MMOMFG’s unofficial guide to the custom maps of StarCraft II

Through the years, user-created maps and modded game types have been a staple of Blizzard’s real-time strategy titles. As I first delved in to StarCraft II last month and began outlining a review, visiting the custom games section of Battle.net was high on my list. Feeling nostalgic for my RTS roots, I had lofty expectations buoyed by memories of wasting entire afternoons playing SCV Football a decade ago and getting royally sucked into Defense of the Ancients years later when WarCraft III was hot. But as I played through a sampling of StarCraft II’s custom maps I was disapointed by a lack of interesting options and the absence of clever and innovative games.

So I dinged the game on this in my review. But in the back of my mind I knew that, given a few weeks, the StarCraft community would restore my faith in modding and bring to Battle.net some welcomed distractions from the frenetic pace and usual failure I associate with 3v3 matches. I’ve spent the last week or so playing only custom games and write to share some of my experiences with you. I’ve picked a few of my favorites, a few of Battle.net’s most popular, and some just plain old wacky.

PartyCraft - One of the most popular SC2 mods out there at the time is PartyCraft – a succession of mini-games. Think of it like Mario Party on an alien planet. A group of up to 8 players compete to see who can win the most events. These can be creative,  like dodging an obstacle course/gauntlet of siege tanks and explosions, but also banal,  free for all killing sessions where every player is provided the same unit feel like meaningless fluff rounds.  I recommend this mod when you’ve partied up with a friend and have the natural incentive of bragging rights involved in the contest.

Resident Evil Outbreak – It’s a good thing the Zerg can infest Terran marines, or else StarCraft II wouldn’t have any fitting character models. For the zombie slayer in all of us this has to be the game of choice, I know it’s my hands down favorite so far. You and a group of fellow Terran ghosts must protect a city from nightly waves of zombies, but there’s so much more to this one. Not only can you upgrade your hero, but you can hire different units with money you get per each dead zombie. Building your own little zombie fighting force and leading them in valiant defense is what I’m talking about. And it gets better – every few rounds a mission takes place directing players to visit a section of the city, like a hotel or armory, to rectify an infestation and access new units. It’s complex, it sucks you in, and its got zombies. I can ask for no more.

DotA - The classic is back and it’s just as good as ever. Not better than ever, mind you there’s not much new here, but whoever said DotA needed to change? The urge to push your forces forward and take out opposing heroes comes flooding back like it never left. Is it a coincidence that lately the game I find myself playing the most in between StarCraft sessions is Monday Night Combat? Nope, that shit is a DotA third-person shooter and I love it.

Marine Arena – A traditionally popular map type, the SC2 version of arena games aren’t much of a departure from the past. Your base spits out 1 unit every few seconds, you wage war and earn money per kill, then use that scratch to upgrade or buy a hero, and hire more intermittently produced units. I feel like once you’ve played one you’ve played em all. But that still won’t keep you from flushing half an hour down the drain with one match.

Runling Run – I loved SCV football, and am surprised not to have found it in SC2 yet. If you don’t remember it, you basically played touch football with SCVs, trying to outmaneuver your opponents. It was a simple concept and an incredibly addicting challenge. The closes thing I’ve found to that game this time around is the map Runling Run. It’s another puzzle of movement, if you will, except here you guide a zergling through a square maze of mobile mines. Like SCV Football, it’s all about the right route and rapid reflexes. It’s downside is the soundtrack – the version I played blasted that awful “I’m blue dabu deebu” song constantly. I’m sorry, am I in a shitty club or sitting in my apartment playing video games?

Nexus Wars – Another classic, in this game you can only control an SCV to build structures that produce different units constantly, one after the other, and sends them towards the other side of the map to butt heads with any opposition they come across. It’s a test of strategy really, choosing a good mix of complementing units to gain an advantage. It’s similar to DotA, with two major differences – you have direct control of how many and what type of units are spawned from your base and access to heroes is much tougher. They are highly expensive and don’t factor into victory as much as DotA’s. Another difference, I don’t like this me nearly as much. It’s popularity is somewhat lost on me.

Income Wars - I’m going to come right out and say it – Nexus Wars sucks and Income Wars rules. Please don’t shoot me. In income wars, your AI bots are constantly pumped head-first toward the opposition, but you do not build structures to produce them or control heroes. No, you control a little zerg egg thingy in a section to the top of the map full of examples of units that can be produced and their prices. Every time your egg steps onto a units square, once pops out. You receive minerals every 30 seconds, and the more units you have pumped out the bigger they payload twice per minute. In order to mass produce, one places their egg just outside a units square, and tells it to patrol to a spot just inside the square, sending the unit darting back and forth into and out of the square. It’s a seriously weird way to do it but this one is simply more enjoyable than it’s Nexus Wars sibling.

Hungry Hungry Baneling - This has to be the wackiest one I’ve played so far. The only way I can describe it is as the Katarmi Damacy of StarCraft 2 custom maps. You are a baneling who eats units just by rolling over them, and you’ve got to eat a whole map of Terran forces up. The more you eat the bigger you get and the bigger units you can consume. Eventually, you feel like Godzilla running riot through a Japanese city. It’s got its downsides though, controls are a bit funky and I found several of my attempts to complete the map hampered by being unable to scroll around the map using the mouse. Also, if you get too adventurous, which is pretty easy to do once you really get rolling, and find your hungry baneling as a dead baneling there’s no quick restart or do-over option. That means you have to trek through the score screen, back to the Battle.net menu, then to the list of custom maps, scroll down till you find it and restart. Kinda a pain.

Looking back on these selections, it seems I don’t have the same tastes as most other SC2 players – of the more popular maps detailed above, I didn’t really like any of them very much. No matter though, in the end there is a lot of fun to be had working through StarCraft II’s custom maps. Were modes like these really lacking when the game launched, or did I just not look hard enough? Either way, this RTS fan is glad that the custom map experiences of his youth are not lost forever.

Have I neglected one of your favorite maps? If I did, the only thing you can do about it is leave a comment about the map and why you like it so much. If you’ve been playing around with the SC map editor and think you’ve got a solid piece of RTS innovation drop us an email. We’d love to check it out, and maybe even include it in Volume 2 of the MMOMFG guide to the custom maps of StarCraft II. That is, if I ever get sick of the Resident Evil Outbreak game and try out some new ones.

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