Map: Bus Depot

This map was made by RichGaming


Setting: Ten seconds after closing your eyes as you rest your head to sleep you suddenly open them to see the strangely familiar bus station from Tranzit zombies! No, this isn't a bad dream; this is reality. Your objective: to escape the bad dream and discover the truth (that RichGaming can create a better map in his freetime than Treyarch employees can create to keep their job!).

Positives: In every Treyarch zombies map there're always a few random doors that actually don't open and leave the player in deep thought (or disappointment). For starters, these doors don't exist in the "new" Bus Depot. The more and more I saw of this map, the more I came to the conclusion that there was a good amount of thought put into the layout of the map. The soul chests were placed almost perfectly. Bus Depot has just enough buildables but not too many to state that the mapper "overused his resources". Continued, many of the textures were spot on and the lava that appears on the players' screens as they run over it is much cooler than the lava from Black Ops 2 imo. I was very satisfied with the weapon selection, which includes a few AW submachine guns, the Mauser, a suprisingly half decent M8A1, the famous Sliquifier, a gorgeous CEL-3 Cauterizer, and many more. Furthermore I was happy to see a few small features such as a bank, a fridge, dig sites, a boss, and a special reappearance of Nacht.


Courtesy of Scobalula

Negatives: I wasn't able to explore all aspects of the map but was a bit disappointed with the out of map textures. They were plain and took away a little from the beautiful playable area textures (although the background buildings/silhouettes were sweet). The invisible barriers were quite annoying when running through the corn field and players can get stuck when running against them. If that doesn't speak for itself, I don't know what does (Don't do corn, kids). Furthermore, it seems to me that a reoccuring theme with mappers today is to include every perk ever made in their map (which isn't a bad thing if the perks are spaced rediculously far apart from one another). A few of the custom weapons weren't able to be pack-a-punched (typical ). Thankfully (in v1.1) the end game radio prices were changed (originally 30k). Not too many problems but just enough for me to pull out the poker face

Conclusion: Overall, Bus Depot was a pretty solid map. Although a few custom features (like the # of perks) were abused, the map was well done and fun! To say the least, Bus Depot by Rich was a mix of a stationary Tranzit and Origins. I would like to see more built onto this map btw. Although it wasn't an incredibly small map, it could be improved with some more work. But anyways, great map Rich, looking forward to the next one man

Level of Detail: 9/10
Custom Content: 8/10
Fun Scale: 7/10
Replayability: 7/10

Score: 31/40

Download Link: http://ugx-mods.com/forum/index.php/topic,10658.0.html

Map: Utopia

This map was made by CanadianTyler


Courtesy of CanadianTyler

Setting: World War III is interrupted by a massive unidentified object colliding with Earth right off the coast of Indonesia. You and three men are stationed on an off radar island in the deep Atlantic. With the globe in mass chaos and tsunamis quickly covering the east and approaching the west side of the United States, you and your men are ordered to hold and survive on the island. But as wrecked ships swamp the island you have an eerie feeling your "paradise" won't be much of a vacation.

Positives: Utopia started out a bit slow, but as the rounds went on, I gradually enjoyed playing. When preparing to write this review, I thought about the pros of Utopia and couldn't think of many. For that reason, I appreciated many of the small things in this map that many overlook or take for granted when forming opinions. First of all, seeing any map with UGX Mod and a number of game modes is always great. Throughout my playtime I saw no bugs or glitches (expect a few corpses resting in thin air). The map wasn't overly complicated but had some cool (and potentially very useful) techy textures displaying computers and buttons (shown below), similar to the textures in Tyler's preceding map, Battlestar Galactica. My favorite features of this map were the pack-a-punch custom camos (shown below). The weapon choice was pretty nice too. As far as I could tell, there were an assortment of Cod4, MW3, and Black Ops. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Winter's Howl and Thundergun when rolling the box for the first time. Pack-a-punching the Winter's Howl turns it into the "HELLFIRE" (basically the opposite of the Winter's Howl), which I had a ton of fun playing around with. Not too bad for a 15 hour map.


The cool "techy" textures I was referring to before


The pack-a-punched Winter's Howl called the "HELLFIRE"


Pretty radical pack-a-punched Thundergun camo

Negatives: Now, when one makes a so called "15 hour map", one must expect criticism. Many would review Utopia lightly because it had little to no time put into it, but today I will be criticizing it as if it was any other map. The map was pretty small, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. In this case, Utopia actually had much more potential. I was expecting to open a door to an underground base (like Abandoned Rocket Base). When I found none, I was pretty disappointed. Also, a recommendation to all mappers... do NOT overuse grey textures in your map (especially when there's little to no detail. If this is the case, you might want to add some ). The combination of bland grey textures with no detail to unplayable areas really killed the look of the map, which reminds me, Utopia is the worst possible name for this map. Anyways, there weren't any great training spots either, not too big a deal. But if you haven't gotten the picture yet, detail is close to everything for me in a custom map. Seeing an awful map in the downloads section after two weeks of waiting for a new release is bad enough, but seeing a potentially great map go to waste is painful.

