I'm not gonna deny that Max Hoberman is a smart guy and one of a handful of people out there who truly *get* Halo, but at the same time I'm not going to adopt him as one of my deities and just automatically agree with him and regurgitate everything he says as if it's gospel, which is what 95% of the cuckolds on this and any other video game forum do with whomever they choose as their overlord. I don't know what maps Certain Affinity made in Halo 3, but their track record is mixed IMO as far as map playability. They remade Derelict and Hang em High at the tail end of Halo 2's life cycle and, honestly, both maps bombed. Derelict was simple to begin with, but they removed everything distinctive about it and turned it into the very definition of a bland, lifeless, cookie cutter arena. Tombstone was just Hang em High on easy mode, since blue was now much more accessible, and the battles to hold/regain it didn't mean as much. Highlands in Reach was a lot of fun, probably their best work. Condemned was dumb fun in premium slayer but when teams played seriously it felll apart. The anniversary maps were meh, most of the alterations they made were either lateral moves or downgrades. They did seven original maps for Halo 4 and only 3 of them were halfway decent; Skyline, Perdition, and Outcast. Landfall is Condemned all over again but worse, Monolith plays like a mediocre community forge map, Daybreak stinks, and Vertigo is like a remake of Abandon. What I WILL say about Certain Affinity though, is that they have a [i]very[/i] good team of environment artists. The backdrops they created for the map packs they worked on, as well as H4 forge (dat Impact skybox!), are incredible, and completely outclass what Bungie and 343i did in those same games. They have a real talent for bringing these fictional places to life.