nukoda.com

I lean to Nukoda.com editor Ross Arbour and mutter, quite unimpressed, “it’s a palette swap.” Ubisoft Creative Director Clint Hawking, who’s been demoing the ruthlessly difficult and outrageously gorgeous Far Cry 2, has just turned a 512 meter by 512 meter map from a dry, rocky, sandy savanna in to a lushly green forest being ripped apart in a giant rainstorm.

It’s just a palette swap. But hot damn if it isn’t an impressive and easy to use addition to one of the most simple and intuitive console map editors I’ve ever seen. Whether you’re lifting mountains out of flat ground or dropping licensed Jeeps in front of smashable shanty shacks, everything is accessed through the seemingly intuitive radial menu system.

Within a few button presses, Hocking has raised rocky hills of varying sizes with his circular brush, and has applied various “paint” jobs to them to maintain setting consistency. After just minutes, he’s got realistically grown and predominantly destructible trees littered throughout the tall grass of his arid map. Before the crowd can shout “Burn it down!” in to the echoing theater yet again, Hocking is chucking Molotov cocktails in to the fields creating giant, roaring firestorms that are impressive, to say the least. Adding roads, rivers, floods, foliage, wheels and structures is equally easy, utilizing a basic menu system that gives players tons of access to create varied and ludicrously large multiplayer maps to bust caps in online asses.

It might not be a spectacular change in regards to gameplay, but being able to change the look of your stage is a great addition to a spectacularly deep, and shockingly accessible map editor that will hook Halo Forge addicts looking for something to do besides mix up weapon placements.