Why have there been so few Team Fortress 2 maps released by Valve? And where are all the great custom levels to fill in the gaps?

After setting out on a quest through public server hell, I answered the first question by way of the second.

The following is knowledge gained through immense sacrifice, the result of a three-day binge on bad maps and toxic voice chat. I played with teammates who didn't understand how to jump. I walked through maps that didn't even have textures. I braved servers branded with bone-chilling warning signs: "Beware all ye who enter here with racist names."

Did I find custom map nirvana, or was I doomed to walk the land as designed by a 14-year-old who skipped the Hammer tutorial? Read the following mini-reviews to find out, all organized--in Old Man Murray fashion--by how long I could play the map before I physically felt pain.

Map: Mario_Kart
Author: Xenon
Time to pain: 2 seconds

Like a post-Nietzsche version of Little Nemo's Dreamland, Mario_Kart lures you in with its simple promise of Nintendo nostalgia, then promptly splits your skull wide open with a deluge of multi-colored landscapes and seizure-inducing special effects.

There are no capture points here, nor is there any evidence of intelligence. Instead, towering posters surround you on all sides, draping the level from floor to sky in hentai, anime, and other 4chan materials.

Players stumble around the 2D circuit in a stimulus-induced haze, saturated with input and stupified by the pure repugnance of it all. Nobody seems sure whether to shoot the other guy, or end their own miserable, confused existence.

How does this guy have 10,000 hitpoints? Is that an Akira motorcycle flying through the air? Why have you forsaken us, Lord?

Map: CTF_Bball
Author: spike
Time to pain: 15 seconds

Bball is a fairly self-explanatory map, created with an innocent premise in mind. The teams begin each round at opposing ends of the arena, the obvious object being to grab the intelligence from center court and slam-dunk it via rocket jumping or demo blasting.

It's a novel concept, and one that works well with six players. But then splitting the atom seemed a novel, innocent idea too.

The dilemma with Bball is that nobody plays a game called Team Fortress on servers of six. As such, on a typical server with Bball in rotation, the court usually overflows faster than you can make an NBA Jam reference. Full teams of 12 frustrated gladiators are thrown into the tiny fenced arena, armed to the teeth with turrets and sniper rifles.

Like a Pistons-Pacers game, it soon devolves into an all-out arms race, with walls of chaingun-wielding heavies spawn-camping the other squad's bench. The coach is screaming his head off in voice chat, the "ball" goes totally ignored, and nobody is alive long enough to call foul.

I love this game, but not this map.

Map: Surf_Legendary_Lite
Author: Satan
Time to pain: 23 seconds

I used to be ignorant of "surf" maps. You know what I've learned? Ignorance is bliss.

The brilliant idea here--as much of an idea as cup stacking, or riding wild cattle--involves gliding across long custom-made half-pipe surfaces using the strafe key. The effect is akin to "surfing" in Starsiege: Tribes, only in a game that doesn't have jetpacks.

This particular surf map began at the top of a large tower, with the surfaces angled steeply toward the unseen ground below. After a long, uneventful glide to the bottom, you find yourself stuck in a pit, surrounded by other players who seem just as confused as you are, scorpions tossed into a jar and feeling twitchy. It's a bit like Bball, only with the cute premise replaced by old world, Poe-inspired fatalism.

If you're thinking the only way this map could sound any more fun is if there were Tiki idols that randomly popped up and shot you with darts, you're in luck.

Map: CP_Rats
Authors: ts2do
Time to pain: 32 seconds

Ever had the urge to play Team Fortress 2 from the perspective of a rat?

Yeah, me neither.

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