Beauty and magnificence aren’t words you get to use often in Counter-Strike, unless you’re describing your abilities and way too impressed with yourself*, but they’re true of de_wanda.  This gorgeous map also offers something even more incredible – a reason to play anywhere other than dust (if only for a little while.)

*And we guarantee whoever you’re talking to is bored

De_wanda is an epic adaptation of the Italian maps, rebuilding the whole town around an Colossal display – and that’s not “colossal” as in big, that’s “Colossal” as in “To do with a Colossus, Shadow Of The.”  Map-modder “warby” brings the most artistic enemy ever to grace videogaming into the source engine, so that terrorist teams might contemplate their own insignificance while killing the hell out of each other.

First you see the exhibition’s posters….

…then the image gets bigger…

…then it gets a LOT bigger.

The above pictures really don’t do it justice – with full 3D, bloom effects, the very motes of light themselves dancing around this still combat (combined with how running around the map really puts you in scale of a suddenly very small human) it’s an astonishing centerpiece.  The tragic Colossus locked in battle with a Combine tripod, which at least isn’t some bugger crawling over it with a magic knife.  (Hey, it happens.)

The entire map is designed to show off beautiful source effects from flowing waterfalls to brilliant balloons.

It’s really somewhere you’d rather take a holiday than an AWP round to the head.

The usable beach-telescopes add to the holiday atmosphere, but don’t be fooled – this is a serious slaughter map, stuffed with blind alleys, sniper perches and alternate routes for combat.

In real life that ladder would be useless.  In CS, it’s going to give at least one arch-exiter a very nasty surprise.

The artistic feel is kept up with a few original additions to the museum basement.  The first is a stirring monument to the eternities of combat.

I call this piece “Violence”

The second is an even more stirring piece of total kickass you only wish you could use.

And I call this one “HELL YEAAAAH!”

There’s even an easter egg hidden in the vast village beyond the boundaries of the map.  You won’t see much in play…

… but some telescope (or good old Garry’s Mod) will reveal a rather out-of-place extra.

I say, my dear, you seem somewhat incongruous.  And rather excited!

It’s not something you’ll see on public servers – optimization has brought the file down from 160 MB to a positively anaemic 70 megs, but that’s a lot more than anyone wants to download.  Where you will find it is on LANs or your private counter-strike servers.  It’s an excellent addition to a clan rotation, where you can make sure everyone’s added it to their map folder in advance – and where expert players can truly appreciate the love that’s gone into this most magnificent of all slaughterhouses.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 8:42 am and is filed under Counter-Strike Source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.