Comments - thermal7

- the weirdness. Psychedelic nightmare is only one component of the weirdness of this mod. Throughout CtA you may get a feeling of uncanny valley; the maps use vanilla textures, models and displacements, yet something still feels quite off. While most mappers at least try to imitate the overall look and feel of the original HL2 experience, Leon throws all that out the window and does things his way, designing on a whim. The locations have no sense of realism and map transitions are abrupt and often make no sense (for example, you somehow ascent up the mountain even though the maps are mostly horizontal). This is likely the result of Leon following map design philosophies of "boomer shooter" mods which tend to put gameplay above realism and immersion.
- sound design. You can always trust Leon to put the most off-the-wall, random music tracks and sound effects ever. Like CoD and Max Payne 2 music, or random Overwatch announcements that make no sense. Also, it appears that Leon has absolutely no concept of soundscapes - everything you ever hear is done through "ambient_generic". Not a good choice for things like atmospheric sound (because it's not directional) or music (because it can overlay with other tracks). This is especially noticeable when you backtrack through areas which had ambient souns only to find that they're completely quiet.
- technical stuff. Let's be honest: this mod is old, buggy and held together by duct tape (this especially shows in stealth and nightmare sections). Visual bugs are plentiful and maps sometimes don't render properly. From the gameplay side, Leon's attempts at "pushing the envelope" tend to go sideways. The very idea of a stealth section in a game that's not coded for stealth is quite absurd. What's even more absurd is having to fight without a suit. You can't even switch weapons or see your health without a suit. Even you if power through the part where you're stripped of weapons and suit and make it to the nightmare section without turning on cheats, you will screwed over by the very last area of the nightmare. You're spawned in a circle of Combine and they gun you down, you're unarmed, and there's nothing you can do about it. You'll have to turn on god or notarget. Expect they're not supposed to shoot you at all. If you play the mod on older Source SDK version, the Combine will spawn with no ammo and platform will lower in the nick of time before they reload. Apparently, you can spawn Combine without ammo and Leon wanted to experiment with that. Unfortunately, this feature does not work in Steampipe version of Source SDK. CtA is one of the few mods where it's best to play it on the lower version of Source SDK to get a better experience.

Overall, this mod reflects Leon's general map design tendencies: whimsical, illogical and interesting; flawed, but peculiar. Personally I like playing and replaying these mods because they're so perfectly flawed. Leon "SPY-Maps" Brinkmann can even be considered an antithesis to Minerva's Adam Foster: while Adam aims to create maps with cinematography, polish, atmosphere and realism, Leon's maps are entirely game-y, spontaneous, and off-the-wall, yet they have just as much passion and soul put into them.

Of all the mixed bags in the Half-Life modding community, SPY-maps is the mixiest of them all (perhaps only Fakefactory can compete for this title). Leon's mods have a lot of weird design elements to them (a lot of intrusive, unskipable, unnecessary cutscenes, endless keycard quests, incomprehensible choices of music, countless hordes of Combine), and this mod shows best that even without custom textures Leon's maps are entirely unconventional compared to any other mapper.

This lack of regard for any rules that most mappers would follow dates all the way back to Leon's first HL2 ingenuously titled mod Leon-HL2, but CtA really gives you a look at how one guy can make insanely huge mods that look almost like weird "modert art"-esque exhibits which I find quite appealing and replayable despite their lack of reason or logic.

The problem with Leon's mods is that it's hard to call them objectively good, and every aspect of theirs is up for debate. Some of those aspects are:
- the length. On one hand, it can be said this mod (like all of Leon's mods), has too much filler, that it prioritizes quantity over quality, and I don't entirely disagree. Still, this mod gives that sense of monumental journey (especially for 2006, when many mods only consisted of a few chapters). It's even in the name: you traverse from Coastline to Atmosphere.
- the challenge. Half-Life 2 wasn't exactly known for its difficulty, so it makes sense that many first-time players who are used to regular HL difficulty are caught off guard by the mod's massive hordes of Combine, some even turn on cheats just to get through it. But for Leon, who's always been a "boomer shooter" kind of guy, this is probably normal. And it makes sense that Combine are throwing so much of their forces to stop Anti-Citizen One. Personally I never had problem with difficulty; the number of Combine is massive, but they're not too smart and there's usually enough ammo and health-kits/batteries.
- the gameplay. The gameplay loop of this mod (and all of Leon's mods in general) is pretty shallow: go forward, shoot Combine, go forward, shoot Combine, turn left, find key or press button, shoot Combine, go to locked passage/door/gate, take a car, shoot more Combine. This goes on for 5-8 hours. There's not much to spice up the shooting gallery, not even physics puzzles (in fact, I can count on one hand the number of times you're required to use the gravity gun in all of Leon's mods)
- the map design. The "look and feel" of Leon's maps is quite distinct, but not always in a good way. Even outdoor areas look narrow and claustrophobic (just compare the first map of Minerva Metastasis, which was released in 2005, with the first map of this mod), not to mention the corridors of the Combine space station. Speaking of Combine, none of the "Combine" areas even look Combine at all. There is no alien-ness to them, no bizarre shapes and edges, no catwalks suspended above bottomless chasms, no overwhelming sense of scale that leaves you feeling like a microbe crawling through the cold, metallic arteries of Combine buildings. That's the kind of feel you get when playing through the aforementioned Minerva Metastasis. The space station has the most bare-bones, dull-looking environments I've ever seen. A lot of people will feel discouraged from even trying to complete CtA because of this kind of level design.

