Map THFE Feature: Excavation

Check out Excavation in the HaloCustoms map database!

Your squad moves through the abandoned mining facility. Dusty old machinery creaks overhead, you hold your rifle at the ready and order your squad to do the same. Splat! You just got stepped on by a Mantis. Your squad's mission to recover the purple dinosaur eggs has been a failure. However, the battle raging around your pancaked corpse is quite exciting. You are avenged by a speeding fast attack jeep as it fires a volley from its mounted rocket turret at the enemy mech. Next, the jeep flips over as a round from a hostile sniper finds its way into the driver's cranium. Finally, the purple dinosaur who's eggs you were searching for shows up and proceeds to sit on everyone in sight.

Right up to the purple dinosaur fight, that pretty much describes the sorts of experiences you'll have on Excavation. Flying Shoe ILR has created a competitive BTB experience which incorporates a heavy vehicle set. You can hear all about in the video, though. This is a map which rewards player skill and team work while still providing the shenanigans that only a heavy vehicle set can create.

Also, I'm trying to get Shoe to add the purple dinosaur to the map, so stay tuned for that.

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FINALLY!!! This map is really great and balanced. I've played extraction, Slayer, I believe CTF on it and I got to say; great Job Shoe. The over all layout for each type of competitive criteria is different so much that the each part of map gets it's fair share of game-play in at least one of the three categories of game-types that the map was designed for. That mantis, it can be really used to the players advantage, if done right, but isn't to over powering to the point that if you organize an attack you can easily take it down. On this map, even if the teams are unbalance it doesn't feel frustrating with loosing. It's just an enjoyable playing experience and one doesn't get annoyed at the unbalance that certain maps can seem to give when you are in this position of un-balanced teams. Great work Shoe can't wait for the next map of yours.

 

To my knowledge this is the first time heavies has actually been balanced to function in a competitive way that really works well. It is true that not only BTB but especially Heavies has a reputation for being an unbalanced and overly chaotic mess but this changes my view on what can be done with such powerful weapons and vehicles. Balancing the Mantis is always a challenge but it looks like anything possibly overpowering has been countered by the excellent map design. Great job!