Reviews - GeorgGrech

Favourite mod

This is a great mod. One of the best HL mods probably of all time.

The mod is pretty lengthy, feeling almost like an expansion, but without feeling like it's dragging for extra playtime. From start to finish it feels like a solid experience.

The mod starts slow, but it does so in a great fashion. It doesn't give you weapons when you don't need them, with the goal being to solve puzzles and progress through the levels. The mod later picks up pace as you get more weapons and **** gets even more intense.

The mod itself is a thing of beauty. The maps are expertly done and detailed and don't feel confusing. The visuals are great, be it the detailed textures and the lighting. It fills the game with a heavy atmosphere. I'm unsure about the use of the ps2 models and HL2 gman but i guess they fit. What I really appreciate are the reworked weapon sounds, as I hated the original HD pack sounds.

I have to comment on the use of cut NPCs. In this mod it is done very well. Usually cut enemies are usually shoehorned into the game without much thought, and can make the game potentially unfun. This was definitely not the case in this mod. The cut enemies and NPCs are implemented in unique ways that make for some memorable moments.

Finally I get to the mod's plot and ending. This is where the game really blew my mind. There were moments of story where I was pretty much dumbfounded, as the game managed to link a bunch of the half-life plotline together while giving a new take on them. No mod I've ever played managed to do this.

However after all of this I can't give the mod a 10/10 due to some problems. The first and most critical: the sheer drop of performance. While the game was somewhat playable it went down to framerates i wasn't really liking, detracting from the experience. One other minor problem is the excessive headcrab spawn. While a headcrab in a vent is a staple in Half-Life, the headcrab spam was incredibly unfun , and this lasted throughout the whole game, in parts where I really wasn't in the mood for it.

While I appreciate realistic damage values, as they give a skill-based alternative to bullet sponges, I feel that this doesn't work too well with Half-Life.

Half-Life, 2 especially, has a lot of moments where you are left in the open and pitted against multiple enemies, with little to no cover. While this works for vanilla HL2 due to the low damage of weapons, this mod can make these encounters feel overwhelming, and in chapters like Water Hazard especially this feels downright unfair, as you have a multitude of enemies shooting at you and you can't shoot back.

Half-Life 2's supply system also doesn't work well with this, as while the supply boxes and health/energy stations are frequent enough for HL2, this mod doesn't give you enough health and suit power after battles, as HL2 doesn't expect you to haven taken that much damage at once.

Not all is bad however, and it does offer a challenging yet fair experience when the level design allows it, but this isn't always the case. So while this could work for a specifically designed HL2 mod or a further update that fixes levels and balancing, base HL2 isn't too enjoyable with this.

Great mod with good level design, great visuals and some memorable moments. Doesn't bring too much new to the table, it's your standard HL2 experience. Although I did feel that some of the encounters felt overwhelming and unfairly hard.

Overall, I say it's worth your time.

This mod is great, and I'm not usually one for puzzle games. This mod's puzzles are challenging but not at all frustrating. It managed to hit all the right notes.

Horrible. Don't play this. From start to finish I didn't find this mod in the least enjoyable. The mod looks like overall trash, from the weapons, to the npcs and to the environment. But let's not look at just graphics shall we? The mapping is horrendous, and the whole game had no sense of direction or motive. You were simply going through places without any real indication as to why you were there. There was even a whole puzzle section you could skip without any effort. The npcs are either weak as **** or hilariously buffed. The voice acting is also quite cringy, and some **** like the talking trashcan in the beginning, which was clearly meant for comedic purposes, was completely unnecessary and unfunny. The mod is also full of bugs from Medics throwing nothing at me and enemies staring at the wall. I found the mod to be getting worse as it progresses, with the final battle being the worst, with the combine soldiers targeting only me even though I had a rebel squad. Even the ending was broken, with nothing happening after the final battle. I wandered around for a while before looking at a playthrough to see that there should have been an ending there. And from what I saw, the ending made no sense whatsoever.

This might just be the worst mod I have ever played

The gameplay really isn't the best, and it gets even worse when Kate is introduced as rather than being a helpful companion she just feels like a guard you have to drag along for most of the game. This is made worse due Half-Life's bad NPC pathfinding.