On an unusually sunny day in Seattle (a May heatwave I've been told), I was lucky enough to visit the Valve headquarters. If you ever get the chance to drop in on Valve HQ, the first thing you notice as you walk in the door is an industrial-looking layout featuring an abundance of crowbars and, of course, one giant valve in the middle of the reception area. During this visit, we were escorted into a room with two PCs and a huge television, and given the privilege of play testing two of the new Day of Defeat Source maps that will be released soon.

Anyone got a light?

The first thing noticed was that not only were they new maps, but it was a new beta graphics engine with some new features thanks to the influence that Half-Life 2: Episode One has had on the Source Engine. Two very noticeable additions are the Film Grain and Color Correction effects - adding an old-movie feeling to respawning and joining servers (which you may have seen in the Day of Defeat: Prelude to Victory movie recently available on Steam), something that helped immerse me in the game. When playing normally, of course, this feature is switched off, but I imagine it will be great for making movies and other mods, too.

The two maps we were lucky enough to play (dod_colmar and dod_jagd) were in essence completely new. Both were excellent designs - town-based maps with many routes: the Colmar pocket is a small area in France where the Third Division fought in World War 2, and Jagd is a map that many would remember from Day of Defeat - however this version had very few similarities to the map with the same name as Day of Defeat (I didn't actually notice anything the same!) - and the Day of Defeat team hinted that the map might have a name change before going live over Steam because of this.

The new maps took a little getting used to as the mapmakers have designed some of the best multi-route maps I have seen for a while. When I first joined each map I weaved in and out of buildings, finding some great MG and sniper positions (and a toilet or two) on some of the alternate routes, and soon found myself quite lost before I stepped back into the soup and was quickly shot by one of the Valve staff members in-game at the time. The new designs also featured open areas that need to be controlled to win the map, surrounded by sniper/MG spots and 90 degree corners for holding and ambushing the enemy. Most of these spots also had secondary routes allowing you to sneak up behind or beside your enemy (I can hear a certain Valve staff member reminding me to look behind me again). This should make both of them great maps for clan wars as you can mix up how to get to an objective easily, while finding many places to ambush the enemy.

Happy Birthday to you

Day of Defeat Source players would be used to capturing flags as an objective - once you own all the flags you have won the round - but with the two new maps comes a new style of gameplay. Both maps were slightly different but based on a similar theme: get the explosives and blow up the target. In the case of these maps the targets were tanks, anti-aircraft positions and transport vehicles, however for future maps these targets could be anything. Each map has at least one area to pick up explosives. This area wasn't designed to be subtle or difficult to find: on each map, there was a clearly visible character-high pile of crates, some containing explosives. All you need to do to pick them up is simply run over this area. You then have to get your explosives to the target area, shown on the map as a glowing yellow wireframe of the explosives. The explosives take 2 seconds to arm, by holding down the Use key. Once armed, it takes 20 seconds for the fuse to run out and the explosive to go off - and it is imperative that you guard your target during this time, to prevent the enemy from disarming the explosive (by holding their Use key over it). To destroy each target you must complete this twice. Anyone on a team who can set charges is able to pick up explosives and any one of the enemy's team can disarm the explosive.

Gameplay on each map was slightly different; dod_colmar was a 'push' map, the idea of which is to destroy two of the enemy's targets while the enemy tries to destroy two of yours. The explosives can be found in the middle of the map with both sides doing what they can to collect them and complete the mission. This creates a bottleneck in the middle of an open area of the map that both sides are fighting over. When both targets have been destroyed after two explosive charges have been detonated on each one, that team wins the round.

The map that is currently named dod_jagd has a slightly different set of objectives. Dod_jagd is a timed attack-and-defend map, the objectives for the Allies are to protect their targets while the Axis try to destroy them. The Axis have three targets they need to destroy on this map and once again you need to detonate two explosive charges on each one. The major difference between jagd and colmar is the timer. Jagd has a round timer and every time the Axis destroy a target, the round timer adds another 2 minutes of gameplay. This gives a shorter round time if the Allies are dominating - and motivation to the Axis to hurry up and get the target.

The new type of gameplay was fantastic, requiring teamwork to complete objectives and allowing anyone on the team to be Hero of the Day - bringing a whole new level to a game whose popularity is ever-increasing.