A top shooter needs great shooting mechanics, and either fun movement or tactical ones. Still, you can make a game that excels at all three ??and it will be no more dangerous than a lion inside an aquarium if it doesn't feature proper maps.

When someone talks about a specific FPS you like, chances are most of your memories will come from one or just a few handful of maps that stood above all o?thers. Read on to pay your respects.

Dust 2 (Counter-Strike)

If society collapses and video game archeologists of the future end up trying to put the pieces together, they might come to the realization that serious competitive online gaming started here. In truth, De_Dust 2 isn't really the first competitive Esports map of all time, nor the first really popular one. Still, it sure is the best map in the original Counter-Strike 1.6, and it remains a banger even over 20 years later. Dust 2's service to CS helped make the tactical shooting and Call Of Duty online scenes the juggernaut that they are to??day.

Not bad for a map made for fun without f??ollowing any strict rules of map-??making - because those didn't exist yet.

Facing Worlds (Unreal Tournament)

Did you ever tell the youths of today you used to have some of the most fun a human body can survive on a CTF map composed of just two towers flying in space united by an impractical bridge? Good, because they'd laugh their asses off while likely doing what you can only assume is a Fortnite dance. Stil?l, you know damn well that few things beat being a sniper on top of that tower, easily getting over 25 headshots per match, or, should things get too dire, just get the Redeemer to nuke all pesky passersby.

Facing Worlds isn't a very competitive map because it's too easy to prevent anyone from ever crossing the bridge, but taking turns between being the cool sniper and the fool who tries to make it across remains one of the most fun things you can no longer try today because Epic completely abandoned UT.

Ps: In case you're wondering, yes, I'm using a picture of the newest iteration of Facing Worlds as a psyop to make you want UT back even more.

Nuketown (Call Of Duty series)

The universe has an interesting way of balancing things. Not long after Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull gave us one of the dumbest scenes in movie history where Indy survives a nuclear blast by finding she?lter inside a fake fridge on a nuclear testing site, gamers get one of the most fun maps of all time.

Nuketown is simple, really, just a bunch of suburban houses populated only by creepy nuclear test dolls. Sti??ll, having a shootout with your friends in a cozy place that's clearly there only to be destroyed feels right every goddamn? time.

Rust (Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2)

"1v1 Rust?" Is one of the oldest memes spawning out of the Call Of Duty series, and for good reason. Modern Warfare 2 introduced one ?of the smallest maps in the history of online shooters, just a? small patch of sand with a rusty tower in the middle.

Simple, sure, but a?lso the best place to have an up close and personal duel with your friend or foe. Snipers? Submachine guns? Pistols? Knives? Anything goes on Rust, and everything works.

Blood Gulch (Halo: Combat Evolved)

Similarly to Facing Worlds from UT, Blood Gulch has a very simple setup of two enemy bases united by a long patch of land. But, instead of a bridge, players would get a wide corridor they could traverse on foot or by vehicle. You could take on Blood Gulch however you wanted, and it would always result in fun. If there's one multiplayer map that would immediately sell anyone on everything Halo could do, it was Blood Gulch.

They used to say, "blood gulch is the map so nice, they remade it twice." That was a long time ago, as Blood Gulch has since been remade for pretty much every Halo game, and it remains just as simpl??e and addictive back in? the day

Q3DM17 aka The Longest Yeard (Quake 3)

You'd think that's probably a bad choice of a name to something you want to make popular, but, once you play it, you'll understand Q3DM17's experience will more than sell itself. First things first, Q3DM17's setting of a sci-fi arena floating in space looks just amazing �even if you're to experience its earliest version nowadays via Quake Live. Also, it allows for a lot of freedom. This is a map you can enjoy safely or by risking some tricky and dangerous jumps that might take you to a position you can more ea??sily frag your enemies from.

On top of being an all time top-tier arena map,? Q3DM17 remains likely the best Instagib map ever made.

Construct (Garry’s Mod)

Not all great multiplayer FPS maps need to be all about putting players in places where it'd be cool to have a shootout straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster. They can also be about creating, and Garry's Mod's Construct is one of the best places to both come up with the wackiest ideas, contraptions, and even other maps. Construct provides an incredibly chill and iconic area to let your mind fly free, and there's no wonder it served as the primordial mud from whence a lot of awesome gameplay ideas came ou??t of.

