Penis Day at the Gym

If the title didn't give it away, the banana peel perfectly placed on a platform to launch you into the void, complete with cartoon slipping sound, just might. This is a troll map. It is also quietly just a really really well designed space.

The map mostly peddles in interior spaces, winding corridors and stairways that lead into and over each other, punctuated with larger tiered rooms that like to put you on the backfoot as you ascend them, with enemies over your head. Importantly it controls this space very well. Pieces of the map adjust themselves slightly as you go, blocking off a corridor here or opening up a switchback there, all in the service of keeping you heading up up up at a solid clip. Its a little less subtle in its guidance than a map like The Monochrome (18) but still works equally well.

The interior is pretty drab; not in an ugly way but in a very flat minimalist way where the shapes of the room and its occupants give as much texture to the space as the textures. It's only once ascending for a while you'll finally see the sky and the exterior of the concrete installation, caught under the moonlight and covered in snow.

Did I mention this is a troll map? Do you remember Hawk Tuah? This map does! God I feel old. Its not at every turn, that would make it too obvious and predictable, but at a decent rate the map is throwing out jabs. Sometimes its lewd (hidden brutalist butt plug!), sometimes referential (a youtube link which if you painfully type out will bring you to a family guy clip), sometimes plain mean (a damn cardboard cutout of an archvile from doom 2 popping up). Can I say that all of these landed for me. No. Can I say that most of these landed for me? Still no. What I can say is that its a (fascinating? horrifying?) look into another mind, the kind of abyss that sends you family guy jokes if you make small talk with it at a party. If this had been a map solely full of these, I probably would have lost patience for it, but their prescence alongside an ordinary, if very well designed map, makes an interesting contrast in a game usually full of dark and dour spaces.

In any case, from the top exterior, its back down through the same space, which has once again shifted slightly to lubricate your route down. Into the basement and a blowout setpiece fight to finish the map. A good time all around.