Wildfire achieves what it sets out to do remarkably well, creating a well-balanced and enjoyable environment for competitive 6-vs-6 Capture the Flag. With its unique mechanic of having your own team's flag being the capture zone, it definitely stands out from any other Capture the Flag map, and I applaud it for being able to pull off such a feat. Its layout leaves nothing to be desired for 6v6, having a good variety of combat areas and holding spots in it while not sacrificing the potential for flanking that a good Capture the Flag map needs to survive. I've particularly enjoyed playing around the spires with the flag on them for each team, however the mid area of the map shouldn't be neglected; it's an interesting combat space, and makes nice use of what modern mappers call "dish gameplay."
Herein lies the underlying issue with Wildfire though. Capture the Flag is not a viable gamemode for 6v6. And as such, Wildfire seriously falls by the wayside as a result. This has left the map in a rather unfortunate predicament, where its main audience doesn't want it, and its supplementary audience, 12v12, doesn't mesh well with the map at all. Put simply, Wildfire is too small 12v12, and too CTF for 6v6, and this makes it unfortunate to critique since the map no longer has any audience. I think for what it's trying to achieve, it's pretty good, but that bar of what it IS is, well... not very good. Capture the Flag just fractures teams way too much for 6v6.
Moving onto the detailing, I think it's good for its era. You can certainly tell that it's an older map from its visuals, but sort of in the way that Frontier still looks good nowadays; It's simple, but I like it. The environment it tries to portray, which is a Hydroelectric plant right next to a forest fire, is pretty well executed and I think very suitable for its target audience. This map really trims the fat of some unnecessary detail, although it still has the occasional "cringe sticky bush" that can lead to some unfortunate interactions. The ash particle is a really nice touch on the overall feel of the map, and the sundown lighting and skybox of sky_wildfire_01 really add to the illusion that the forest fire is slowly creeping towards you.
I think overall the map deserves applause for getting what's probably the second-best Comp CTF map after Turbine, but that's about it. The detailing is good, but not great, and there's some strange dark bits around the main doors. I will give this map a reluctant 5/10, it just doesn't really fit into TF2 anymore. Makes me sad.