Erangel (PUBG: Battlegrounds)

As far as gameplay variety goes, there's just no beating PUBG's first map. Erangel played a big role in making the BR genre the beast it has been since, well, the rele??ase of Erangel, a role I believe many don'?t realize.

I myself had to wait until the release of PUBG's much inferior second map, Miramar, to realize how much of a miracle Erangel was. The team came up with such a wide area that never feels bor?ing or repetitive, and where every sub set piece can still provide the perfect set for completely unique shootouts eve??n so long after the game's release.

Deck 17 (Unreal Tournament)

A lot of verticality and grey tones don't usually do much for me in shooters, but I'll open an exception for Unreal Tournament's Deck 17. It features a beautiful balcony where snipers get a great view to the open ar?ea where the madmen have at it, wide and long corridors, and bridges w??ithout rails that will lead you to a nasty death in a vat of green goo. That's the best of the late '90s and early '00s combined right there.

Deck 17 can be chaotic, but it'll never? make you feel too bad as you kn?ow damn well you can always go for the nuke that will calm things down.

Wake Island (Battlefield series)

Battlefield's greatest strength is the incredible size and scope of the ba??ttles it allowed players to partake in even as far back as the early 00's. Still, sometimes it can be a bit much, and you might want to kick back and relax in a smaller and c??ozier war effort.

What makes Wake Island the definitive Battlefield map is its ability to feature both the series' amazing scope, but to also make it feel smaller, more streamlined, by allowing players to conquer the whole island by starting at one end of this organic corridor of a map and finishing at the other. If you don't care about that, however, that's also fine, as Wake Island also excels at being played as if it were any other Battlefield map.

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As originally reported by IGN, the DMCA copyright strike notice that an undisclosed source adjacent to Skibidi Toilet had hit Garry's Mod with has been resolved.

Skibidi Toilet, the mega YouTube and TikTok series featuring toilet-ified Half-Life 2 character models used in the Garry's Mod sandbox, has been spreading to conquer the few unaffected corners of the Internet via bizarre headlines. Last week, we learned that Transformers Michael Bay himself is trying to make a movie or TV series out of the property. This week, we learned that a peculiar legal battle between Skibidi Toilet and Garry's Mod almost came to be.

In very late July, we learned that a DMCA copyright strike possibly coming right out of Skibidi Toilet's creator Aleksei "Dafuq!?Boom!" Gerasimov had hit GMod's creator Garry Newman. Though Garry never stated the obvious, the move is baffling because Skibidi Toilet owes its existence to Garry's Mod, not the other way around. Still, the strike mentioned four characters present in Skibidi Toilet that are copyrighted by Invisible Narratives. That's a company co-owned by director Michael Bay, the one he's using to try to adapt the Skibidi Toilet series to the big or small screens.

Newman took to his own Discord server to notify his fans about the strange occurrence, which sent both fandoms into a frenzy. It didn't take Skibidi Toilet creator long to answer in Garry's Discord, and to address the?? is??sue on his own server.

Boom! further explained that he didn't know where the attack came from, but that it came from neither him nor Invisible Narratives. He said it likely originated in back in 2023, in an attempt to remove NSFW videos featuring Skibidi Toilet's character models that he didn'?t want kids to see??.

“The letter that was posted by Garry is not from me or INVIZ. While we don’t know exactly where it came from, it’s possible it was sent after member of the team reached out at the end of 2023 with concerns that Skibidi characters were being animated and monetized in hurtful ways.�/p>

Boom! also said that he had no intention of taking down the actual Garry's Mod.

Newman has since provided an update, confirming to IGN via email that the takedown had been sent back in 2023. He concluded by saying that Dafuq had been in touch, and that the issue was no more. Still, we're yet to learn of the exact source or the reason for the action. Just as interestingly, Valve, the company whose assets allowed for the existence of both Garry's Mod and Skibidi Toilet, remains seemingly nonchalantly sil??ent on the issue.

The post The Skibidi Toilet – Garry’s Mod DMCA issue has been resolved appeared first on Destructoid.

Tensions have been heating up around the web series Skibidi Toilet. Garry's Mod creator Garry Newman recently shared in his s&box Discord channel that he'd been hit with a DMCA strike notice regarding copyright infringement of Dafuq?boom!'s Skibidi Toilet.

