Reviews - Skreemer

A lot of the nastier reviews have it wrong. It's not that the models suck. they're actually pretty cool and creative considering they were made for a 20th century gaming engine. It's not that the levels suck per se, either, though some definitely do. Like the levels with mazes. The last thing you ever want your player to think while playing your level, is that they don't know where to go next. THAT'S ALL A MAZE IS, NOT KNOWING WHERE YOU ARE. Put a maze in your level and I'm cheating my way through if I bother to continue at all.

Aside from the fact that the game clearly wasn't play tested much if at all, the big problem is that Halloween is rife with logic flaws. Why is it that when I shoot an animated statue of a woman, it taunts like a grunt from Black Mesa and then drops a submachine gun? What sense does that make? I guess it's supposed to be funny? . . . but it's not.

Clearly a lot of time and effort went into Halloween, and the mod has some neat ideas, but as of this writing it has a 7 rating on here, and really, it doesn't deserve it.

I like to play around with levels as much as play them, and if you like doing that, then fire up the cheats and mess around with it. If you're looking for a solid playing experience, though, look elsewhere.

When I fire up a new mod, the first thing I'm looking for is some reassurances. The job of every modder, early on, is to imbue the player with confidence that this is going to be a fun experience, and that they, the player, are in the hands of someone competent.

I got no such assurances from the makers of The Gate. First off, I found that this thing has two installers. Apparently you need an installer for the installer??? I skipped the first installer and used the second one, and the mod ran okay. So, once installed, the mod's intro (that is, intros, since there's two, apparently so the mod creator could credit himself twice) kept me sitting and waiting, and then sitting and waiting, and then sitting and waiting, for the action to start.

When the main character is called in to talk to "the general" about his mission, the model used for the general is a chain-smoking ****** who constantly feels herself up. Was this ineptitude? A bad joke? A bug? I don't know. But I know that at this point and several points beyond, The Gate's creators were reaching beyond their grasp.

The failings of The Gate would be easier to take if the production team had eased off on the hype. I was really expecting a lot, but what I got was the same bad guy with an MP44 over and over, and a lot of characters whose lips didn't move. And they were all packed into dark rooms with junk to obscure my vision. It's not fun to get wasted by enemies you have no hope of seeing.

Judging from the rating here on the MODDB, The Gate Project Director C J Beattie was far more confident in his abilities and far more in love with his creation than the rest of us. When are modders going to figure out that all the fancy stuff --voice acting (which isn't that good in The Gate, btw), cut scenes, new textures, etc, just don't make up for poor level design? The Gate Production Team wanted this thing to seem like a movie, but I wanted to have fun. It seems they were so busy trying to impress me that they forgot to entertain me.

With all the really fun, well-made Half Life mods out there, my advice is to give The Gate a miss.