Conclusion: Thankfully, CanadianTyler is NOT finished with this map! I'm excited to see what Utopia becomes within the next few updates. More importantly, my bone to pick is not with the map but rather with the mapper himself. Tyler has lots of potential (as I've said numerous times in both this review and others). I really like his style and believe he can create some sweet maps in the future. if he spends more time on in and out of map detail. Gameplay for this map is solid. As for Utopia, it needs work, but for a 15 hour job, not too bad. Thanks to the mapper for creating another decent & relaxed map

Level of Detail: 5/10
Custom Content: 5/10
Fun Scale: 8/10
Replayability: If CanadianTyler continues to update this map, I'd give it a solid 8/10

Score: 26/40

Download Link: http://ugx-mods.com/forum/index.php/topic,10591.0.html

Map: Neon Fighter

This map was made by qwerty195


Setting: You wake up blinded laying on what appears to be cold carpet. As you blink a few times you realize that you aren't really blind, but the darkness continues to close in around you. A flash of light and you can see once again, but the neon lighting barely shines past the windows and doors. The sounds of footsteps approach your ears and the classic "Round 1" appears on your screen...

Positives: As one who enjoys small and very simple maps, I enjoyed the simplicity of Neon Fighter. The map itself didn't look hard, and I haven't seen neon textures like these in any other map I've played (except for Quizz v2). So I said "hey why not" and downloaded the map. I was up for some chill and less intense zombieslaying, so the smooth and plain atmosphere wasn't all that bad. As for gameplay, this map features a Der Wunderfizz machine (random perk machine from Origins). The pack-a-punch weapon textures were pretty sweet IMO, and the map featured a number of different guns and perks from BO2 zombies. There was also a boss zombie each round, so I'd say that made the map a little bit more interesting.



Negatives: So for starters, the bloody buyable ending was originally 500k... 500K!! ...until the mapper lowered it to 250,000. Second, I did like the variety of perks in Neon Fighter, but I'm not a huge fan of maps that have one for every day of the year. And even when I went to buy all 12 perks, there was a perk limit. Just my thoughts, but if you're going to make a small map with 12 perks and 8 rooms total, please don't put a perk limit. I mean seriously, the map was pretty much for people who haven't tested out all the unnecessary weapons and perks Treyarch introduced. And to top it off, playing this map was like running on a treadmill... it was boring for the most part.

Conclusion: Neon Fighter would best be described as a "mood map", and when I say this I mean that one would only really enjoy playing Neon Fighter if they were down for some casual zombies or looking to fire a Ray Gun Mark 2 for the first time. It's not that the map was bad, it just wasn't all that good. The custom content was extremely weak. The map wasn't original in any way, but it did bring out the thoughts of adding neon textures to maps with more time put into them. Overall, props to the mapper for releasing a first map that wasn't a box room

Level of Detail: 4/10
Custom Content: 3/10
Fun Scale: 8/10
Replayability: 6/10

Score: 21/40

Download Link: http://ugx-mods.com/forum/index.php/topic,9732.0.html

So I know topics like this have been brought up a number of times before, especially having a forum for mappers' first maps. That idea was thrown away because it would be biased towards better known mappers (makes sense). My thoughts are that we haven't specifically identified the problem. Some mappers have great first maps, as we all know.

Recently, I've seen a number of pretty obvious first maps which have only a few hours put into them. I'm not sure these belong under the "Community Maps" Forum, so my suggestion is to have another subforum under "Community Maps" titled Test & Broken Maps or something that designates it as an obvious "not exactly what you want to waste your time downloading" place. Maybe even having a "Box Map" subforum would be helpful.

Maybe this idea has already been mentioned and I'm beating a dead horse, or maybe it's just not that great of an idea. If this has been suggested before, I apologize. Thanks for taking the time to read. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

When custom zombies first emerged from the shadows, mappers spent lots of time working on the maps themselves and less time on the extras. There were generally the 4 basic perks and stock weapons with basic textures. Very few maps included new features (buyable endings, custom & hidden weapons, eastereggs, etc.), but the maps were still pretty impressive and fun to play.

Old Map Examples: Subway, Pirate Ship, Dead Sand Elite, Baseball Field, ZM Mars, Cavern, Verruckt Mansion, Berlin Bank, Epitaph, Hotel, Simpsons, USFO, frt, Skate Park, Area 51, Junkyard, Moon of Fooy, Grid2, Waterworks (You may not even recognize some of these maps)

Nowadays, custom zombies has evolved into an entirely new game featuring new game modes, objectives, weapons, textures, perks, and pretty much everything else you can think of. Thanks to the mappers, modders, and scripters of the community, pretty much anything is possible in a custom zombies map. It seems as if a new map means a new feature or idea coming to life.