Garry's Mod open sandbox model unfortunately renders the game liable to such situations, as we'd previously seen with Nintendo, but this case is stranger for a few reasons; namely, Skibidi Toilet's creator Dafuq??Bo?om! claims he was unaware of the strike.

Though he claims not to know the exact origin of the strike, Boom!'s made a statement on his Discord channel explaining that the DMCA acti?on isn't related to anything new, but to a situation that ??arose in 2023.

"The letter Garry has shown on S&Box discord channel is nothing to do with recent events, but ?from something that occurred back in the end of 2023, and is being taken out of context."

Boom then explained that this was a situation that saw YouTubers using Skibidi Toilet characters in highly innapropriate GMod animations.

"Most of you don’t know this, but back in 2023 Skibidi Toilet NSFW content has been massively present on YouTube. What you see right now is mere fraction of that. I and my team were struggling with removing many heinous NSFW YouTube videos and channels that were using Skibidi characters in a gross manner. And you know, as evident, YouTube report system just doesn't work. This all still remains unprosecute?d, fully monetized ??and available for all ages."

Though Dextero found out that the characters mentioned in the email received by Garry Newman belong to Invisible Narratives, the Skibidi Toilet-adjacent co?mpany co-owned by director Michael Bay and Adam Goodman, Boom! also states that this is not where the action originated from.

"The letter that was posted by Garry is not from me or INVIZ. While we don’t know exactly where it came from, it’s possible it was sent after member of the team reached out at the end of 2023 with concerns that Skibidi characters were being animated and monetized in h?urtful ways."

Skibidi Toilet, for those unaware, is a web series generated within Garry's Mod that's become extremely popular over the years. It would make sense for Bay's company to be attempting to claim all the material related to the brand, especially considering how we recently learned that it's working on a tentative Skibidi Toilet movie or TV adaptation, but that might not be the case.

The other reason why this is all incredibly strange is that some of the Skibidi Toilet characters' copyrights are secured by Dafuq?Boom! or his partners, which is a bit puzzling considering how they spawned out of Garry's Mod �and of Valve, before that. Whatever the case might be, Boom! stated his love for Garry's Mod, and said the goal was never to bring it down. We??'ll see if anything more come??s of this.

The post Skibidi Toilet creator claims they didn’t send the Garry’s Mod copyright notice appeared first on Destructoid.

Skibidi Toilet could be headed for the silver screen. Paramount Pictures president Adam Goodman recently told Variety about ongoing talks to bring the extremely successful YouTube and TikTok series to TV or the big screen, with Transformers director Michael Bay in the picture.

Though the two are actively pursuing the project, they are yet to get the formal greenlight to begin pre-production on any actual adaptation. In the Variety podcast Strictly Business, Goodman said: “We are absolutely in talks right now, both on the television side and the earliest conversations right now on the film side,�said Goodman. “But it’s not a be-all, end-all for us.�/p>

On the business side of things, this attempt at expansion might make sense. At over 65 billion cumulative views, Skibidi Toilet is arguably the most successful series in the history of YouTube, a phenomenon big enough to dwarf Baby Shark, Despacito, and Gangnam Style many times over. In a time where brand recognition plays a role of extreme importance, anything Skibidi Toilet-related could prove a hit right out of the gate, but it's not that simple?.

Adapting Skibidi Toilet might prove tricky

Though Skibidi Toilet tells a mostly very straightforward tale of wacky a war between an army of human heads with toilets fo??r bodies and one of human bodies with pieces of tech for heads, a peculiar system of moving pieces exist?s within.

The toilet heads from Skibidi Toilet have become so popular that they're already an indelible part of Internet imagery. Still, unlike most popular series out there, these designs aren't entirely original. Most of what you see in Skibidi Toilet episodes are pre-existing models from Half-Life 2 that have been made available via Garry's Mod and brought into movie form via Source Filmmaker.

Skibidi Toilet series creator DaFuq!?Boom! gets to make these videos, and serious bucks out of them, because ??Valve is just really cool about letting other ki??ds play with its toys. That, however, doesn't necessarily translate to the company lending the rights to their intellectual property to a studio or production company that's not even directly adapting Valve's works.

