Reviews - Rogaliusz

One of the few HL2 mods that do atmosphere very well. The puzzles were understandable and fun to solve, thanks to VScript implementation; however the level design could be done better, as I often got lost in the confined corridors of Black Mesa. Would love to see a longer mod similar to this one.

I liked Snowdrop Escape. Although it had complicated puzzles, and solving them was the majority of the game, it stood out as a Half-Life 2 mod thanks to it's huge addition of custom content (in fact, it's possible that no Valve made textures and models are used in both SDE and Swelter). SDE and Swelter build a pretty detailed world, where Swelter completely uses the universe to it's advantage. Take the very existence of Radiohim as an example. Although Swelter is not a sequel of SDE, it is mentioned in the environment of Swelter, most notably in the part of the game where the player and Roki move from a train towards Nexus by an abondoned metro tunnel. We see a wrecked Radiohim van. Later, we can see pictures of Radiohim itself in a file/folder. It's name contains the word "kgb" in it. Does that mean that KGB financed Radiohim facility? The tunnel is worth mentioning too, as Roki states: "This secret tunnel was built for the evacuation of state security staff in case of a nuclear war." This builds the world a lot, and this connects The Tunnel with my KGB theory.

Theories aside, the mapping is phenomenal. Everything is well detailed, and the 3D Skyboxes are humungous, making the game feel like it is semi-open world. It is completely different from every HL2 mod so far, due to it's addition of factions in the game.
Most important cons of the game are:
- grammatical errors in written and spoken english language (this doesn't hit me that much as a non-native speaker though)
- poor optimisation in some parts of the game (most notably The Steppes)
- the ending feels a bit rushed

Still, together with E:Z Uprising and Reasearch and Development this is one of the best mods ever made for Half-Life 2

absolutely fire, E:Z 2 is nothing compared to this

One of the best mods ever created for Half-Life 2. New mechanics are very intuitive and easy to learn. Story is reasonable but the lore has a much bigger potential and in my opinion should be expanded more and more. I like how this mod shows how humanity changed after HL2:EP2, most notably when one of the commanders says "Thanks Freeman, you're alive" like if Gordon was some sort of god, which is understandable.