Cache replaces Overpass in controversial map pool switch

Cache was already back, but now it’s BACK back.

Valve have announced a change to the active duty map pool with Overpass coming out of the pool and Cache coming back in for the rest of the year at least.

Cache is an old favourite of, well, anyone who played CS mostly. It’s a typical three lane map, it’s fast paced with a big open A site and a smaller, enclosed B site. It doesn’t really get more prototypical than that in terms of tactical FPS maps. You could put it in any game and it would make sense.

That makes it sound really generic, but there are of course nuances to it. Middle has quite a few gimmicks, with the boost for the Ts (or CTs who get very enterprising), the vent in towards B, the ledge that provides elevation and unique angles and much more in terms of the micro aspect.

At its core, though, it is a micro-heavy map. A lot of people will call that a ‘puggy’ map, and they’re not incorrect, but at pro level nothing is really that puggy any more. Mirage, for example, is deeply tactical at the top end, perhaps more so than some of the more complex maps. In some ways you have to be more tactical on the maps that are simpler in order to get an edge.

On that, it’s unusual that Cache is replacing Overpass rather than a map that it resembles more. Overpass is a big, sprawling map about incremental gains and more of a five-lane map than three-lane map, whereas Cache is more action-packed, faster and simpler. Both are great maps, but normally one would try to change a simple map for a simple map.

As it stands, the map pool is set to be somewhat one-sided. Nuke is the only map that would really be considered a complex map left; we were already somewhat short on tactical options in the pool anyway.

One can’t help but ponder if this is deliberate; Valve moved to a MR12 format to help with viewership, and seem to be angling for a faster-paced map pool too, and it would seem those things would go hand-in-hand. Faster, shorter games for the ‘modern audience’ as it were.

We, as oldheads, don’t really get the fascination - but we do love Cache and WILL be trying to recreate the NiKo Deagle ace (both down highway and on B) at every given opportunity.