Shanghai Harbor is a good ol' map. It's a straight-forward walkthrough map with bosses placed throughout, themed areas between them, an overarching theme, a clear goal, clear routes of progression, clear enemies and a clear threat, a clear sense of completion, and great visual style throughout.

Battle your way through a palatial harbor castle full of blackops grunts and female assassins, a sewer system full of mutant gonomes and headcrabs, and the harbor full of snipers. Take out each of the mob bosses along the way and stock up on an increasingly versatile mercenary weapons as you forge your way through the map. Updating spawn points throughout keep the players close to the action. Numerous enemies with reasonable amounts of health make for tense but satisfying gunfights. Well-armed, well ammo-fed players steadily progress through action-packed battles one after the other.

The map has some excellent brushwork and map design on display. Near the end there is a boat in a harbor which is entirely superfluous to the progression of the map, but is very well done and neat to see. Much of the map has the kind of subdued, dignified beauty of the maps in, say, Deus Ex.

After defeating the bosses, the game throws an apache at you for good measure. Defeating this will end the mission. It's a fairly simple and cheap way to end a map, but it's properly climactic.

Overall, I think that Shanghai Harbor really shows how to make a superb walkthrough map that's simple but incredibly well executed throughout. I would highly recommend this map to show off to friends or to run on any action-oriented server lists.

Pros:

• Simple, streamlined, satisfying gunfights
• Very nice to look at throughout
• Fun theming and progression
• I really liked the bosses
• Updating checkpoints and good pickup balance keeps quality of life in check

Cons: