So this is interesting, and I feel the need to speak about Cold War itself to give some context on what I’ll say about this map later.
Cold War to me is, so far, the absolute peak of gameplay and mechanics in zombies. Everything from the movement to the gunplay to the progression all feels the best it ever has in any zombies title, and it is overall my second favorite zombies game tied with BO4. But the maps themselves are just sort of meh.
Die Maschine, imo is the second best Cold War map, and that’s mainly owing to a few smaller things. First aesthetics, I’m a sucker for the whole semi snowy dead vibe with the map and the Dark Aether is absolutely beautiful both in looks and function. Second the wonder weapons on the map are pretty fun and the only four variant ww set in the game, which I always thought was a good idea on how to do wonder weapons personally. And third it’s just does such a great job of introducing players to the mode, which is a massive improvement over BO4 which I feel made very few attempts to meaningfully reach out to a wider audience and stuck primarily to attempting to appeal to the core zombies player base from BO3. But it still has plenty of flaws.
1st the map just doesn’t have very much to do outside the creation of the wonder weapons and EE. It’s a relatively barron map where most of the content is dependent on the gameplay mechanics of the game itself working well and not making a truly unique or engaging experience outside of that. 2nd the story on the map just doesn’t really do much to catch the interest of most players, which is in large part due to a lack of primary playable crew and the fact that so much of the lore from this map is in the form of intel which can only be accessed and read through and analyzed in an out of game menu that most players won’t bother with. And 3rd the launch of this map and game sucked, it was extremely unstable and though somewhat understandable given the circumstances of the games development that still doesn’t leave a good taste in the mouth of a lot of people.
Overall I’d give the map like a 6.5 when trying to just judge the map without accounting for CW’S amazing gameplay mechanics, but when accounting for them I’d bump it up to about a 7.5 or an 8.
Kanj0Bazooie
My favourite map in Cold War, and a great way to begin the game with a bang. Does a lot right, not a lot wrong, and is a great map for beginning players! But, it does some things that aren’t so nice, which I’ll go over now.
This isn’t necessarily a complaint just for Die Maschine, but for Cold War as a whole. The simplification of some aspects of the mode is a definite negative for me. Operators just being strictly worse then the crews of old, environment’s taking up a more “normal” look, the game in general aiming to be as accessible as possible for newer players, while most of this is more personal taste then genuine issues it has, I still haven’t been able to look at it as a good thing, I won’t lie. Still, lot of people enjoy this iteration, and you always have to respect that. I wish there were more side EE’s. I think the only three there are besides the D.I.E upgrades are coffin dance, monster hand, and the max ammo, yeah. Kinda makes a lot of runs samey. The D.I.E’s, while fun, are very imbalanced. The Shockwave and Electrobolt are good, and the rest are sorta rendered obsolete for not being as good as those two. And lastly (this is just a personal one) those monkeys in the Dark Aether drove me mad in trying to figure out what they’re about. I don’t know if we found out why they were there to this day, shits nuts.
Now, on to pros! Nacht is recreated beautifully, spray paint all over it’s walls, it’s just looking really nice visually. And Nacht is only about a 5th of the total map! With the particle accelerator room, the outside areas, and the underground, there’s a lot of cool spots in this map! The Dark Aether only adds to the environment. Can agree, I love the giant purple jellyfish. Just a shame that this is the only map that really played into the Dark Aether’s aesthetic, I thought for sure swapping between the base world and the Dark Aether would be a staple feature. Ah well! With mantling and really fast movement on the table, traversal of the map is really smooth. And hey, there’s a handful of teleporters on the map to help you out too. The D.I.E is a very solid wonder weapon, with it’s 4 different variants being very simple to acquire and unlock. There’s loads of strategies you can incorporate here. Tons of camping spots (the roof of Nacht by the Wunderfizz has proven to be a popular one particularly), and a lot of places to train the Zombies up at. The Ray Gun is a top tier weapon again, hooray! The Megaton’s an alright boss enemy. Bit tanky for my tastes, and I wish I could just kill it as it’s splitting in two, but like all good boss zombies, it’s presence demands respect, and is always something you have to pay attention to. Plaguehounds are pretty good too, even if they’re hellhound reskins. And the last thing I’ll mention, Alone is a top 5 EE song, and you can’t change my mind. God Kevin did good in Cold War, shame he had so little to do.
There’s an argument that this is probably up there with Kino as the best launch map in the series if you’re looking at how well it can bring in new players. And even without considering that, it’s a damn fine map, and absolutely the highlight of Cold War for me. Like a lot of CW maps, though, I think the mechanics carry it a bit. 8/10, personally
Lunar_Worshipper
Is shit. But so is CW as a whole so that’s nothing new.
BigDong1142
I think it’s a solid 6. An “Okay” map.
EatthisB
8.5/10. This is one of my favorite maps, EE, and EE song. The wonder weapon is just okay, but being able to upgrade it with fire, electric and so on makes it a little better. Would love to be able to get the wonder weapon from firebase Z on die maschine.
ThuggerSosaYak
It’s a decent map but Cold War mechanics are just terrible so it ruins it
Mattie_1S1K
All above make amazing points I’d like to add I really think Cold War could of benefited from a main quest and a hardcore EE like TFR
Also 3arc gets all the credit for this mode but you can see the sledgehammer elements from the armour system and field upgrades lifted from WW2.
michael_memes_
I love how there’s only one armor stand, gives that area more value
Vrooother
7/10, First off I can’t really talk about CW as a whole without giving my opinion on the system. Definitely give my rating to the extent of CW as an isolated game rather than as a whole of zombies. I just didn’t mesh with anything within the gameplay, it seems that post-Bo4 zombies catered far more to Warzone/Casual players rather than the hardcore player and that’s completely fine but it fundamentally changed (which is a good thing, change is good but the execution just left so much to be desired) the core tenants of zombies in a way that ostracized a part of the community.
The load-outs, killstreaks, self-revives being bought, ammo being bought, scrap, and drops and tweaks to zombie health and behavior feel counter to the tenants of core zombies gameplay, being weak from the jump with a starting pistol with half the capacity in it having you to fend for yourself. It attributes itself to the game being infinitely easier are more trivial than past titles where you are a frail little human in a horde of savages trying to get at you. The engine also just didn’t mesh well with me, I’m not a huge fan of the new MW19 engine that games post-19 utilize but other than that those are most of my views on CW, not trying to knock it just giving my context on my rating/rankings. The game also feels more like X enemy type rather than killing an onslaught of pure zombies, there is no real crunch to killing a zombie like the way Bo3 mastered.
Now getting into the map, it flows extremely well. There is a nice sense of discovery especially when the power is out and you get to use a flashlight, the flow is very typical of a map-like Der Riese and serves itself well with the mechanics of CW. The boss zombies are fun, and the areas are rather interesting to camp and see where you can last at, very large places and a great amount of locations to hold out. The D.I.E variants is a tried and true concept, easily the weakest of the variant weapons but that’s not a bad thing because the gameplay variety trumps the design of the weapons however uninteresting.
For the negatives, the EE is miserably easy. I appreciate it being easier and very guided but it is so abundantly clear that it’s a starter EE for a new-gen ideology of EE being easy and accessible without any necessarily real difficulty. Along with this the story and the way it’s spoon-fed to you feels forced and excessive. It tries the Samantha route on Origins but it lacks any of the nuance, intrigue, and sheer awe of Samantha or a character like Dr. Groph or Monty being extravagant fixtures of the map and giving really vague and story-driven quotes. Now it’s just a generic military guy telling you the story as it unfolds because your character is a generic operator and the intel files you read outside of the game.
This also goes into an extremely distinct fixture of the atmosphere, charm, or life in CW as a whole being a husk of zombies’ former glory, there is no defining feature of Die, just being a facility and a DA mode that isn’t that interesting. That kind of ambiance was done significantly better in maps like Shangri-La and its twilight zone. It feels barren and bland, where maps like Origins, MOTD, Moon, Five, and SoE, are peak environmental and atmosphere-defining fixtures in zombies history
9 Comments
So this is interesting, and I feel the need to speak about Cold War itself to give some context on what I’ll say about this map later.
Cold War to me is, so far, the absolute peak of gameplay and mechanics in zombies. Everything from the movement to the gunplay to the progression all feels the best it ever has in any zombies title, and it is overall my second favorite zombies game tied with BO4. But the maps themselves are just sort of meh.
Die Maschine, imo is the second best Cold War map, and that’s mainly owing to a few smaller things. First aesthetics, I’m a sucker for the whole semi snowy dead vibe with the map and the Dark Aether is absolutely beautiful both in looks and function. Second the wonder weapons on the map are pretty fun and the only four variant ww set in the game, which I always thought was a good idea on how to do wonder weapons personally. And third it’s just does such a great job of introducing players to the mode, which is a massive improvement over BO4 which I feel made very few attempts to meaningfully reach out to a wider audience and stuck primarily to attempting to appeal to the core zombies player base from BO3. But it still has plenty of flaws.
1st the map just doesn’t have very much to do outside the creation of the wonder weapons and EE. It’s a relatively barron map where most of the content is dependent on the gameplay mechanics of the game itself working well and not making a truly unique or engaging experience outside of that. 2nd the story on the map just doesn’t really do much to catch the interest of most players, which is in large part due to a lack of primary playable crew and the fact that so much of the lore from this map is in the form of intel which can only be accessed and read through and analyzed in an out of game menu that most players won’t bother with. And 3rd the launch of this map and game sucked, it was extremely unstable and though somewhat understandable given the circumstances of the games development that still doesn’t leave a good taste in the mouth of a lot of people.
Overall I’d give the map like a 6.5 when trying to just judge the map without accounting for CW’S amazing gameplay mechanics, but when accounting for them I’d bump it up to about a 7.5 or an 8.
My favourite map in Cold War, and a great way to begin the game with a bang. Does a lot right, not a lot wrong, and is a great map for beginning players! But, it does some things that aren’t so nice, which I’ll go over now.
This isn’t necessarily a complaint just for Die Maschine, but for Cold War as a whole. The simplification of some aspects of the mode is a definite negative for me. Operators just being strictly worse then the crews of old, environment’s taking up a more “normal” look, the game in general aiming to be as accessible as possible for newer players, while most of this is more personal taste then genuine issues it has, I still haven’t been able to look at it as a good thing, I won’t lie. Still, lot of people enjoy this iteration, and you always have to respect that. I wish there were more side EE’s. I think the only three there are besides the D.I.E upgrades are coffin dance, monster hand, and the max ammo, yeah. Kinda makes a lot of runs samey. The D.I.E’s, while fun, are very imbalanced. The Shockwave and Electrobolt are good, and the rest are sorta rendered obsolete for not being as good as those two. And lastly (this is just a personal one) those monkeys in the Dark Aether drove me mad in trying to figure out what they’re about. I don’t know if we found out why they were there to this day, shits nuts.
Now, on to pros! Nacht is recreated beautifully, spray paint all over it’s walls, it’s just looking really nice visually. And Nacht is only about a 5th of the total map! With the particle accelerator room, the outside areas, and the underground, there’s a lot of cool spots in this map! The Dark Aether only adds to the environment. Can agree, I love the giant purple jellyfish. Just a shame that this is the only map that really played into the Dark Aether’s aesthetic, I thought for sure swapping between the base world and the Dark Aether would be a staple feature. Ah well! With mantling and really fast movement on the table, traversal of the map is really smooth. And hey, there’s a handful of teleporters on the map to help you out too. The D.I.E is a very solid wonder weapon, with it’s 4 different variants being very simple to acquire and unlock. There’s loads of strategies you can incorporate here. Tons of camping spots (the roof of Nacht by the Wunderfizz has proven to be a popular one particularly), and a lot of places to train the Zombies up at. The Ray Gun is a top tier weapon again, hooray! The Megaton’s an alright boss enemy. Bit tanky for my tastes, and I wish I could just kill it as it’s splitting in two, but like all good boss zombies, it’s presence demands respect, and is always something you have to pay attention to. Plaguehounds are pretty good too, even if they’re hellhound reskins. And the last thing I’ll mention, Alone is a top 5 EE song, and you can’t change my mind. God Kevin did good in Cold War, shame he had so little to do.