Invisible Narratives, the independent company that Bay runs with Goodman, is already involved with Skibidi Toilet's toyline. On the collaboration, Goodman says: "I will say that Michael and Jeffrey Beecroft, who's his longtime production designer and a colleague of his that's worked with him on all of his movies, have been working very closely with Alexey to really professionalize the kind of back engine of this, to make sure, if we ever decide to go film or television, that this is kind of lifted beyond just the resources that creators have on the internet." That seems to indicate some things are indeed moving, but we're yet to learn of Valve's essential thoughts regarding any sort of Skibidi Toilet adaptation.

If you don't care about the legal implications and just want to learn more about the bizarre story of Skibidi Toilet, I'm happy to let you know that we've even employed the efforts of Half-Life series w??riter Marc Laidlaw to look into it a??ll with us.

The post Michael Bay is ap???parently working on bringing Skibidi Toilet to film and TV appeared first on Destructoid.

Nintendo may have now aimed its infamous legal prowess on Facepunch Studios of Garry's Mod f??ame, from the looks of things. "They don't want you playing with [Nintendo IP content] in Garry's Mod," says the recent announcement from Facepunch, with the studio now removing all Nintendo-related stuff from its Workshop.

This information comes from Facepunch Studios' official statement on Steam, which plainly stated tha?t the purge of any and all Nintendo content was deliberate: "This is not a mistake, the takedowns come from Nintendo," it says.

A curious wrinkle

Early on, there was some uncertainty as to whether Nintendo really is or isn't behind the takedown requests. Nintendo has yet to publicly chime in on the issue, and some members of the GMOD community claimed that a "fraudster" is engineering the crisis instead. In ??response to the community's concerns, Garry Newman of Facepunch S??tudios said that his team was "doing [its] own investigations" on the matter.

Setting these suspicions of foul play aside, however, Newman has since clarified that he's been "assured that the takedowns ha?ve been verified by Nintendo as legit, so [the content takedown] will continue as planned."

"If you want to help us by deleting your Nintendo-related uploads and never uploading them again, that would help us a lot," says the announcement on Steam. At the same time, some of the community members who have been keeping track of the situation as it developed have been trying their best to preserve the mods for as long? as possible. A worthy objective or a breach of IP law? Time will tell.

The post Garry’s Mod is pulling down years of Nintendo content, but players suspect foul play appeared first on Destructoid.

Not called Garry's Mod 2

Garry’s Mod is getting a sequel after almost ten years.

In an interview with PCGamesN, Facepunch founder Garry Newman said a follow-up was in the works, with the intention of it?? making use of VR technology:

…I mean we’re kind of working on a sequel, so it’d be stupid to the raise the price, really. It’s early days. We’re looking at having more VR stuff in it - that’s the big point of it. And it won’t be called Garry’s Mod 2.

I’m curious to see how they adapt Gmod to do anything interesting with VR, as a physics sandbox game doesn’t seem like your normal candidate for the tech. It’s also worth speculating whether this sequel will use the new Source 2 engine, which so far has only been put to use in Dota 2.

Platforms, release date, or even a name aren’t currently known at the moment. Facepunch is plodding away with the development of Rust at the moment, so it may be a while before we get details of the new Gmod.

But the most important thing I need to know is this: can I still make a sculpture dedicated to the glorious Team Fortress 2 Heavy/Medic pairing, and then fly it into the sky on remote controlled rockets? Because really, that’s all anyone does in Gmod.

The post Garry’s Mod is getting a virtual reality-focused sequel appeared first on Destructoid.

The creator talks about the success and appeal of the mod

Garry's Mod, otherwise known as GMod, has been a long-time fixture of the Steam and PC gaming community. In it, player's can take existing character models, objects, and environments, and experiment with them in a variety of unique ways. It's very much like playing with a collection of action figures from different brands, and it's been quite popular with humorists and fans. Last week, Garry Newman, the creator of the mod, posted a sales chart showing the progress his title has made.

During an online exchange with Rock Paper Shotgun, the creator talks about the success of the mod, why it has responded so well to the community, and how it keeps on selling. Obviously, much of the credit goes to Steam, Valve's self-developed games, and social media and video sites. Steam began selling the retail version of Gmod in 2006, and the popularity of it expanded along with the community that shares media of their latest creations. Surprisingly, one big influence over the years was Minecraft, which Newman claims helped Garry's Mod tremendously.

