I would say that it's a very good map, and great for being a first release. It did have some shortcomings imo. The vent leading to the first keycard is too hard to see/enter. I found the nearby secret easily before getting in the vent.
I think the same and the same thing happened for me for the vent/secret.
The room with the teleporters seemed like a cheap way to connect the different areas. Exploring was fun, but the battles were nothing special. I did enjoy the gameplay in the Orchid area, though, and also the overgrown look of that area.
I agree that the fights were nothing special. Not bad, but nothing special.
Also exploring was the best part of the map. I especially liked how moody the introduction of the place was.
Discovering a new area was always really cool.
However like I said the teleporters didn't bother me and I'll explain why: you shouldn't take them as actual teleporters but rather as devices representating a time ellipsis each time you go through them.
Basically it's as if each time you take a teleporter, it's a new episode. That's something that you should be able to understand even if you haven't seen the show or anything just because of how the weather completely change after the first teleporter.
However maybe you didn't realize/know that the entire thing is supposed to take place on the same island. Maybe you thought you were being sent in a far off place with no connection whatsoever.
The only other way he could have carried that meaning of time ellipsis would have been making several smaller maps and make a short "episode" but it would have been stupid since every map would be roughly 3mins long.
I think the use of teleporters in this case is a smart storytelling device for a Duke3D map; which is kind of ironic considering that the map has very little story content (but storytelling and content of the story are two different things).
Perhaps the mapper could have made both story content and its telling better by having bits of text for the player to find by himself and read from times to times (like on computer screen, pieces of paper, maybe even written on walls, etc).
It could also have helped people understand what's going on, and that each bit doesn't necessarly happen right after the other, and how exactly the different places are connected.
In other words if you don't know the show you're missing part of the interest of the map. Having bits of text here and there could have fixed this problem.
I usually don't focus on the story in a Duke map, but here it seems to matter since the aim of the mapper seems to have been to make a short summary/retelling of some of the things that happen in the show.
The ending made no sense to me (I haven't seen the show, I don't know if that matters). I looked for buttons for a while before noticing that part of the ceiling was made of sprites, so I blew it up with a pipebomb, then fell down to the nuke button area. Didn't feel like a good ending to me.
There's a crack on the computer monitor.
I didn't have trouble finding that crack either though.