There’s an argument that this is probably up there with Kino as the best launch map in the series if you’re looking at how well it can bring in new players. And even without considering that, it’s a damn fine map, and absolutely the highlight of Cold War for me. Like a lot of CW maps, though, I think the mechanics carry it a bit. 8/10, personally
Is shit. But so is CW as a whole so that’s nothing new.
I think it’s a solid 6. An “Okay” map.
8.5/10. This is one of my favorite maps, EE, and EE song. The wonder weapon is just okay, but being able to upgrade it with fire, electric and so on makes it a little better. Would love to be able to get the wonder weapon from firebase Z on die maschine.
It’s a decent map but Cold War mechanics are just terrible so it ruins it
All above make amazing points I’d like to add I really think Cold War could of benefited from a main quest and a hardcore EE like TFR
Also 3arc gets all the credit for this mode but you can see the sledgehammer elements from the armour system and field upgrades lifted from WW2.
I love how there’s only one armor stand, gives that area more value
7/10, First off I can’t really talk about CW as a whole without giving my opinion on the system. Definitely give my rating to the extent of CW as an isolated game rather than as a whole of zombies. I just didn’t mesh with anything within the gameplay, it seems that post-Bo4 zombies catered far more to Warzone/Casual players rather than the hardcore player and that’s completely fine but it fundamentally changed (which is a good thing, change is good but the execution just left so much to be desired) the core tenants of zombies in a way that ostracized a part of the community.
The load-outs, killstreaks, self-revives being bought, ammo being bought, scrap, and drops and tweaks to zombie health and behavior feel counter to the tenants of core zombies gameplay, being weak from the jump with a starting pistol with half the capacity in it having you to fend for yourself. It attributes itself to the game being infinitely easier are more trivial than past titles where you are a frail little human in a horde of savages trying to get at you. The engine also just didn’t mesh well with me, I’m not a huge fan of the new MW19 engine that games post-19 utilize but other than that those are most of my views on CW, not trying to knock it just giving my context on my rating/rankings. The game also feels more like X enemy type rather than killing an onslaught of pure zombies, there is no real crunch to killing a zombie like the way Bo3 mastered.
Now getting into the map, it flows extremely well. There is a nice sense of discovery especially when the power is out and you get to use a flashlight, the flow is very typical of a map-like Der Riese and serves itself well with the mechanics of CW. The boss zombies are fun, and the areas are rather interesting to camp and see where you can last at, very large places and a great amount of locations to hold out. The D.I.E variants is a tried and true concept, easily the weakest of the variant weapons but that’s not a bad thing because the gameplay variety trumps the design of the weapons however uninteresting.
For the negatives, the EE is miserably easy. I appreciate it being easier and very guided but it is so abundantly clear that it’s a starter EE for a new-gen ideology of EE being easy and accessible without any necessarily real difficulty. Along with this the story and the way it’s spoon-fed to you feels forced and excessive. It tries the Samantha route on Origins but it lacks any of the nuance, intrigue, and sheer awe of Samantha or a character like Dr. Groph or Monty being extravagant fixtures of the map and giving really vague and story-driven quotes. Now it’s just a generic military guy telling you the story as it unfolds because your character is a generic operator and the intel files you read outside of the game.
This also goes into an extremely distinct fixture of the atmosphere, charm, or life in CW as a whole being a husk of zombies’ former glory, there is no defining feature of Die, just being a facility and a DA mode that isn’t that interesting. That kind of ambiance was done significantly better in maps like Shangri-La and its twilight zone. It feels barren and bland, where maps like Origins, MOTD, Moon, Five, and SoE, are peak environmental and atmosphere-defining fixtures in zombies history