Played this with a handful of other people and found the map and mode pretty fun. Normally VSH has novelty with large maps, various bosses, and long wait times when you die early. I like Tinyrock's design being compact so rounds end sooner, but it also made discovering the map get stale quickly. After a couple rounds, I felt like I learned all the map has to offer compared to the wacky gigantic maps VSH was known for.
And unlike stock arena mode, your tactics are stagnant on a small map with the same single enemy. I think that's why the VSH audience gravitated towards bigger maps even if they were unbalanced, there was more depth to it than a compact deathmatch layout.
Is Tinyrock balanced? Yeah, I like the Killing Floor 2 level design that removes good camping corners. I don't love it though, Tinyrock felt solved after a few rounds, it was too balanced. I missed having cool camping spots to hunker down and find new places to try defending, I liked exploring the map to which Tinyrock is symmetrical and quickly learned. Maybe multiple stages to keep gameplay fresh could help? But right now, something is missing for me to enjoy this long term.
Hale as a new character looks and plays great. I like that the abilities were explained and always on screen. His viewmodel while impressive, seems to invert if you use cl_flipviewmodels 1 (I don't know if that can be fixed). I liked seeing him use custom taunts as well as recycled Soldier animations. I liked that Hale's running shook the ground, similar to the Left 4 Dead Tank so you are alerted when he's nearby.
And finally, the RED melee wall climb ability wasn't explained and some people were confused about it. If I didn't read the map description, I wouldn't have known about it. I liked that it made reaching higher areas a cinch though, as well as juking Hale by jumping down and climbing back up. A Mannpower grappling hook on say 12 second cooldown (if that's possible) I think would be a more understood ability rather than jittering up a wall on high ping servers.
Overall, I like what's going on here. To me, VSH still has more potential to reach for both as a vscript mode and this new-age proposed level design.
