Reviews - TheMike

"Perfect" may be a strong word, but I really don't see how a horror game made in this graphics engine could have possibly been better. Seriously, if you just want to get the ever-loving **** scared out of you, this is as good as it gets! True, it doesn't quite work as a straight up action game (the enemies are too stupid to be a serious challenge, all of them rushing into your gunfire like hellish lemmings) but as a horror experience, this **** is absolutely GRUELING and completely brilliant.

I won't bother covering the story due to lack of space (also it's up there ^), but the gist of it is that you're alone in some unknown location and surrounded by horrible things on all sides. "Alone" is the key word; this game creates an oppressive feeling of loneliness throughout, absolutely crushing your spirits and creating a sense of helplessness that proves scarier than any of the game's effective though ultimately cheap "jump" moments.

Though Half-life is buried in there somewhere, the gameplay is mostly vintage survival/horror. All of the staples are here: the player character with clumsy aim, the sporadic save points, and of course, the grid-based inventory with no spatial logic whatsoever (yes, a shotgun takes up as much space as a small key, just go with it).

Updated play mechanics like quick slots and dual-wielding give it a modern edge, but it's mostly the love-it-or-hate-it style of the genre's glory days. It's intentionally clunky game design with the intention of taking you out of your comfort zone and forcing hard decisions on you at all times (what do you want more, your light source or your melee weapon?), and personally, I love it. Also, BOSS BATTLES, HELL YES! Man, I've missed these things!

Not much room left to discuss the graphics, but trust me, the mod team has done things with this engine that are truly stunning. It might not always run silky smooth, but that's a small price to pay for visuals this stellar. Basically: download this!

I'm seeing a lot of complaining about how this port doesn't include fancy new models and textures and essentially just adds ragdoll physics and better follow AI. Let me give you some history and explain why, in my opinion, that's all this port really needed!

HOE was the original proof-of-concept for the idea of "episodic gaming". It was released originally for HL1 in 6 parts, each unleashed upon the internet separately as they were completed. With each new release, we would get a new episode as well as improvements on the previously released ones. It was a fascinating system as we got to see the mod get finished step-by-step, watching it morph from a standard HL mod with some new resources to a true total conversion.

That said, there's some things that we who followed it from the very beginning feel a connection to that are going to be lost to gamers who just stumbled upon the finished product recently. For one, the game always had a hilarious self-referential sense of humor about its place-holder models. Though it might seem like childish racism now, putting a rice hat on a HL scientist and having him shout "HELLO ROUND EYE!" so he would pass as a Vietnamese villager was ******* hysterical for those who realized it was a jab at the developer's half-assed style.

In-jokes like this stayed around right up until the end of development giving the mod much of its personality; in other words, making the models more realistic and polishing things up for this port would have been missing the point entirely! I have to applaud the developer's of HOE:Source for staying true to the heart and soul of the original. The new scripted events, cutscenes, and enemy behavior tweaks added here all either keep with the mod's original sense of humor or end up being welcome additions.

My only nitpicks are the occasional scripted event breaking (only happened to me once) and the pistol being made WAY too powerful (seriously, that **** is a canon now). Otherwise, awesome work!