Temperate Beta

As I already explained in the Zip comment

LOL must be hard you only have 10 points of Health left!

If someone shot you in the gut with a shotgun would you be almost dead?

Hey!
realism <> fun. don't forget this!
well, I haven't played it yet.
gonna download it and make my own opinion.

Concerning the visuals/mood:

Decent visuals although it could've been done better. Nice setting but worked out somewhat blocky. Trees were too straight, models could be a very good solution here. Rocks also were too flat. Some flaws, edges of bushes not lining up with the ground, rocks with seemingly missing faces, all in all rough on the edge. Sill, nice setting, with an especial eye for ambience. The sounds are very well incorporated.

Concerning the technical side:

Trees weren't made entities and so splitted the floor into many faces. Grass was made with masked textures providing an interesting look, although it would've been better when this grass was non-solid (e.g. the player wades trough the high grass). It's something I have done once in a testmap but haven't seen incorporated in another map yet.
Performance is a problem here, r_speeds are ok at first, then jump to about 1000 (fine, but concerning the amount of detail I'd say it's too much). Second map had an average of 2000 wpoly's, wich is pretty bad in a combat-area. Mind vis-blocking techniques and face-reducing methods!
About the climbable leafs, make the func_ladder touch the ground. It's more irritating than puzzling to find that the ladder has to be jumped upon. Besides, jumping onto ladders from close boosts you away from them.

Concerning the gameplay:

Not that hard, just a glock-paradise. No real fun either, just precise aiming from far away, and later a bit of well-timed shotgun blasts. Nothing stunning, rather dumb usage of enemies in fact. No sign of tactics on the enemy's side, and getting killed almost instantaneously by a shotgun can get pretty frustrating after a while.
The first part missed action so would be a good part for some puzzling or more advanced jumping.

Personal opinion:

Nice setting, could definitely be well implemented into a storyline, but still rough on the edges, and some parts probably have to be redone for sake of performance. Combat needs attention too, as well as overall gameplay. Ambience however is well done. Technically also some things to improve on. After all, quite a nice attempt but still lacks certain things.

I hope that was not too harsh?

I agree with most of your opinions except for the glock paradise and the rocks that were missing faces. If you are running in software mode that will happen if there are too many polygons on ANY map. You only get two glock clips, anfind two more later on. over 120 in shotgun ammo, but that's because I didn't want the player to be able to use every weapon yet. I will take in many things that you said. However I have no idea how to make realistic trees or rocks. I can pretty much handle ground terrain, though. Pehaps you could help me out on the trees?

Also if you look closely in the swamp area, you ARE wading through high grass, about 20 units tall.

The grass, I see you're right. Sorry, my fault!
Mhh, I also noticed the bushes have some strange horizontal lines above them, this is due to the texture placement. Move up the texture a pixel or two, or make the func_illusionary a few units lower.

As for glocking paradise, it's true that after a while you'll have to enter the camp in order to get ammo and use the shotgun. Yet the first 6 or 7 soldiers I was able to glock pretty well. Personally I think it's not a fun combat tactique. All you do is kill dumb enemy's from a distance without real challenge. Perhaps that the soldiers on the towers could warn those in the camp as now they look very dumb (oh, half of the camp is dead... let's just keep standing here.. ;)). Now it's just precise shooting and caring for ammo, it could be made more challenging and action-packed, maybe have the player sneak into the base with a shotgun only, so he has to go close range and use silent tactics. Also turn down the shotgun damage a bit, as being killed instantly isn't real fun (for me). Unless you want it to be more realistic, but then at least provide some kevlar...

Trees and rocks, I'd say modeling is the way to go. The cliffs and such, there are some tutorials covering different techniques of creating them, search the Snarkpit for some nice ones.

Oh, and the missing rock faces... it wasn't a rock, it was the base of the cut-down tree...

Another thing I just thought of: the explosion radius is pretty large but the explosions themselves are fairly small. You might change them to bigger ones for a more convincing look.

These cars are pretty good made bytheway...

After I load custom game and try to play, it says "cannot find map 'jw_1'."