Reviews - overwatchprivate

A few good setpieces and fun engagements but overall drawn out repetitive encounters and a story that leaves you constantly scratching your head.

What a nostalgia trip this was. This mod captured the feel of playing the opposing force within Black Mesa quite well. Its not without faults unfortunately. Overall it does a great job at what its trying to do but nothing is without issue. So lets get down to the details.

Lets start with what it does right. It captures the athmosphere of being in a source version of Black Mesa well. The ambient sound, the liveliness of the troopers, and the moving vehicles all add to this. Hearing some grunts listening to rock and roll as I walk out of the APC is a nice thing to hear and see. It gives the soldiers a feeling of humanity and shows that they are more then just mindless grunts. On the topic of grunts, the fact that my troops were so lively (more so then even the rebels in Half Life: Two) was an excellent choice, as they were both useful tactically and narratively. The revisit to old locations mostly redone was also a blast from the past. But I do have issues with this unfortunately.

Many of the assets did not blend well with eachothers, high poly soldiers against a model of an APC from the early 2000s did not look pleasant. I understand that it can be difficult to find reliable team members skilled in these areas, but this is still a fault nonetheless. The choice to give scientists weapons at many points was also a poor choice in my opinion. Scientists are portrayed to be cowardly and foolish. Very rarely do they even pick up a weapon and even then do not join guards in fighting. The inclusion of special zombie types is also a breach in canon, as such zombies as the poison zombie did not exist at this time and were a creation of the combine.

Well those are my major points. Overall its a solid mod and with the tools at the developer's disposal and I respect the quality of the content made here. I think this deserves an 8/10. Its great, but it has issues.

This mod is very unique in that it is one of the only mods pertaining to post black mesa incident and pre Half-Life 2 events. I have many good things to say about it but I'm not without my gripes. Lets start off on a good foot though. This mod has some very fun gunplay and combat sequences, trading overwatch soldiers for a hired mercenary force was a good choice of antagonists that fit the time of events very well and is not unrealistic in the Half-Life universe. Adding diffrent kinds of new and old Zen creatures was also a great gameplay and story tool for emphasizing that the world was in a bad way after the Black Mesa incident. The choice of music was also a very nice touch and the composer should be commended for his work as there is some quite memorable songs within the score. As I said before though the mod does have its issues. The companion who is with you throughout the game, John is rather annoying and not someone who I was by my side throughout the game. The key to having a good video game companion is creating a character that players like and can relate to, Alyx Vance or Barney Calhoun being good examples. Also for supposedly being in the Netherlands, many of the characters don't sound Dutch. The actors were decent but could put a Dutch accent on many of their lines. This isn't necessarily an issue but something I would have liked to see is having the protagonist and John try to run and escape from the invading Combine synths rather then leaving the mod on the cliff hanger of them pouring in. These are my thoughts on the games ups and downs.

This is one of the most polished beta/leak mods I have ever had the pleasure of playing. The Ship level is without any major bugs and the custom npcs such as the Stalkers are well balanced, providing a nice challenge but not making me feel as though its unfair. The addition of the E3 levels even for nothing more then novelty is a nice blast from the past that you get to traverse through yourself and in my opinion it greatly enhances this mod. Having a majority of the beta weapons in complete working order is also a positive mark this mod has. I would suggest though that if time and finding the right team members permits, to replace many of the models commonly used with higher detailed versions. I would also suggest this with textures, once again if the ability to arises. This mods lack of levels is also a negative in my view, seeing as the beta/leak versions of Half Life 2 has massive amounts of content to pull and obtain ideas and concepts from. Those are my major preferences and issues with this mod, and I understand that many of my issues can not be fixed with out a somewhat large mod team but I would still like the inform you of what I would like to expect from future versions of this.

These are only my personal thoughts of the mod and some people but disagree with them. For a being only in beta, this mod is great quality! It is very well paced, has logical map design, which is somewhat of a rarity in mods. The combat is for the most part tense, but not overly frustrating. The zombies are well balanced, exchanging faster movement speed for less health. The mod is very well paced, slowly building up combat and introducing the player into different elements of game-play, giving them time to familiarize themselves with the element before adding something else, and the story never feels rushed or cut short, leaving a satisfying ending that doesn't make the player feel cheated or cut out of their fun. The dialogue is rather high quality for a mod and the voice actors are clear in what they say and show the emotion and personality their characters should imbue. The music is for the most part spot on, fitting quite well with the location and events taking place. Nothing is perfect though and as such I do have some minor complaints. My first would be the new custom textures within the omnicorp complex. Most feel a bit too vibrant and colorful, not fitting with the moody and suspicious tone of the rest of the game. My second would be the zombie models. They could use a little variety in their faces as most I ran into seemed to be elderly people with a full beard. Though not as large an issue, their clothes could be changed to fit with their locations, zombies in omnicorp wearing some sort of suit or lab coat to show they work in the complex, zombies in the sewers and underground areas wearing construction gear, etc. The omnicorp thugs also could do with a change in face models as most had the bald Caucasian citizen model. These are all marginally minor complaints though and don't detract from the mod too horribly. These are more just issues to fix if you have extra time or wish to polish the mod to its maximum potential.

This is a severely underrated game in my opinion and should be better known, as it is one of the best vampire rpgs I know of. The visual and sound quality of the game is sub-par but those are some of the only things holding it back. It has a well thought out story and properly developed characters. The music fits the set tone very well. The game also offers a large amount of choice in the characters actions,from being able to play as multiple clans such as Malkavians or the Noseferatu, or deciding whether to sneak through or attack every enemy in site. Every action has a consequence though, good or bad, and that's what makes this game interesting. Things as simple as drinking enough of someones blood leading to their death can cause you to lose a potential blood source and violate the Masquerade. As I mentioned earlier though, this games plentiful issues primary revolve around its poor model and texture quality, as well as its awkward animations. Its sound file are also not exactly high quality. These do indeed detract from the immersion, make no mistake, but the game is still very fun regardless of them. There is also a small mod community that works to rectify these issues. Overall this is quite a fun game though and this is a must for people that enjoy rpgs and are interested by vampires and the legends surrounding them.

This is such a seamless blend between rts and fps and its balanced so well. This is a very well created mod. Most if not all of the negitives I can think of would be small mapping issuse such as bugs, overly small corridors and things of that nature. The postive far outweigh such negitives though. The rts perspective player quite a large amount of options to slow or stop the rebels. Being able to control anything from a metrocop to a mighty strider means the player has access a very nice variety of unit types. Its also a very enjoyable experiance for the rebel players as well. It feels as if Im playing a campaign level on Half-Life 2 but with more intelligent npcs that attack me dynamiclly, making the level diffrent each time. The music is also very fitting to the situation and I like that as the mission intensifys, so does the music. As I said earlier I can't think of any major negitives about this.