Alright well my opinion so far on the refresh is mostly positive in terms of trying most of the modes out, although there's a couple of stinkers.
Cannonball evasion is decent, although I think 5 rounds is a little extensive for something like this. 3 rounds maximum I'd say.
Ground smashers is a fun twist on the old custom mode, termites from what I gathered and played, a fun mode that I think fits it's criteria :)
Night of the mantis VS is also a lot of fun, played the original version of this a bunch and I was pretty damn impressed by some of the scripting that was going on here in forge. Definitely a cool mode to see here.
Pig of the hill is also a relatively good mode, not sure If I'm a fan of the weapon changes here, where it was default weapons and power weapons on the map in a beta video I saw, now it's been changed to only light rifles, vorpal talons and tons of nades (no weapons on the map either). It's still decently fun but compared to what I saw in this beta video it's a slight step backwards.
Pyramoid soccer is honestly a stinker in my opinion, it feels really clunky and kind of luck based what happens due to the vehicle physics, the idea is funny, but man the execution makes it boring and kind of annoying to play in my book.
I sadly can't say much about Shift slayer since I've never gotten it before, but I'd like to try this one out, this is one of the modes that's gotten my attention and everyone seems to like it, so even though I don't have a say in the word technically, I'd say this should be a keeper.
Stay off my lawn is HORRIBLE, not gonna pull any punches on this one and just say it right off the bat, once again, good idea but my god the execution is broken, survivors can survive by crouching the whole time, or at least sometimes? Because I've seen it not work for some people including myself, it's a very odd and annoying mode to sit through.
Wizard duel is also quite the annoying mode, a funny way of representing Harry potter type's of battles by mixing a sword and gavel together through the default weapon pickups, but it sort of falls into that problem mantis breakout has where if your teammates aren't good or you have none, you're pretty much destined to lose. I do think it's a bit worse here though.
X-ball is a REALLY clever take on paintball that I can dig, I like the way the weapon glitch was made here with AR's shooting plasma pistol bullets, and how it feels like actual paintball, really cool mode and a good way to upgrade paintball without removing the original mode.
Game night is a funny way of having NES duck hunt in the game, but it's only really fun when you're the infected shooting the "ducks". It's pretty boring besides that.
Bug Zapper is a mode I can't really talk about since I haven't played it but a wasp only mode sounds like fun, if that's what this is?
Even though I never got this mode, Duck run is just basically the halo 3 custom game version of Game night and has the same sort of problem, the infected gets the only real fun, I'd say it works better here since people can do a bit more than just get shot up in the sky constantly, and you have more movement but I still don't think this is super amazing. Works for an action sack mode though despite this.
Sadly can't say anything about the updated GPound arena map other than from the screenshot it looks nice, but the other riftball map is decent, looks cool but man is it awkward to control through compared to the original one.
Most of the other modes that are still here I'm fine with although I would've liked to see battle golf stay in.
Might've gone a bit over board writing all this but hey, it's what I think of the refresh so far, I wish some rotational playlist modes got thrown in here to save up some rotational playlist space but hey, the original modes that are here are for the most part, pretty nice and fit in nicely to the playlist.
