• OK. I'll admit it. I sometimes get lost in CSL. There - my nasty secret's out. How many times have I wished for a simplified CSL, without those pesky underground rat-runs? Well, my wish has been answered - Stronghold IS that map.
  
  
• Of course, calling it a simplified CSL is a bit of an understatement. This is a quite beautiful map - perfectly proportioned and textured, which helps to ground the map in reality, even though the setting is quite surreal: Two identical small islands, each containing a big two-storey building, linked by a bridge which crosses a fordable river. There are four smaller buildings, but these are really just used for cover, although you can run inside to escape the inevitable storm of fire coming from the other building. The two main buildings have two floors, a roof reachable by a fire escape, and three doorways at ground level. A nice touch is that the roof has two skylights, through which you can fire into the interior stairway or the upper floor.
  
  
• The map comes in two flavours, multiplayer and terrorist hunt. The terrorists aren't really that challenging - the interior stairs become a natural killing ground, and the carnage (as shown in the picture below) can be rather extreme. It's as a multiplayer map that this really comes into its own.
  
  
• You're in the middle of a firefight within seconds of spawning. You're never that far away from being shot, and there are very few (if any) truly safe places on the map. This is a sniper's dream. Bring smoke grenades, grenade launchers, anything which can protect you. They can dominate this map. Until you've taken out any snipers in overwatch, running out into the middle guarantees death. But that's why you have snipers of your own, right? So the battle splits into two phases, if you have enough team-mates - a sniper duel, and then, once they're suppressed, a mad breathless charge for the other building. Phew.
  
  
• The author notes a couple of small bugs in his read-me, and the only one I have to add is that you can occasionally see people through the wall when they're hiding behind the walls directly beside the main entrances to the buildings - but that's it.
  
  
• A small wish list: The map could have been improved by having a night-time version, which would help contain the snipers to a certain extent, and I would have liked to have seen a doorway off the fire escape leading to the upper floor of the house - so that attackers have two routes to get there, rather than just using the stairs inside - which are (literally) a killer.
  
  
• So, for some two-fisted, knock-em-down action fights with ABSOLUTELY no chance of getting lost - download this map now.

---

Stronghold 1-1 Overall Rating -8.5 of 10

---

Download Mac version of Stronghold 1-1