"Minecraft. You’d think Minecraft would kill GMod’s popularity... but it’s kind of the opposite. People play Minecraft to death -- they love it... so they go out looking for other games that are a bit like it. Minecraft has attracted a lot of people th??at aren’t rea??lly PC gamers too. They play the game on the 360 or the iPad and everyone tells them that the PC version is better."

It's seems like the only direction for Garry's Mod is up, though Newman has no plans to recreate the success of this title. His development studio, Facepunch, is currently working on Rust, an open-world survival game. While a departure from his previous work, he will continue to support and update GMod when needed.

What are your favorite creations to come out of Garry's Mod?

Garry On Garr??y’s Mod&rs??quo;s Endlessly Rising Sales Figures [Rock Paper Shotgun]

The post Garry’s Mod has sold over 3.5M copies since release appeared first on Destructoid.

I want to be a Mantis. Can I be a Mantis?

FTL: Faster Than Light was one of the first big Kickstarter videogame success stories. After earning more than twenty times its original goal early last year and releasing in the fall, we loved it. We weren't the only ones, of course, and now some fans have taken it upon themselves to create a first-person multiplayer homage to the sci-fi roguelike, calling it Final Frontier.

It is still in the early prototype stages right now, existing as a mod for Garry's Mod, but it may end up as a standalone game. Though it mostly exists as a concept right now, it feels like it could turn out to be a mash up FTL with Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator, in that it could be totally rad or completely disastrous, depending on the competency of the crew involved. Either way, with some [read: a lot of] work, Final Frontier could be quite a bit of fun.

Awooga! FTL boarded Garry's Mod [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

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By Freddie Wong

Garry's Mod, the most famous m?od of all time, comes to life in this little ode by filmmaker? Freddie Wong. Everyone's always wanted to launch into the sky in a rocket propelled bathtub with a little gnome, right?

The post Watch this: An ode to Garry’s Mod appeared first on Destructoid.

No matter what, the shotgun is still your best option

Have you ever asked yourself, "What if someone took the concept of fighting flat 2D enemies from Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard and put it into a much better game?" I know I have, and thankfully the modder Ghor has answered my question with their latest creation, gmDoom.

In this mod, players will have the ability to go through the entirety of Half-Life 2 with the full space marine arsenal of the iconic Doomguy. You will also recognize some familiar faces in the form of Doom's monstrous cast of Imps, Demons, and Cacodemons as they pay a visit to City 1??7 and its neighboring areas.

Sometimes in this era of high-fidelity gaming and intricately woven stories,?? we forge??t how nice it can be to just kick back and shoot the crap out of some Imps with your shotgun.

The post New mod adds?? Doom weapons and characters to Half-Life 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

Facepunch looking into a new game project

Garry's Mod, the thing that let's you do all the weird things to Source games like Half-Life 2, has earned about $22 million since it was released over seven years ago. ??Creator Garry Newman of Facepunch revealed the figure when asked by a fan, but he also added that a lot of the profits have gone to taxes.

"Over 7 years GMod has made about 22 million dollars," Garry shared. "We get less than half of that though. Then the tax man get??s a bunch of that. Then when we take money out of the company the tax man? gets a bunch of that too."

A lot of Garry's Mod success has been through word of mouth, and the regular features update it gets. Plus, it's only $10. Facepunch is currently working on a Linux version of Garry's Mod, and they're considering a move to Valve's ?SteamPipe system as well.

Additionally, the team is looking to into creating a new PC game. It's a game Garry has wanted to start on "for ages," and they're trying to ge??t a team together in the office to start work.

Mailbag [Garry's blofg, via PCGamesN]

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Garry's Mod, the sandbox physics game based on Half-Life 2, has surpasses one million sales on S??team after five years of availability. For half a decade, the mod has been updated by Garry Newman, and has earned a great dea??l of respect from its supporters.

Newman has been planning a large update to Garry's Mod to coincide with the landmark sales fig??ure, but that checkpoint was reached before he was finished. The update is coming, but you'll have to wait a while. That's something to look forward to!

Over 1,000,000 Sold! [Garry's Mod]

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