Hey Leon, nice to see you're still active in HL2 community. I really do hope that you will someday release similar updates for your older mods like Coastline to Atmosphere and Strider Mountain because god knows they need some fixing for engine-related issues.

For such a half-baked mod, the first level was actually pretty cool, with its noirish, urban atmosphere. Honestly, it's a shame this mod never went beyond the demo. The soundtrack was also really good, too bad it's just tucked away in game files without ever playing in the game proper.

Great job on the remod, especially with the models and sounds, but I have a few criticisms (or better said, pet peeves).
1. The zombies still make the zombine sounds, which need to be deleted manually.
2. Combine "Nova Prospekt guards" shouldn't really have those Nova Prospekt signs on their backs since Nova Prospekt is nowhere to be seen.
3. Music replacements are kinda random and are hardly more appropriate than COD's score, made worse by using the same track to replace several different ones. And the tracks also cut off early for some reason.

You're doing so great, man. Your mod is such a great way to revisit Half Life

The Pantagruel boss battle was honestly more bark than bite. Sure, you're scared crabless when you first see that huge thing and begin emptying your RPG into it. But then, after that first impression wears off, you can see that long-jumping past the holes in ground and using proton cannons to quickly kill that thing makes the fight laughably easy.

The Portal Keeper boss battle was... a bit off. Firstly, he's basically a slightly bigger version of Voltigore (that big-*** cow-like thing of OP4) and that's a rather dissappointing display for someone who leads the Xen race, considering how big and bad Nihilanth was. Then there's the fact that the boss himself didn't even aim at you directly. Rather, he just spams ray attacks in random directions and as long as you remain hidden in a corner, these attacks won't reach you. The only dangers of the boss fight are alien controllers that can easily overwhelm from above, the fact that the boss fight takes place on a series of teeny tiny ledges that you have to jump in between to restock on ammo. And you're gonna a lot of it, since that turd ball is the worst bullet sponge I've ever seen. It's not even an NPC, just some func_env thing that's like these weird-*** Minecraft command block custom bosses.

The Showdown at the Courtyard that happens shortly after the final boss was a different story entirely, in a good way. This battle is a lot more frantic and energetic and revolves around moving a large, maneuver-inviting area with Gargs and Gonarchs spawning in huge numbers, military guys fighting on your side and being surprising helpful and badass The Violator track playing in the background. I think this fight should qualify as the final boss fight because of how cool it is.

I always thought longjump module was useless until I saw this mod. Darn, I did not realize that longjump manuevering would help me so much. In the original Xen, I would only use longjump for jumping over pits, here I would use longjump all the time because this mod perfectly accommodates its usage, resembling the tactics of TF2 Scout. In fact, longjump manuevering makes fights with Gonarchs and Gargs exceedingly easier and adds the much-needed mobility for these harsh battles.

Despite the grueling difficulty of the fights, there are some quiet moments where you can take a breath and just look at your gorgeous surroundings. The Heart of Hive chapter that follows after the vortigaunt/houndeye onslaught in the anti-gravity chamber gives a little inside look into the lives of Xenizens and a fairly easy parkour section and provides with a somber, melancholic drum'n'bass kicker - Skyscraper - to take the edge of the stress. Or as another example, The Slide, the chapter that goes after the Pantagruel boss battle, demostrates you a gigantic, bizzare train complex that captivates the player with its sheer wierdness.

Speaking of wierdness, a lot of mod's imagery is rather grotesque and mind-bending. For instance, the sky in the underground Colony. Why? No reason. It just looks cool and atmospheric. Or maybe that parkour section at The Heart of Hive, which is a bunch of transparent tubes floating somewhere in the void. Why's there even a void if it's an underground colony? Who knows? It just makes for a good display. But of course my favorite and the wierdest section in the mod is The Slide: industrial cyberpunk-looking tunnels with large trains that looks completely out of place in the Xen colony (supposedly, they are the Combine's, but don't quite look the part). These tunnels are so atmospherically powerful, with how vast and terrifying (just the size of those things, the ear-splitting, ground-shaking sound they make) those trains are, what they transport, who's driving these things, where they're going and why... And then, there's also these 2 parallel tram lines in the middle of nowhere. Just the black void, the contrasting red lights and trains that travel along the floating rails. It's like a H.R.Giger exhibit in a Half-Life mod and I love it, no matter how non-sensical it is.

