Reviews - Morbo512

Easily my favourite HW2 mod. Expands the unit roster - adds more diverse weaponry and capabilities to each ship, whilst staying true to the overall design, aesthetics and spirit of the original.

Listed as "Released". This is a lie.

Takes the vanilla game, fixes some of its immediately glaring issues (eg. More entry points in sieges, "speak to village elder/guildmaster") , and puts its mechanics to use in service of a generally more fleshed out and interesting world, and adds some really cool features of its own.

GMDX has great attention to detail with regards to small graphic and sound improvements, like different sounds for landing on different surfaces, or different debris for each different type of surface you shoot.
The AI improvements make each move require a bit more calculation if you wish to remain undetected, and better reflexes and supply management if you don't.

The additional weapons, ammo, functionalities and upgrades give you a lot more flexibility in how you deal with combat and stealth. This also extends to the skills, which have all been rebalanced to remain relevant, as well as the surrounding gameplay systems. Swimming is probably the best example, being replaced by athletics which ties into a stamina system; In addition to affecting your lung capacity and swimming speed, it also influences the new stamina system, dictating for how long you're able to run, climbing and attacking with melee weapons.
Environmental training is also worth taking now, especially as environmental hazards (Radiation, toxins, electric arcs) are much more threatening - things like Hazmat suits and Ballistic armour are changed in that they don't drain passively, but rather only when they're absorbing damage. The Env. training skill allows you to stack these items and improves their efficiency.
Each skill has perks you can spend "surplus" points on, giving them more depth.
Augs have also been rebalanced, my favourite probably being microfibral muscle giving you a choice between an active and a less effective but passive mode.
Even the flashlight can be upgraded, and with how much use it gets and the BE drain it has, it's actually worth it.

There's a whole lot more to talk about with regards to the improvements this mod makes to an already great game, but that's what the videos are there to explain.

There are a few detracting points however, but they're really minor on the scale of things:

First, one of the new weapons (The UMP) isn't introduced until Hong Kong - This means that you may have spent the upgrades and skill points up to that level on the Assault Rifle/Rifle skill without even realising there was an alternative. However, it's a moot point as its stats are all around worse or comparable, though it is considered a pistol rather than a rifle. If I'd known about it in advance, I probably could've saved quite a lot of skill points. It may have been worth having it use 10mm ammo, for one it simply makes more sense (7.62x51 simply isn't a pistol/SMG calibre) and for another it pretty much supplants the 10mm Pistol in effectiveness with the only real drawback being its inventory size - not an issue if you consider that it takes up the same amount of space as the AR when combined with the pistol.

Another one in regards to weapons, I'm not sure if it's due to engine limitations but I think the Sabot shotgun shells would be much more appropriate as a single slug instead of several with spread (As with Buckshot). I didn't find much use out them in combat, it's only particularly effective against the MJ12 elites. Having it as a slug means better practical accuracy, and could also lend them more utility in being able to exceed damage thresholds of the many doors that aren't met by anything other than explosives. The rubber bullets are awesome though, I love the fact that they're reusable at the expense of being fired from a gun you can't suppress.

Apparently there's a third pistol in the game, but I've yet to encounter it. The HDTP Stealth Pistol's model/textures still suck IMO.

Like I said though, they're minor points that can be overlooked. The only major issue I've had so far is a game-breaking (But avoidable if you take a different route) crash in the Versalife lab, but these things are to be expected in continually developed mods and will no doubt be fixed.

A++ for effort, execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Pros:
Atmosphere
Expanded character backgrounds, additional quests
Magazine system
New & remodelled weapons

Cons:
Artificial difficulty
Artificial difficulty
Artificial difficulty
Frequent crashes

Let me break it down, starting with the cons:

I'm a fan of challenge in FPS games, but this takes the cake, ***** on it and force-feeds it to you.
Aiming and recoil is half of my main complaint. I like weapon sway a lot, but SoC has some weird "drunken" view-panning, I don't know how to describe it. Basically after you stop moving the mouse, your turn will still have some momentum instead of stopping when you do. This would be fine by its self, but coupled with massively exaggerated recoil, it becomes frustrating. Speaking of said recoil, again, I'd be fine with this by its self, but once you factor in the ability of NPCs to make accurate follow-up shots it's once again extremely frustrating. Combat doesn't feel compelling because it's stacked against you so much.
Beyond that is weapon damage, NPC resistance to damage and your own resistance to damage - If you even survive long enough to do it, it's possible to put 3 rounds from an AKM into a bandit and yet they don't react to getting hit, while an M1911 is capable of one-shotting them. You, however, with the starting suit at least, are lucky if you survive a single shotgun pellet. Again, I'd be fine with this if NPCs reacted to being hit by any round that does significant damage to them, and if a given round (especially 7.62x39) isn't doing significant damage to a guy in a leather jacket, something's wrong.

Radiation simply drains health way too fast for my liking, especially when drunkenness lasts so long and doesn't do much to diminish it. These things are fortunately easy to modify to your own taste.

Anomalies - I'm torn on whether I like their invisibility. It makes the bolts actually necessary, but at the same time it restricts your movement to the point of tedium especially when they're randomly placed. I'm neutral on it, I can deal with it.

Crashes and bugs, well, it's STALKER.

For the pros:
The magazine system is probably my favourite feature of the mod - If you've not tried it, basically you can buy and find boxes of individual rounds, with which you must load individual magazines where appropriate (Certain weapons like shotguns and certain rifles load with loose rounds). However, once again the execution leaves something to be desired. It's overall a very clunky and tedious system and that's no doubt due in part to engine limitations, so I can let my complaints slide; those being that there's no easy indication of which rounds your loading, it's not possible to load different rounds into the same magazine (Eg. you have 15hp and 15ap 9x19mm rounds, you can only load two mags of 15 rather than 1 of 30), switching between which rounds you're loading doesn't seem to work and the process of emptying and loading magazines being relatively convoluted.

Atmosphere speaks for its self, I think it really builds on that of the original SoC rather than taking it a different direction. Very bleak, and many of the gameplay changes factor in.

You'll get a lot more side-quests to do with this mod, as well as being able to hear stories from most named NPCs, real nice touch.

vSoC's weapon models and animations are really dated - the ones used in this are a big step up in comparison.

Overall, when it cooperates it's very fun. Clearly had a lot of work put in to it, I just hope future versions address the issues I outlined.

Played Firearms Classic up til the initial release of FA 1.0. 1.0 was very flawed, I genuinely didn't enjoy it for very long, but 2.0 was just great. A few overpowered gear combos here and there, but it's ridiculously fun none the less, and as a bonus comes pretty close to the pace and feel of FA1, about as close as a source game could anyway. I hope this continues to get updated and it really needs more exposure.

My favourite goddamn game of all time.

Kept me playing this series since Faces of War. I'd love to see the Berlin Blockade and Korean War theatres expanded