Well, I just finished playing it. I'll have to have another run through to document all the bugs/improvements needed. However, I thought it wasn't too bad. There was no real point to the objectives, really. I think the level would really benefit from some sort of explanation as to why you are doing the things you are doing what you're doing. The first bit of the level is just turning off Covenant radio towers, but I liked the path you chose for getting the player down to the mid-level of the island. Btw, its a super combo of the Silent Cartographer and Death Island. For a first map, this is pretty good.
The weapons are great except for a few things. Firstly, the pistol is way too overpowered. It takes elite minors down in 2 shots to the head if you aim carefully. It should take three shots. Second, the SMG is underpowered. When I unload a third of the clip into the Grunt's upper torso and head, I expect it to die. The grunts all due from single shots to the lower body from a pistol. Why does it take so many rounds form the SMG?
Vehicles now. Well, they all seem a bit frail. The banshees go down from just 3 bursts of the Battle Rifle and half a clip of the Assault Rifle. 6 shots from the pistol will also bring one down easy. The wraith and spirit are great, although if you get caught on the ground without a heavy weapon, such as the rocket launcher, or a chaingun, you're screwed against a wraith. It makes me wonder why a Spartan Laser was not placed on the beach during the first main assault.
Now going back to unnecessary gameplay, the part where you are underground and find the spartan laser, there are just a bunch of stupid banshees flying around getting stuck on object and not shooting me. Well, I have no idea really why those were there. It would have been better if you put a bunch of elites and grunts there instead. Which reminds me, the player has no fall damage so they can't die when they fall. What is the point of this? I could have just jumped down to literally right onto the top of the overall objective instead of making my way through the enemy guard that you had set up. Only for the sake of testing the map did I actually go the way you intended people to go.
Now for atmosphere. It was gloomy as hell and was pretty boring to play in. It was cool at first, especially since you added that nightvision-esque visor mode, but the novelty wears away quickly. I realized that putting it on in was great for dark areas, but I could only see about 10 feet ahead of me. It was good enough for a close combat battle, but other than that it was useless. Even in combat it was hard to see the enemies do to the size of the noise, but I had no choice of using it since I'd be blind fighting those enemies in the black areas.
There are a lot of unused and unnecessary areas of the bsp that just make the world seem more bland and empty. It would be best to tighten these areas up so it doesn't feel like we're going on and on with mindless little battles for no reason. Sort of like how CMT's SPV2 expansions to A30 were so long drawn out and unnecessary, but yours wasn't that bad.
The biggest surprise to me when I played this was how aggressive the grunts were when they were awake. They made the Elites look like wusses in some encounters. Most of the minor grunts held their ground and the major grunts actually pursued me for a little while before I slaughtered their guts out. They didn't seem to be afraid. Did you do anything to the AI? Also, I rejoiced when you mentioned that the hunters would seem easy to kill. I thought you meant you didn't touch the hunters compared with other people out there making them unreal difficult to kill. Your hunters are numerous, but they are way too weak. Taking out 3 hunters in the span of 12 seconds when under fire? That's too quick.
Oh, and a tip: If you have a latest and most improved version of a map, post that one instead of the older ones. In this case, going through V1 and looking at it may find other improvements.
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