The Passage

The Passage
Based on the Novel By Justin Cronin

I admit, this is not the first time I've tried this idea before. The first time I tried, I couldn't get enough ideas to fill the entire mainland of Forge World. The second time people couldn't survive unless they took a Falcon, and then that made it too easy to survive. In fact, I tried different variants of this map six times before deciding on what we have here. Though, that doesn't count beta testing. I tested this map about eleven or twelve times, with a broad range of people. The end result was a fairly intense and very frightening experience, that overall, most people enjoyed. Since you guys have so kindly come to overview the map, I'll let you in on a couple of secrets that are sure to turn the game around. First though, I must go over how this all works, just keep on the look out for things I may point out, you can use them to your advantage.

Everyone knows the classic zombies, find the big guns, hold out, and make sure to find the sweet spot on the head of the zombies. I'll admit, this can make for some very fun gameplay, but I sometimes feel that it gets a little too repetitive. You end up with the same player as Last Man Standing for at least two thirds of the rounds. Me being an odd soul, I like to make things different than most people do. What I wanted was a game where, you can't hold in one spot for the whole round, but you can't run and gun. My goal was to create a map, where survival meant risking your life. You will have to adventure to survive. What I needed was a combination of the two. So this is what came along.

As a human, you start off next to all your "buddies" with only a pistol. There are a few weapons here, mostly ranged as the sight lines are great for any sharpshooter, but they have low ammo, and don't respawn. Generally most people will run away from this place. If your going to make a move, do it now, once night falls it starts to get dangerous. There are two places to run. If you go towards the left, you'll find a refill station with two warthogs, meaning six people can get away fast. On the right, there's a military outpost, it doesn't look like much, but if you blow the hatch, you will find an underground layer. Here's where you find weapons. They don't respawn, but they do have good ammo. This is not a good place to camp, in fact, no place is a good place to camp, and I'll tell you why. The reason being is that the zombies are faster, stronger, and they jump higher than humans. That's not what gets you though, what gets you is that if you don't look hard enough, you'll mistake them for a human. Though if you're the last man standing, you can use this to your advantage.

After going through the weapons, you'll find a roadway leading to a small bunker. This bunker has two shotguns and a teleporter. The teleporter leads to the big military complex, long abandoned by the military, sitting atop a large mountain towards the Northwest. Don't be fooled, even if it looks like a good place to hide, it's really not. Though you can hold for a little bit in the Air Ducts.

Features

One little nifty mechanic in this map, and I swear I don't know how it happened, is that, after the map gets dark, you can start to notice it get lighter and lighter as the round progresses. Another is the "your never safe" feature. A couple paragraphs up you may notice I put quotations around buddies. The reason for this is, we are humans, and when a zombie is after us, we may tend to dessert the place we were at. In the games we played a lot of people got left behind. In this game, trust nobody. Keep you friends near you and listen to here if they are going to a different area. To account for that, there's also the fact that it's dark. I can't tell you how many times I've lost a teammate due to them not checking the corners of the building they're in. If your not careful, you may find a zombie coming down from the roof. Another thing to watch is the mountains in the canyon. This is where the zombies spawn. Then you may come across a tunnel, it has a lot of rocks, and it's pitch black. Be careful. If you get into a warthog, it doesn't matter that you have a big gun. All it takes is one zombie and you're all dead. I've seen it happen too many times. People think they're invincible just because they're in a warthog. If a zombie slashes the back end, it spins you out. Then they just have to take the driver out, and your all finished. Now on to the pics!



This is the spawn area. Remember what I told you.



Two Warthog convoys heading out. They didn't come back.



This was at the beginning of the second round. We spit up, two people take the guns, the other takes the Warthog. This is about a minute in, it's at it's darkest right now.



At three minutes in, we spotted our first zombie. Our gunner took him out, and when we took a peak at who it was, we found it to be our gunners brother. He insisted we left him behind, saying he had a good spot to hide, and good weapons. Let him be an example of why not to camp.

This was the most scariest game that we had. Watching the video you really don't get that feeling. In game however it's a different story. It's the suspense knowing that if you round the corner, you may find three zombies waiting for you. We decided our last place to be was on the roof of a building. Not knowing whether or not a zombie would pop out is the most scariest thing in Halo. I guess that's one of the reasons it makes this game fun. Not knowing what will happen, if you will survive. That's all for now, I hope you enjoy the game. It really is fun. Until next time!



...oh and I almost forgot, don't aim for the head!
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