In conclusion, this mod is very unique in its style and atmoshpere, but it has several pacing issues. One hardcore fight after another is not for everybody, and can potenially turn people off rather than on. Many casual players will confused and angered by its difficulty, but hardcore gamers and atmosphere enthusiasts like me will be delighted.
9/10

My review is a tad too big for the review section, so I'll post it here. Spoilers ahead...

When I first saw this mod, I expected it to be nothing more than a dull, grey corridor shooting gallery, mostly because I played a lot of jail-break games and mods at that time. In fact, I wasn't even planning to play it myself, instead I just watched the walkthrough. But when I first saw I overwhelmed with how much of a true treasure this mod actually is, despite its generic name.
Firstly, even though the mod is dubbed Prison, very little of it takes place in an actual prison. Rather, most of it is situated in an enormous Xen colony that is located deep underground below the prison. Sure, you walk around the jailhouse of about 30 minutes, but then a guard tells you that Xenizens (I'll call them like that to avoid using the redundant "Xen alien" term) have attacked the jailhouse because it's located on their turf, and naturally it is Freeman's civic duty to go kick alien *** again.

The plot is as simplistic as a Half-Life mod gets, nor does it really need one anyways. The atmosphere, on the other hand, is nothing short of astounding. Prison's Xen is a LOT more alive than the original one. You can literally feel this "alien civilization" vibe when you explore the various caverns and buildings of the Colony and observe the little details that make Reactor's Xen feels so... live-like.

There are things like signs in alien language, peculiar inhuman technology like that explosive proton ball cannon at the arena or that space distorting machine in the maze, little details that hint at the domestic life and culture of Xenizens, such as cantina where alien grunts are having their daily lunch or vortigaunts shepherding Mr. Friendlies, or when they're seen studying human weapons and mechanisms. Last but not least, there's the gladiator arena. Before the iconic battle, you get to see it from the safe distance. There, you can see bullsquids slaughtering and eating each other while several dozens of vortigaunts cheer on in the background. I just LOVE that little touch. Not only does show the player that Xenizens are not all work and no play, but also it makes perfect sense for such a deeply imperialistic civilization to indulge in equally imperialistic entertainment. All these little details give them so much life and makes them more than just targets for Freeman's rampage.

I also love how Reactor emphasizes the Doom-esque aspects of Xen; grotesque fleshy-looking environments, strangely shaped interiors and slightly maze-like design of the levels. They even have their own Icon of Sin, the Portal Keeper that inhabits a large tub of acid in a very bizzare, seemingly-bottomless corridor in the middle of a large void.

Let's be honest: the fights are poorly balanced and very taxing. On one occasion, you have to turn off the gravity... by shooting moving and hard-to-break tiny triangles while enduring an onslaught by infinitely respawning vortigaunts (whose attacks are hit-scan, unless you're in cover) and houndeyes (whose attacks can penetrate through any cover and get stronger if the numbers are larger). Funny enough, I did not actually realize that vorts and hounds can work together in such a perfect tandem. Gonarchs and Gargs are fought on a much more regular basis, and although both of them have much lesser health than their boss battle counterparts, they can still dish out a lot of punishment.

The Arena Battle is tough as nails, but also breathtakingly thrilling too. The second you set foot on that place, the vortigaunts start screaming in pure rage, the bulletproof glass dome being the only thing that stops them from toasting you on spot. Then, the Portal Keeper himself, in a distorted, demonic voice, expresses his emotions of disgust and wrath, eager to see the loathsome invader spill his blood on the land of Xen, to see the predator turn into prey. This entire scene reeks of Xenizens' unadultered hatred for Freeman, and I always get goosebumps when I get to that scene. After you defeat several waves of Xenizens, you are confronted with the final challenge of the arena battle, the explosive proton cannon. That thing fires off bouncy explosive energy balls that hurt you badly when you touch them, and they're also fast as hell and they richochet of the glass dome and it turns into something of a bullet-hell thing.

Damn, that stuff is good! You even got rid of those ugly cubemaps. I'm amazed at the amount of work you guys put into this.

Nice going bro, your mod looks real promising!

Well, sounds intriguing. Let’s hope that it won’t turn out like They Hunger Again.

Damn good you are. I hope soon enough we'll see more results.

Sounds interesting. Also it'd be lovely to have a couple of extra DMW maps with adjustable settings or more addon campaigns like Boiling or Aesir Project.