Wonkuun

Description
Here we have a new map by a_speck_of_dust titled Wonkuun. I am sure you all know already that this is one of his last maps, so I neeedn't (is that a word?) reiterate it again. Onwards to the review, then.

Visually, this map is very nice, and has very nice lighting much like many of 'Speck's maps. There is a lot of foliage everywhere, as well as some very nice looking trees. I can't say I liked the way the Geonosis rocks looked, however. They would look better if they were skinned a bit differently beacuse bright orange just isn't the color for this map. There was also some grey-ish smoke all over the central battlefield. This smoke would look ten times better if it was colored to better fit the enviroment. (Brown, perhaps?) Obviously, walking through a cloud of smoke means you won't be able to see anything, and as you can probably guess, this does not affect the bots. So don't go running into a cloud of smoke hoping to hide.

Like all of 'Speck's maps, this one has an insane number of units in an enclosed space. Throw on top of that a dozen tanks and a handful of turrets in the trees firing at you all at once, and you've got one chaotic battle. So, if you go running out into the middle of the battlefield, expect to be dead within seconds. Even with a tank, your best bet is to stay back and fire at enemies from a distance. Otherwise, you're bound to get killed immediately by the fifty grenades lobbed your way. Despite all that, the map still has its fun.

It seems most of the effort was put into the Clone Wars era, so I'll cover that first. On the Republic side you've got 'Speck's camo clone troopers that he uses in pretty much all of his maps. For whatever reason, these clones fire green blaster bolts. Other than that, the sides layout is exactly the same as the default. Mace Windu is the hero here. The Republic also has IFT-X Fightertanks, speederbikes, and a couple flyers. The flyers are drammatically slowed down for use in this small-to-medium sized map. Don't expect to do much with the flyers, however. Droid rocketeers will shoot you down in a hurry no matter how good you are at barrel rolls and innelmans.

On the CIS side you've got both B1 and B2 battle droids. The skins on the battle droids have been changed around a bit, but nothing big. The CIS has a couple AATs, STAPs, and dwarf spider droids. Nothing else changed in way of sides as far as I see.

Galactic Civil War has the default units with new skins, as well as respective combat speeders, fightertanks, and speeder bikes for both sides. Again, some lasers are colored differently, but other than that there are no other side changes.

From what I've seen, the map is virtually bug-free. However, it could use some work in way of playability. For example decreasing the number of units and getting rid of the annoying tower turrets that seemed to cut me down everytime I moved. I'd also like to suggest some new units and weapons, because that's one of the key things I look for in new maps. For example, a commander unit with a portable ion cannon and orbital strike.

Overall, this was a fun map to play and review. However, if you have a low-end computer you may experience some lag due to the number of units and foliage. Turning down your settings may help. The filesize is also fairly large, 550 meg if I remember correctly, so don't download if you don't have that much space on your computer.

Make sure you read the readme file!

-Xavious

A Note to the Author -- Please be sure to credit those whose assets were used for your map. You neglected to credit Lord-Bandu for the Dantooine tree and psych0fred for the dwarf spider droid.