Reviews - gfbnews

** I reviewed this by each map separately and not by the total package **
Rating is just a arbitrary number.

Second Wind: Looks pretty. Awesome use of height. Poorly constructed puzzle at the Gargantua part. Was very confuse what to do here. I glitch this part by stacking 2 barrels at the corner of the rocks near the entrance. Doing this made 1 barrel float in mid-air so I can jump up and ride a brush upwards. I'm sure this was not the intent of this part. Needed better direction. At the final part when climbing up the pillar it creates a autosave every time you die. The autosave does nothing and just sits in a black loading screen, very annoying. You have to restart from the bottom. The fight here was not fun and killing flying aliens in tight areas is always annoying. I would say design is this maps best feature. 3/5

Labcoats Required: This suffers from the standard Half Life curse of scientist refusing to follow you. Luckily you can push them out of doorways to make them open the needed door. This played like a standard vanilla HL level. Nothing special and was very short. 2/5

Coil: Not fun. I felt like a rat trapped in a maze running through this building maze. Zero story and pointless. You can skip it. 1.5/5

Echo Transit: Felt look a well made Op4 map combine with HL2 aesthetics. Good custom voice work. I love the text to accompany the speech. Nice touch. Best gun fights of all the maps. Very challenging and lots of ammo / health scattered about. Some bugs like enemys inside cargo crates shooting non stop grenade launcher at you. Also the trip mines / bomb part was skippable by just closing the train door. Don't know if thats what you had to do or not. A little buggy at the end with the portal. Sometimes it just did nothing but I finally got to finish with a few restarts. This was my 2nd favorite of the bunch. 4/5

It's Safer Here: Tried to recreate a HL2 map in Goldsrc. Kinda worked, kinda didn't. The low res HL2 models look out of place for me. It just wasn't fun. Also the sky is missing. 2/5

Encamped: This one was interesting how Alien and grunts work together to hurt you. It says if you killed the aliens the grunts will turn on each other, I saw no evidence of that. Gameplay wise its standard press buttons to activate something kinda puzzles. Nothing interesting at all. The futuristic setting was cool and the textures were nice. Game crashes always after entering portal making the hub incomplete :( 2.5/5

Satellite Trouble: This one was the complete package. If felt like i was playing a Black Mesa mod map in HL1! It had great fights, environmental puzzles, and a interesting story. The setting was also great. The use of graphics and lighting made the map stand out from the rest. It felt like a source map. The last fights with the grunts at the end could of been better but it was still cool. I wanted more when it was over. Well done. 5/5

Scepter of Ra: This one was unique in terms of setting and the use of custom enemies (even though they are re-skins of HL enemies). Gameplay wise it wasn't interesting and the over use of enemies made it tedious. That darn snake took forever to kill. 2/5

Cyan: Clearly Doom 3 inspired this one was interesting in terms of Corridor style gameplay. Although nice use of lighting it was a bit dark at times. You can be confused to where to go next. The gameplay is still HL; escort scientist to open door, grab keycard, deactivate lasers ala Doom. The endless monster spawn at the end was a tad annoying. The ending was a bit "huh?". I wanted a little bit more because it was interesting. 3.5/5

cons:

too dark
too many headcrabs (annoying)
buggy (elevators making you fall thru or just killing you)
level geometry glitches
backtracking or just confusing level layout
use of low res textures
gameplay repetitive and drags on at times

pro:

nice designed levels (at the cost of fps)
cool use of objectives
story

decent mod but needs help. 6/10

it was fun until Xen. Low fps at that part, couldn't finish the game.

Bad pacing near the end. The parking lot/tunnel part was very tedious and I did not know what to do to advance. Also too many enemies scattered to make things difficult. If played wrong you can be stuck with no health. Play this on Normal-Easy or else you will not have a enjoyable time.