cp_hotrod

Pros:

+ Similar to dustbowl
+ Great gameplay ideas
+ (Mostly) unique layout
+ Typical TF2 style adaption

Cons:

- Very unfinished
- Some team balance issues
- Various glitches and leaks
- Large empty and useless areas

Conclusion:

So for my first review on this site, i present you cp_hotrod (beta 3) by DIODIO, a japanese fellow of the tf2 community. If he's also a good mapper? Let's find out.

First impression
	On first glance, this map seems to have everything it needs to concur with retail maps. the original tf2 style was adapted correctly, textures come from the desert/industrial environment and we have three stages with 2 CP each. Very dustbowl-ish a few people already stated. And i agree.
	Now, in general we have a huge difference between the screenshots promoting a map and the actual level. In this case, I was surprised how grounding the first part of the map felt for me.
	Already the first spawnroom on the blue side had not much to impress with. A widely open room with poorly arranged textures, all cubish and un-trimmed make sure that you don't want to spend much time here.
	Out of the spawnrooms, the map can impress with great layouts and wonderful gameplay ideas. Despite an obvious imitation of the dustbowl-flow, many own ideas were placed and work pretty well in this szenario.
	You find many good spots for Engineer's equip. Unfortunately for the Blu team, most of these spots are heavily overpowered, offering only a small opening for an attack and if a few Reds are guarding a tactical sentry spot, the Blus have to come up with a very coordinated attack or they simply won't be able to move on in this map.
	It all looks very unfinished, you see lots of compiling errors, leaks, bad lighting, wide open spaces (placeholders?) and useless empty rooms. But it's a beta, so it might not be finished yet.
	On the other hand the map can score with many good approaches and interesting gameplay settings.
	The first impression gets a score of 35% with much potential for further improvement!

The style
	Nothing much to say about it here, we have a classic style setting as seen in any other desert map. Not much wrong with that, no experiments and I'm okay with that.
	Some people noted, that non-tf2 textures were used in some spots, but this isn't really worse than other more important facts.
	Since everything looks okay and nothing is misplaced, this leads to an average score of 70%.

The layout
	As I said in the first paragraph, we have nice and interesting approaches to unique gameplay elements. Most of them define special locations where a specific class can play out its advantages. These are commonly named as Sniper spots, Sentry spots, ambush-areas for demomen, name it, you'll find it here.
	A bigger problem is the large amount of useless space, which expans the map needlessly at locations, where none of the teams could make an advantage out of it. Alternative routes are just too long to provide a really useful chance for a suprise attack.
	A removal of these areas would not harm the existing layout, so this would be a way to improve this map.
 	Also, when working with open spaces, it is important to visually fill this space through architectural work or other stilistic details, which are missing in most places.
 	But the worst crime I found was the copy-paste of goldrush's 2nd stage sniper pit. (the one at the first area's end behind the big house) This really has to be removed in the next release.
	All this brings me to a score of 50%, which also represents the map's progress I assume.

The conclusion
	All in all, we have a total score of 52% with much potential to raise the overall rating in the next RC version. I'm looking forward to it.
	You won't regret playing a few rounds, since the map is technically fine and the gameplay works pretty fine already.
	For anyone who is looking for maps to put on his server, I recommend to wait for the RC.