genuinely astonished people like this map so much
i think it's unbearable, bottom 5 maps in the game
at least when people know what they're doing anyway, maybe it's fun casually it does look nice aesthetically
but everything else is just awful, it encourages such...for lack of better word, cringe play
with the fan up, there's attacker-sided high ground going into spawn; the side fan also grants attacker-sided high ground from an OFF-ANGLE in spawn
this wouldn't be such a problem if the only ways to rotate on this map REQUIRE those 2 fans, which means in order to make any rotation happen you have to walk straight into the attackers on high ground
meanwhile, mid is incredibly small with almost no cover, so you're just going to die to every slosher, blaster, wall-user, or sniper in your area. it's so short that any weapon with decent range (even a zap or something) can influence a massive chunk of the middle of the map by just keeping the fan up and painting the front
and if you do get dived, or chipped by one of the aoe weapons, or you're trying to hide from the sniper without spending the whole game stuck in a corner—basically, if you ever try and run around, congratulations! you've got a tiny skinny gap between mid pedestal and the fans (which are always going to be up), or you can trap yourself in bottom left or right with only one very obvious and limited path back up
note that this is worse than a regular horrible splatoon 3 map because if you put your fan down you have no foothold into mid + they can spawn rush you, so to even play the video game your team now needs someone on permanent fan duty which is just an extra annoying minigame to have to play
all this means is that everyone is incentivized to be in mid never, because the whole thing is a death pit, which means now you're just in a breeding ground of snipers in spawn / on the fans, and aoe weapons endlessly rushing to try and kill the snipers, and everyone else is just hoping that maybe this tiny funny little block will keep them alive just a little bit longer
theres no way to outplay people on the map because you can see the WHOLE THING so easily
have i mentioned that I hate how small and lacking in cover the map is
don't even get me started on some of the mode-specific stuff
zones is utterly unplayable because the side fan doesn't even exist, so all you have for BOTH sides is a very obvious, stupid, small little fan that now is DEFINITELY never going to go down because it's all you have to work with (i love shooting the fan!! woohooo!!!! nuanced strategy!!!)
rainmaker is even worse because you can't even USE the fans until the checkpoint is broken so now the long range weapons in spawn are really just never going to let anyone play the game and if you fall in the death pit it's a fight to the death for you
and clams gives the opposing team TWO easy high ground spots to score from that are then hard to ever get back if you give it to them, which just reminds me of how annoying sturgeon is
clams might be interesting someday tho idk ig im willing to give that one a chance
as for tower control, i haven't played it, because the other 3 modes made me so physically unwell that i just turn off the game every time i see the airport in rotation
