As a person who loves Blood Gulch, I'm not a fan of people incorrectly saying Valhalla or even Standoff replaces it. So I hope to end this argument with a very long post. WARNING! Not for those with short attention spans! _____________________________________________________________ Valhalla completely defies the themes of Blood Gulch, which automatically means it isn't the same thing. No matter how many things [i] look[/i] similar (i.e. the pelican on Valhalla as a cave or the river on Valhalla), a map can't replace another if the game play is nothing like it. Some people may not have noticed, but Valhalla has a hill in the middle of it. This blocks the views of one base to most of the other. In Blood Gulch, base to base snipers battles weren't exactly rare. This is because it was a level plain, where a sniper could shoot anyone almost anywhere on the map. Due to the hill, snipers are not the most dominant force on Valhalla usually. One theme of Blood Gulch destroyed. The next theme of Blood Gulch is vehicles. Valhalla has vehicles. So does Blood Gulch. I don't think Valhalla has any tanks though. Or ghosts [i]normally[/i]. Odd for a remake, huh? Not to have any of the things that actually made the map awesome. To vehicles again...there is also, again, the hill. The hill means that vehicular battles will never happen on a regular basis in MM. On Blood Gulch you just had plain open ground. Drive in circles hoping your gunner can outdo theirs, while dodging the sniper. The hill makes it so Warthogs rarely encounter one another. Mancannons are on Valhalla, teleporters in Blood Gulch. I know, 'they're the same thing practically!' Wrong sir! On this map, they are not. A mancannon on Blood Gulch would be devastating to the map, for any decent sniper could have a field day. Blood Gulch had teleporters due to the risk of going to the middle of the map with snipers on either side. This, again, is defeated by Valhalla's large hill. On Valhalla you can just mancannon to the middle of the map in relative safety, or even walk! This is, yet again, due to the large hill in the middle. On Blood Gulch, if you went near the middle of the map on foot, a sniper would likely pick you off. You can go an entire game easily on Valhalla without Vehicles or Snipers. If you tried that on Blood Gulch, you'd get laughed at and killed many times. Standoff has many of the same issues. Where to begin? Standoff ishow shall I put this [b]small[/b]. Blood Gulch was huge, and Standoff is not. The largeness of Blood Gulch is one of its best features. Both maps have a base. Oh, that must mean the maps the same! Standoff replaces Blood Gulch, just like Valhalla does (by the way, if both maps replace Blood Gulch, then you'd better start explaining how Standoff is the same as Valhalla), huh? Right Standoff has a single Warthog in front of each base. Blood Gulch has a warthog by each base as well. Blood Gulch also had a banshee, a ghost, and tank. Standoff also hasoh, never mind. Standoff has mongooses. I have little doubt that if Blood Gulch is ever going to be remade in Halo 3, that mongooses would be included. So there you go. Still, one theme of Blood Gulch is destroyed. Blood Gulch has tiny bumps that bounce you up and down while you drive in your hog. Standoff has rocks that you can crash into. Very similar, I know. Really though, the rocks also ruin the Blood Gulch experience. I don't even need to explain that part I don't think. To me, it is far too obvious. Standoff lacks the one weapon Blood Gulch centered aroundthe sniper. Standoff does not have a sniper, and I think it was a very good move by Bungie not to include it. In a map like Standoff, the sniper would dominate, and I mean more than in Blood Gulch. In blood gulch, you have a tank. Not only can you pick up chicks in a tank, but you can kill a sniper. Yay multi tasking! At last, some smaller points: 1. Valhalla was a spiritual successor. It was not supposed to be Blood Gulch. It was inspired by Blood Gulch. 2. There is a difference between thinking a map is good, and thinking it is not like another map. Standoff happens to be my current favorite Halo 3 map. Valhalla is a fun map as well, though I wouldn't say it was one of my favorites. 3. When Standoff was first shown, I believe the words Bungie used were 'it has a Blood Gulch feel'. Something to that effect... it doesn't mean it can replace Blood Gulch at all! All it means is that it has the same [i]feel [/i] as Blood Gulch. Bungie certainly got that right; it does remind me of it. Maybe that's why I love the map so much. Or it could be that Multi- Flag on Standoff with AR starts is epic fun! 4. Themes can be argued. Maybe some of you don't think the themes of Blood Gulch are snipers and/or vehicles. However, I firmly believe that these are the themes, and I believe most people would agree with me, whether they think Valhalla/Standoff can replace Blood Gulch or not. 5. I am well aware of the 'Bring Back Blood Gulch' group. I support the cause, but I just don't want to join more groups. Sorry fellas, but my support will be from the outside. Good group theme though, it's a good thing. There you have it, the reasons Valhalla and Standoff do not equal Blood Gulch. Please bring fire extinguishers for the flames when you enter the 'reply' screen, if you do reply. Thanks for reading. [quote] Quote due to it looking nicer than a 'edit' symbol. I've been desperately trying to avoided editing this post, because I feel the edit thing makes such a lovely post look sloppy. It couldn't be helped though. Turns out that with the New New Hawtness, it was impossible to reply to this thread due to the title I had. So I had to change the title. Apologies to anybody who tried- you should now have no trouble.[/quote] [Edited on 03.26.2009 6:23 PM PDT]