Reviews - tangentbell

There's some good fun to be had in this mod, and some highly impressive technical work done within a dated engine. However, it's not without its issues. The tacked on emotional story felt as if the developers knew they wanted to include some kind of deep plot, but when the time came to actually write it out, they didn't really know what to do. It failed do anything original or intriguing, let alone "beautiful and touching." This is made worse by the performances put on by the voice actors of Lee and the protagonist. Lee's microphone is audible for the entire game, and the player's voice is whiny and grating, complemented by his inability to say anything but unfitting exclamations and one-liners, making one wonder what the point of giving him a voice was in the first place. If the player were to be silent, or at least less expressive, I would have definitely had a much easier time connecting to the story and Lee as a character, without a wall of "funny man saying the funny thing" getting in the way. Instead I found myself rolling my eyes every time they opened their mouths. Not to say these actors are incapable of doing good work, but they weren't given much to work with in terms of writing. That said, Miles' actor did a great job, no complaints there. The intro in Mars City could also use some touching up. Removing the player's ability to run or jump for this segment was odd, maybe it was done to force the player to spend more time exploring, I don't know, but it got old fast. There are also several points in the game (especially during the hospital flashback) where the only way to progress is by finding a random prompt in the environment. While I was in the hospital section, I would check all the indistinguishable doors for the one that would let me continue, find that I couldn't interact with any of them, wait for Lee to stop talking, then check them all again only to see that one of them had received an open prompt out of nowhere. This is frustrating and a waste of time.
All in all, though, it was fine experience. I definitely had fun with the combat (thank you for fixing the shotgun!), but as for this compelling story you all wanted to tell? I just don't see it.

Minor nitpicks:
-Whenever you call Miles, her concept art appears on the monitor. The more cartoonish style it was drawn in clashes really hard with Doom 3's atmosphere and looks really weird. I suggest you either make an entire model for her, or don't show an image at all.
-The levels aren't really "nonlinear," they still have a set start and finish with little to no backtracking, all you really did was add more dead end hallways.

Amazing by mod standards, but not much to warrant a 10 dollar price tag.