'Ruins' is a fairly large map, and breaks down into three basic sections. There are two large buildings of three floors high, one concrete and one brick, consisting of multiple small interconnected rooms. There are rooftops to these buildings, which are flat and basically completely without cover, and there is the ground level, which is comprised of a group of broken walls and a few alleyways between and behind the buildings.

Each of these three areas requires a different style of play. Inside the buildings, caution is at a premium. The rooms, unlike those in maps such as "Lock'n'Load' and "Quittin' Time" are mostly bare and empty of cover (there is not a single door in the whole map), leaving only the walls to hide behind. Many of the rooms are dead ends, and in combination with the sparseness of ammo throughout the map (especially in the concrete building), this can lead to some quite desperate knife-fights as players struggle to survive. Inter-building jumping is possible, but difficult. The large windows of most rooms make building-to-building shots risky, as retaliation leaves you with nowhere to hide. The boarded-up windows of one side of the concrete building make excellent vantage points to snipe at distracted participants of fire-fights in the ruins below, but watch your back or you'll find yourself being jump- kicked across the map. The MP5 can be found in the concrete building, and the shotgun under a stairway in the brick building.

On the rooftop level, there is no cover and, since this is a brightly-lit daytime map, absolutely no way to hide. However, there is also only one way onto the roofs, from the broken top floor of the brick building, and so a sniper can survive for a long time by keeping a careful watch. The concrete building is accessed by a plank between the two rooftops, but watch out when crossing it, as you're an easy target from below. The map offers plenty of successful opportunities for sniping at the alleyways and ruins below. The sniper rifle can be found up here, but the weapon that really excels on the roof is the MP5 machinegun. With a double magazine spawn-point, and two pistol-clip spawns for backup, get the MP5 on the roof and you are almost guaranteed a long run of "Stayin' Alive" until retired by a vengeful M4.

Down on the ground is where the action is hottest. Fast and furious is the rule, and if you shoot first you'll probably win (as long as you can aim). The reason for haste is cover, or rather the lack of it - the alleyways are long, narrow and empty. In the ruined area, hiding from your aggressor will almost always leave you vulnerable from long-range shooters in or on top of the buildings overlooking it. The play in the alleys often turns into repeated bouts of short-lived mutually assured destruction, as everyone races for the weapons and items that are inevitably dropped there by the dead. This gives rooftop snipers plenty of people to aim at. Two unique weapons can be found on the ground level, the M4 behind the concrete building and the handcannon in the ruined walls.

'Ruins' is a large, fairly open map, and this means it can be rather laggy for some players. While it's fine for OpenGL systems, software rendering can be sluggish, particularly in a fire-fight. This is partially compensated by a total lack of transparent textures in the map. As said before, the look is somewhat ugly - repetitive use of a few (occasionally badly aligned) textures, little or no decoration, and repeated floor plans on each level of the buildings. One good point on the looks is a total lack of 'cracks' in the walls, tiny holes where the sky shines through, a problem which has been prevalent in recent AQ2 maps.

As for gameplay issues, ammo is distinctly lacking - especially for the M4, which makes the MP5, with its more readily available supply, the top weapon of the map. The "flow" of the map is poor - too many dead end rooms in the buildings, and the roof has only one way up. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, see 'Kumanru' for a map with excellent flow.) But despite all these criticisms, 'Ruins' gets away with it because it's just so damn fun to play. It's proof that sometimes the rules are made to be broken.
-"Dr. Bob" Mellish

Review:
This map consists of two buildings with no way in between them inside, and the grounds around them.

The one building's roof is full of machinegun ammo (2 clips) and a bit further on a plank which has been layed down gives access to the other building's roof (the only access). There's another 2 clips of machine gun ammo and 2 clips of pistol ammo. The weapons are nicely laid out and it has plenty of nice close, intellegent fighting happening inside the buildings (rushing up stairs, down stairs, taking cover, ambushing, etc).

The major, major gripe about this level is the rim around the buildings (the ground around them.) It's one player wide. There's respawn spots in it, galore. If you respawn there, you're dead from either a respawn camper, or just some random hopeful firing person. There's no way to dodge, and no skill involved, and since you RESPAWN there, you can't even choose NOT to go there - it puts you there. It would be a much better map if you could avoid that area if you wanted to, instead of just repawning, dying, respawning, dying, etc. 5 times in a row.

But besides that, its a great level when you don't respawn there.
-Nicholas Lawson
[email protected]