After the ESL (Electronic Sports League) promised the EU Counter-Strike players some new things for their gaming needs, they gave us a map to kick start it all off.
This map is in the form of de_blue from a well known *aAa* Vincent ‘Coucouoeuf’ Bailleul.

The ESL Team took the time to grab an interview with Coucouoeuf.

Can you introduce de_blue in a few sentences?
de_blue is a map that takes place in the premises of a fictive IT company, under the sun, with palm trees and well-watered grass outside, clean and very pretty designed offices… Indoor game sequences alternate between these two environments. Both bombsites are quite spacious and offer many game play opportunities. For example, there is that classical thick and central pillar on the A bombsite to turn around when you want to cover your bomb. Spots and meeting points in the map offer very long distance fights like close ones. Well, I am a fan of de_nuke game play you know… Everybody can enjoy himself on this map, those who wield the greedy green gun as people using automatic rifles. Speaking of backups, the two bombsites are linked to each other by a transverse that can be employed in several ways: there is a quite classic underground passage or you can choose straight corridors. There are a lot of trick jumps in this map, especially with the suspended lamps on which you can climb.
I first went to aAa in 2003 to develop the news writing activity and also to do some level design for Counter-Strike (with the release of the aAa maps packs). I have continued to make CS maps since, depending on my free time.

Do you think players want new maps?
Well I think that players, if you offer them the opportunity to change a bit from the common path, can discover and appreciate some news maps. Indeed, it is always better for a map to be known if it has an accreditation from an organization like ESL.
I just hope de_blue will be the European reply to all the non-official maps coming from the US. In Europe, we still do not have a map on counter-strike that can compete with CPL ones. While de_sunny found its own big audience on FFA servers (mainly French, German and even Chinese – do not ask me why) this map is not yet played during events. My aim, with de_blue, is to change that matter.

You can find the rest of the interview here

The Download to de_blue is here