The Old Wheel Map

One of the unique things about the Daily SPUF is our ability to write very detailed articles on very small, specific things. Sometimes multiple articles, if the very small, specific things become big enough. Today, I’m going to do that again, not for a Team Fortress 2 thing or a Warframe thing, but for a map in Gang Beasts.

The Wheel map has been around for a long time in Gang Beasts. It is a Ferris Wheel on a platform in the middle of an ocean. The wheel has 8 compartments and constantly spins round in one direction. The platform is covered in rickety wooden planks which collapse if you walk on them too much. They’ll also collapse if you fall onto them from a great height. Of course, falling off the platform will often leave you floating in the ocean, and in recent versions of Gang Beasts, you have a short amount of time to save yourself before you drown.

Now, this is similar to the old Wheels map I used to love. Similar, but nowhere near as good as the old map.

Firstly, the old map didn’t have burger-shaped carts. The current burger carts on the ferris wheel are much more slippery. There is more room inside the burgers but everyone starts off in separate burgers so you have to climb to reach each burger anyway. The slippery roofs though mean that just getting to each other is a pain. Heck, many games I’ve played on the Wheels map don’t really go anywhere because no one actually manages to get close enough to actually fight. That being said, the absolute best version of Wheel DID have the burgers, but the best version was better for a far different reason.

I’m not saying the burgers are dumb, they’re just kinda weird, almost too detailed to fit with the rest of the map.

More importantly though, the old map had some solid ground. The ground immediately at the bottom of the old ferris wheel used to be solid concrete. The wooden planks surrounded the concrete and were always just as rickety, but the concrete gave players an area to actually fight each other, and fight properly with punches and kicks and throws. Because currently, you can’t fight on the wooden planks at all.

Actually, you’ve never really been able to fight on the wooden planks. The best tactic I’ve found is to get people to chase after you and hope that other players fall into the water via the planks you’ve made wobbly by walking on them in the first place. But those planks give way so easily that you can end up in the water yourself. The planks are just too damn wobbly to be able to do anything.

It’s not like Trucks or Train though. In Trucks, you have the constant threat of the massive signs, but there’s still time to fight in between the sets of signs, and people with good timing (i.e. not me) can jump through the empty frames. There’s still space to fight as well. Not a lot of space, but space nonetheless. Wheel has none of that.

The absolute best thing about the old Wheel map though was that it was destructible. With the right grip and positioning, you could completely and utterly destroy the map, knocking all the little carts off the wheel and creating a huge mess, while also potentially spaghettifying yourself.

It was awesome, but now it’s gone.

Sure, the ability to completely destroy the map was never really intended, but it was awesome. And it’s not like there aren’t other destructible maps. Billboard and Girders are both insanely destructible, with Girders being closer to Wheel in terms of unplayability. You can’t go anywhere on Girders without the floor breaking beneath your feet.

So yeah, the old Wheel map was the best. Bring it back, please.