No I didnt come back just to bash your clusterfucking map Cataclaw. I came back because Im going to genuinely try to start up the reviewing again. Granted I dont even play that much to begin with, but it appears that during my absence, noob mappers felt safe enough to release an endless flow of god awful concoctions without retaliation. Your golden age is at an end, for I am back.

Ok, lets see if I remember how the fuck this goes. Gloom Arena 2. Lets see. If anyone played the first Gloom Arena, you know it was actually pretty creative. I didnt necessarily hate the first Gloom Arena, but I didnt feel as though it deserved anything remotely close to a sequel. Well, god damn, right? Unlike the first Gloom Arena, this map requires negative braincells in order to play. Did I mention TK bans? Not yet but thats an added bonus feature which I will touch on in a bit.

Like I said in the sidebar statement, the layout is non-existant. I cant really bash a map's layout if there is no such thing, but you know what I dont care. The map is a fucking box. Ok yea it has angled corners and shit, so its more of a hexagon or something, blow me. You actually start outside the arena, in your own little designated spawn area. One for Human and Alien, seperated by a window brush so you can spawn grunt and endlessly spam your crotchgrabbing taunt over and over again at drones through the window because you think its hilarious.

Anyway, you run through the clever teleporting door and pop up inside the dome of fucking hell, then proceed to kill anything and everything that you can before you die. If you manage to not die for extended periods of time, this makes you super cool and you win a prize and gloating rights. More crotchgrab taunt animation while you ex shell drones in midair most likely. As time passes by, along with your sanity, higher frag classes are able to spawn into the arena and duke it out. You first get Shock Troops vs Drones, which is midly entertaining, but then it progresses to Commandos vs Stingers.

This is the real meat and potatoes of the map. Spawn Commando and drop a C4 right in the fucking middle, then laugh with glee as you await your auto-kick/ban. Yea you might get a few Stingers too, but theyre too busy being pussies sitting on the outer edge of the dome and spamming gas spores from their invincible healer. I forgot to mention an invincible healer and depot are also available in the map, but what the hell for. Just die and you get full ammo and grenades. No big.

The last round of the match is Mech vs Stalker, and if youve managed to not get yourself banned with C4, you get to enjoy the awesome sight of Stalkers basically horsefucking every Mech that spawns. Yea its kinda fun to watch them try to squish eachother but thanks to stick-code (c) you really have to feel sorry for the Mechs sometimes. Big deal, nobody ever wins anyway. That last line wasnt a joke either. Nobody wins this map, except maybe the person with the highest actual score. But technically every game ends in a tie, meaning you dont get to enjoy your kicking rad victory music. Such a loss.

Guess Ill touch on r_speeds a bit. This should be really fun to plow through since I finally have a system that doesn run on bread crumbs and melted twizzlers. The map is one fucking ROOM. What possible problems could r_speeds pose anyway. The only thing you have to worry about here is the fucking entity overflows which will be raping your framerate no matter what. God help you if youre using EGL on this map.

Overall? Hey yea its creative, and its mindless fun from time to time, but I cant really give it much respect. Its a nice idea, and maybe if Cata had made the arena larger with more obstacles, then tactics might actually have a hand in this map. If you are unfortunate enough to be playing Gloom with 20+ people and have this map pop up, you should throw your hands up in the air, as a gesture that you are being subjected to futility, and go make a grilled cheese sandwich or something.