I had a very quick play of the new patch last night.
The browser filters suddenly make it possible to find those well hidden normal-mode servers. Hurrah!
Played one round on each of the new maps.
Killhouse plays a like Shipment, with 24 people, but is better designed for it. You can have two or three spawns that end up in death inside a second but once you get yourself oriented it can be a good lark. Unfortunately, nade spam and the ability to have air support indoors are just stupid but that was true on Shipment.
Chinatown, Creek and Broadcast, however, are actually much more interesting and substantially larger in feel than the original maps.
Chinatown is full of multi-level buildings, narrow corridors, windows, winding streets and is generally a warren for rats who know the map. Well placed claymores can be amusingly effective and the tight spaces indoors make the shotgun and SMGs good choices, but battle between buildings definitely requires weapons of longer range. Possibly the best of the new maps.
Broadcast is based off the single-player level where the US Marines are breaching a radio station somewhere in Iraq (Baghdad?) with a fair number of changes to make it an interesting map. It's sufficiently large that there are a number of distinct zones in the map that play quite differently; find yourself being pwned indoors? Switch to outside and get out your rifle!
Creek should be a sniper heaven but somehow the snipers weren't accounting for themselves well last night and that might be because there are a lot of ways to get around the map so the sniper can't just stare at one spot and get guaranteed kills. A mixture of ravines, a cave, some buildings, and high ledges it's a pretty map but one that people may grow to hate if snipers find they can be effective 'cause there's lots of undergrowth. Personally, I enjoyed it as a mid-to-short range guy but the map was working for me on that play session.
