Item description:

Here's Canals, a remake of the "Canals" multiplayer level from Gears of War. According to the Readme, this is NOT a Gears of War: Source mod or anything similar; it's a HL2DM level which simply uses the layout and design from it's GoW counterpart. He also says that this is not a full completion of the map, hence the lack of HDR and a few lighting glitches. (Still, I'm a bit confused; if he had time to make a full compile for screenshots, why not just release that?)

The map itself is solid, and while it fails to recreate the atmosphere from Gears of War, it's a faithful representation of the map. It's very well-made on a technical standpoint, but there are a few gripes. The item placement is a little sketchy, but then again, it's just as strange in the rest of the maps Valve made. Also, there are a few little spots in the map in which I get some graphical lag spikes, but it's nothing some optimization in the map can't take care of. And, lastly, I really feel this could've used a bit more custom content; nearly everything there I've seen in Half-Life 2 before.

But don't let these small annoyances discourage you. Overall, I'll give this thing a 9/10; design is solid, few glitches and bugs are present, and the complaints I listed aren't really that significant. A good addition to a custom map library, especially if you happen to be a Gears of War fan.