New Map Examples: Malibu Drive: Age of Apocalypse, Leviathan, Cheese Cube Unlimited, Exo Zombies, Cryogenic, Library, Project Contamination, Insanatorium, Das Herrenhaus, Alien Defense, UGX Requiem, Stairway to Hell, Deadship

Now my question to you, members of the community, is "Do you miss the old style low key custom maps? Do you like the more recent heavy custom content custom maps? Which do you prefer and why?"

Map: Cracked

This map was made by F3ARxReaper



Setting: The world is in mass chaos after an unexpected explosion on the moon. You and three of your friends are left stranded in a small town, Cracked, and are left to fend for yourselves. No others remain from the looks of it... or so it seems.

Positives: When downloading this map, I was really excited to see all the features it possessed. After gathering some guys to get a game and dying a few times, we finally got the gist of what was going on. The first thing that caught my attention was the "afterlife" (called "zombify") from Mob of the Dead. This feature allows players once per round to turn into a zombie, open doors, and turn on the power to various perks, bringing more strategy into the game. The second thing I noticed were the shovels. When playing the game, a player can pick up a shovel and "dig" up piles of bones on the ground revealing weapons, drops (including Blood Money), and parts to a custom wonderweapon (how cool is that??). On top of this feature, the map includes 13 different perks including Widow's Wine and 6 custom perks. "Cracked" also includes a number of weapons (from Cod4 to BO2), easter eggs, a weapons locker & bank, and perma-perks that require different and unique strategies to unlock.

Negatives: I'm going to be honest, when I first saw this map I think I might've gotten my hopes up. I expected a massive and professional made map, and I couldn't have been more wrong. The map isn't really big at all (1 large area, 2 small buildings, and a few small areas), and the textures of the supposed "town" weren't very realistic. On top of that, "Cracked" had more bugs than an entomologist. A few problems include mysery box not spawning, drops disappearing when walking over them, zombies attacking a "zombified" player (in the afterlife) and killing them, etc. Once we made it to round 22, the risers all got stuck and window zombies stopped spawning, leaving us with a pretty boring game.

Conclusion: Overall, I'm not going to lie, I enjoyed playing this map. Checking out all the custom content and desire to build the wonderweapon kept me playing. But every map has its problems... (some more than others). I was not impressed with the map itself (the map was pretty much half done), but F3ARxReaper shows talent. I would love to see some of these awesome features implimented into other maps with more effort put into them. I can't say "Cracked" is one of my favorites, but I can say I had fun playing it and look forward to the mapper's next release.

Level of Detail: 4/10
Custom Content: 8/10
Fun Scale: 7/10
Replayability: 6/10

Score: 25/40

Download Link: http://ugx-mods.com/forum/index.php/topic,9994.0.html

Map: Futurama

This map was made by CanadianTyler



Setting: You're enjoying a pleasant day at Planet Express sipping on your can of Slurm. Suddenly, the doors and windows break open as zombies break the silence. You run to your ship, but the power's been turned off. You must turn on the power and find a way to escape Planet Express before it's too late!

Positives: So for starters, the map looked exactly like a cartoon. It was almost if I had woken up in another universe. The textures were very much like the Simpsons custom zombies map (which I highly enjoyed) and were almost exactly like the show. Futurama also features UGX mod, so it must be pretty decent right? There are also various challenges that you can try and a number of different game modes (including Gun Game). There are a lot of custom weapons (including the RAINBOW, which I definitely recommend using to spray and pray). Perks are attainable through the box, something I've always thought would be cool to impliment into the game.

Negatives: The map really seemed to lack detail. It's unfortunate because going into the map I was expecting there to be heavy customized textures and lots of obstacles. Like I said before, there wasn't much, especially in the basement. It was like the mapper put a lot of time into customizing things that won't necessarily be seen throughout the course of one game (like the weapons/perks), especially when the buyable ending is 50,000. The map was also pretty small and relatively easy to open up all doors by round 8. There was only one box and really no need to go underground besides accessing jug and the power.

Conclusion: Overall, this map wasn't fully Futurama. It was a bit disappointing but had some pretty cool features with some amazing textures. It was definitely fun the first time playing, and I'd definitely be up for playing again to see more of the customized perks and weapons, maybe even with a few friends this time. Would I play this for any other reasons? Probably not, but for a possible first map (I'm not sure if CanadianTyler's done any other maps) it certainly wasn't a box room.

Level of Detail: 6/10
Custom Content: 7/10
Fun Scale: 7/10
Replayability: 6/10

Score: 26/40

Download Link: http://ugx-mods.com/forum/index.php/topic,9899.0.html