

Mark "wombat" Larsen - While we haven't played any scrims on the beta yet, it does seem that Castle is the only decent map of the three. I haven't really read up on how many maps there will be in the retail version, but I would hope there are at least five decent maps for competition.

I think something that should be considered regardless of how the maps turnout, is the system MLG uses for Halo. I'd love to see a tournament or league use multiple gametypes like SnD, CTF, WAR, and DOM. It'd undoubtedly bring a lot more variety and fun to the game.

Taylor "tAYLORRRRR" Sheridan - I guess a lot of people judge games off how the gameplay is and how good the guns are. What really keeps a good game going are the maps. Think back to CoD1, all of those maps have been remade for all of the CoD series. It's obvious the maps need to be good for the game to have any chance. The reason Search and Destroy is only good on Castle for the beta is simple though. They want the average person to try out all the different types of maps, on different gametypes. Makin is your average terrible dark map for the older guy who wants to look at the game more then actually shoot someone. Roundhouse is for your best friend who plays Halo 3 on the xbox and wants to jump in a tank and kill people. Then there is Castle for those cevo-p allstars who need a map with buildings and decent amount of space between both teams spawns. The map selection will probably take a couple of weeks, just to see what maps are good and not. I hope the map editor is easy to use and people can come up with good maps while the game is still coming out.

Robert "griM_" Koster - I strongly believe that the maps dictate success of any game. The game play could be amazing but if the maps are heavily lopsided and just not well designed it makes for failure. Castle is by far the best of the three maps released in the beta. My team has been scriming it the most and it seems to be evenly sided and well designed. We also tried roundhouse a few times and our opinions were mixed. I think if the bolts would kill when hitting someone we would have liked the map better. All in all I think we have 1 great SD map, and 1 so-so out of 3 so I'm fairly optimistic we could have 5 solid maps for competition!

Jesse "Nrv" Daly - I do completely agree that Castle was really the only map that can be used for competition out of all the beta maps. I feel as if they purposely released 3 completely different maps for us to get a feel of the different types of game play CoD5 will have to offer. Roundhouse is obviously a vehicle map which I really am not a fan of at all. I would be open to trying it without vehicles, though. Makin is just completely useless with its dark environment, bushes to prone in, and paper-thin walls all over the place. I know for a fact that there are a ton of maps coming our way in the retail version and we will have plenty of weeding out to do before we decide which maps will be the best to use. Throwing Strike and Crash into CoD5 wouldn't be a bad idea HaHa.

Joe "Nabore" Amorosa - The beta maps are simply designed to give you a heads up on what you are up against. I think they released those maps mostly because each map is suitable for certain game types. Castle being SD, Makin being a respawning game type, and Roundhouse being a flag based game type. I think that in any game, map selection is key and CoD5 will be no different. We have according to my sources a lot of maps to look at when the game is released and we will go from there. Anything said now based on maps is pure speculation, or information given by someone who got the leaked game. I’d rather wait a day and see for myself.


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