Boy, what a ride, played it solo on heroic all the way to the end and beat captain jumpy pants and his mighty hammer using every last gun laying on the ground to do it. This was quite fun and the exact sort of thing I'd been looking for out of halo's modding scene... but it is lacking some important things that make it fall short of its true potential, namely:

This badly, BADLY needs a cityscape map, not a desert temple map like sandtrap. It'd compliment gameplay so much better while also being a superior setting. Picture some tall buildings to better conceal air vehicles from relentless barrage of ground fire while they're in the air, and a few select buildings could have simple interiors with a few upper floors to snipe from. You could have wide roads for a scarab to walk through, and skinny, cozy alleys to hide from one in or fortify a chokepoint with your heroes. Maybe have the rooftops be only accessible with the help of an air vehicle and have numerous sniper rifle spawns, but being that high up will trigger continuous banshee raids to harass you into taking cover while you try and snipe from far, far above. There's a LOT of great options to enhance gameplay, diversify viable playstyle options, and compliment the wave defense presentation far better than the current map does.

The desert ark map is sufficient, but its aesthetic, theme, layout, and even enemy a.i. path-finding leave a lot to be desired. The current map seems to suffer from a forked bottleneck effect, meaning there's only 2 feasible and effective playstyles that can last you all the way to the end, and you get naturally funneled into one or the other as you try to play as effectively as possible (if you're solo, at least), and these playstyles are:
1) Get your hands on a bulldog or ghost (ideally armored one) and spam your primary fire from a distance, boosting away to regen shields and holding still to pick off targets.
It's not realistic to use any other vehicle type you are actually offered even if it does substantially more damage, because the map has so much open space, so hiding or strategically placing your vehicle somewhere advantageous to how your vehicle functions is out of the question. Before long you are just getting shot from everywhere constantly. The only available tactic that works consistently with vehicle usage is blast away from afar, zoom away at top speed when enemy returns fire too much, regen shields, rinse and repeat. It got tedious fast when I discovered there was truly no better way to do vehicle combat in any given wave or round.
2) Sit in the temple interior and snipe from the entrances, then duck back in if things get too crazy and wait for the enemy a.i. to push you while you have a shotgun/melee weapon/heroes camping with you.

While both of these did have their moments of fun, I found myself wanting more, but nothing else was even remotely as viable and consistent, thus it throttled my fun-having options if I genuinely wanted to progress without failing. This forked bottleneck of 2 main playstyles is partly due to the map itself, and partly due to how the mission structures its progressing upgrades. Speaking of upgrades...

The reward system badly needs more diversification in its reward pools so rewards will actually remain useful for more than just early game. I was getting offered a shotgun, a no-weapon warthog, or 3 friendly grunts at round 5 wave 8 reward selection roster. There's tons of potential for lots of different cool playstyles but it's all held back a bit by the way the gamemode needlessly limits the player's ability to actually get stronger in a tangible or more satisfying way.

I also strongly recommend adding more than just additional heroes as an end-round permanent upgrade. Heroes are fantastic because they can be revived endlessly and soak up damage for you, and are extremely ideal if playing solo, but I think you should add several more permanent upgrades alongside heroes specifically to remedy other hindrances the gamemode imposes on the player too.

For example, one upgrade could replenish non-super-weapon ammunition when you walk over a flag you have placed down to indicate to your a.i. allies it is the defensive position. This would allow players to never run totally dry on ammo when boxed in, which would remedy the potential death sentence it would be in mid-to-lategame waves to run out elsewhere in the map in search of a few extra bullets that might not even be there, risking precious lives in the process.

Another upgrade could be a suit ability that you always start a round with instead of needing to find it somewhere on the ground or off of a body. This could allow lesser-skilled teams to get the invincibility suit mod and all have emergency single-use panic buttons at the ready at the start of every single wave if they are about to lose a life.

Another upgrade could be a specific vehicle unlock, except this vehicle is a permanent purchase that you can resummon (or is auto-resummoned for you to respawn it or refresh it's health) at the start of every wave. This would remedy the vehicle unfriendliness problem of the gamemode where unless you're in a very fast vehicle and just do the quickly-boring loop of speed away, regen shields and hp, come back up over a hill and hold left-click from a distance, it is rare for you to make good use of the vehicle before it blows up. I was repeatedly frustrated that I couldn't put my wraith to proper use because it simply could not evade all the danger it was pelted with by just 1/3 through the wave. Or as a better example, say the permanent vehicle unlock was a banshee. That would mean you have now unlocked access to the skies for the rest of the game, instead of just access to the skies for however long that particular banshee lasts (which typically is not long). Obviously such an unlock would come with its own risks, since excessive airborn vehicle use triggers squads of enemy banshees to spawn in for dog fights, but even so... if I could've sacrifice a hero for a repeatably summonable wraith or banshee, I would have, vehicles are fun but the map and gamemode don't let them shine properly.

Yet another upgrade could add a permanent multiplier to all vehicle health, and another could be a multiplier to all vehicle damage (vehicles that a player operates/has summoned in to be clear, so enemies won't benefit from it unless they steal your vehicle). This would further incentivize runs where you do a vehicle-centric playthrough and have a nice good old-fashioned halo power trip with a tank or warthog that can take a worse beating than any of your opponent's vehicles can if you dedicate all your end-round permanent upgrades to vehicle enhancements/unlocks.

Overall this is an utterly fantastic mod and I'm very excited to see it continue development. It is precisely the kind of experience I wanted in halo since I started playing the games for the first time a week ago after having heard how great the (bungie) games were for years and years.


I have some much smaller quick critiques to close on that I think are worth mentioning, such as:
1) Round 6 flying heretic spam (not sure if it was a bug or what but I killed like literally 15-20 of those guys before one finally died with a falling animation instead of just vanishing and FINALLY allowing me to end the wave).
2) The laser tank needs a damage buff so it can one-shot ghosts given how slow it takes to do charged shots
3) The shotgun has an auto-flashlight when held (might only be at night) which isn't necessary since the player already has a flashlight, and it's also weirdly blindingly bright white.
4) Respawn drop pod points need more careful consideration, I had a respawn where my drop pod landed directly in front of a turret currently being manned by enemy a.i. and essentially cheated me out of one of my lives.
5) Please for the love of God in heaven, either don't make banshees/hornets drop in with an a.i. pilot at all, or make said a.i. pilot immediately get out of a summoned vehicle as soon as they possibly can. I only got a banshee in my reward rosters twice the entire run, and both times the a.i. immediately took off when the banshee landed from the pelican, robbing me of the banshee I'd selected. First time the a.i. just got blown up very fast, second time, I literally had to teamkill the a.i. with perfect behind-shots to get them out of the banshee before they got it destroyed so I could at least fly it once.
6) I noticed certain grunts spawn with a mounted turret undeployed on their shoulder, and they can place it down and operate it. That's quite neat, but I think it should also be something players can do if you're able. Make one of the reward possibilities be a deployable mounted turret so players can fortify particular firing lines, that'd be extra fun for those who enjoy the Operation Hunky Dory Hunker Down aspect of wave defense.
7) I never saw the grizzly even once, is it just very rare because it's an incredibly powerful vehicle, or was it removed from the mod?
8) If there is a way to hijack a scarab and control it's firing, I never figured it out. You should teach the player that it's possible in some way, even if it's just a voice line before the scarab arrives and the music kicks in.