Yavin 4: Colony

Culvar's "Yavin 4: Colony" is presumably set on the titular Yavin 4, but with the abundance of Naboo buildings along with AATs and Gian Speeders (for both eras) it makes me wonder if perhaps "Naboo: Colony" wouldn't have been a better title.

Names aside, this is a fair map. It's simple, and it doesn't try too hard... which is refreshing every once in a while. It uses stock sides and a small map which makes for a nice small 8 MB download.

Gameplay is decent, and it's a fairly even battle. The sides feel well-matched against each other even if they seem to be a little bit weird (out-of-era material in another one). The bug with the stock phase 1 sniper/jettrooper can be fixed easily and probably should have been, but at least a note is made of it in the readme.

The map's weaknesses lie in the actual map design itself. There's at least one major object placement issue (with the Arena model featured in hero assault) and there's a big 'ol textureless spot in the sky where, I assume, the Yavin skydome object was supposed to go (but the texture was left out). The map is also pretty bland once you move towards the center. The layout might work fine, but with the sharp (unblended) hills, the stock ground textures, and stock sky textures (I don't care if it is the actual skydome and terrain from Yavin IV - change it. In my opinion no map ever needs to use those terrain textures in abundance or that skydome at all), it's just not doing it for me.

A decent map, and bugs aside it's small enough to be worth a try.

-Mav