Reviews - TheUnbeholden

Game Review on Feb 29th, 2012

Bioshock had serious mouse issues, called mouse acceleration that could not be turned off, it took just over 3 months after the games release before they patched it... controls and UI are still 2 causes for concern.

They delivered on the UI... mostly.

The game lacked an inventory (it did have a weapons/plasmids screen, but that only served as a quick way to see what weapons and plasmids you have)... you could still carry all the weapons you find without having to discard one and each time you tried to pick up some food you would automatically scarf it down like a hobo.

It also lacked a screen to show you how much 'components' you've found.. you had to go to a friggin workstation just to see what you've found.
It also suffered from being to easy due to the vitachambers not requiring to be activated or having any penalty for being used. And lots of ammo, health, eve but barely any grenades. Either way it could have had more PC focus.

It did some things well, like allowing the introduction to Bioshock being player controlled rather than just being a long cinematic cutscene. Eventhough we don't get to do much during it, it still added so much to the game. Using gameplay instead of a cutscene is almost always a better choice and here its shows how well it can be done.

The game has other good things about it but all the rest it merely copy pasted from System Shock 2, without being nearly as scary.
The main character has the same role, to be a betrayal/plot twist later on but your only friend at first, hybrids are splicers, psionics are plasmids, and your melee weapon is still a wrench... The game could have been more original.
Innovation is something I value, hence the lower score I gave it.
Bioshock got a lot of praise for being fresh just by changing the setting to something unique. It takes more than that to make a great game.

The Big Daddy fights where quite fun and challenging though which are one of its saving graces.

Game Review on Feb 16th, 2012

We all want something innovative and new... its what breathes life into a otherwise soulless, copy-pasta vacume of video games. Sure a game can be beautiful with modern day hardware and a good engine, but what counts is the gameplay/story/characters and what creativity lies in it.

Innovative games should be the norm, but after the past few years are becoming the exception to the rule instead of the other way round.
Because of this, a innovative game, even if it doesn't work most true gamers will at least give the game credit for trying. This was true with Mirror's Edge. It may have missed the mark but it was different enough to warrant mention by just about everyone I know that played it.

Even Yahtzee (on the escapist) gave it a bit of honorable mention for just trying, and I honestly felt the same.

Its got style which gave it a vibrant, clean, futuristic look, parkour in first person, with some martial arts to disarm commando's and fire a gun for a little bit till it runs out of ammo which is only necessary in a few situations.
Its almost a parkour wet dream to see it in such a idealistic way in a video game, its also one of the few games where you can run along roof tops that tower over the urban landscape and be able to fall to your death and see it all before those last few seconds...

All it needed was to be longer and cause it probably won't get a expansion, a sequel is the next best thing.

Mod Review on Feb 1st, 2012

This mod has probably some of the best level design I've seen in any mod ever. Levels feel authentic, and fairly large without ever feeling empty. Its got unique music that suits Deus Ex, more retro weaponry and mechanical augs. Its got readables for added depth and a few branching storylines. Its also a tad harder than DX.
Its amazing how
Feels like what DX:HR should have been.

This mod has a number of improvements, like a inventory for corpses... shops sell weapons so money is actually important now.. Spybot is now item instead of a aug.
I think simplifying the skills is a good idea for the fact that Deus Ex is a longer game than this mod. So your not going get as much skill points. To get around that would have meant higher skill point awards which would have made you to powerful to quickly.

Consolidating swimming & environmental training, hacking/electronics, and demolitions/heavy weapons, while buffing existing skills like Mechanics (lockpicking) by improving your ability to upgrade personal bots.

But.. Medicine is the governing skill for melee weapons now...
I do like the idea of Medicine giving you a better understanding of a persons vital points, could be a interesting perk...
I don't agree with combining them considering it does take real skill to use a simple weapon like a baton effectively... or a deadly weapon like a Katana.
Close Combat training should have been added, with the added advantage of martial arts perks, like being able to disarm someone, throw them to ground, put them into submission holds, and effectively throw weapons like shurikens/throwing knives. But thats asking for to much out of a one man mod team.
No voice acting makes the mod feel like its missing something but its not a necessity, more like a luxury. Those cutscenes go to fast for me to read so it feels needed.

In the end I do feel that it could have been longer but I'm satisfied with what we got.

Mod Review on Jan 30th, 2012

This mod really surprises me, in a good way.

This mod has some nice textures that I think may have been gotten from Poke646, because the models of the corpses of civilians definitely are. What impresses me is the atmosphere, it looks and feels professional, new, and it challenges the mind. The puzzles require a logic, in fact the level design itself is top notch which is what draws me in the most. It makes you keep playing.

Some people may complain that there isn’t much combat, in fact some of the maps have no enemies, and most of the maps you are avoiding them.
But I think that would ruin the mod and go contrary to what its trying to do.
They are mostly zombies naturally, a small number of headcrabs, and about 3 scenes with army grunts that want to kill you for some reason eventhough you don’t look like a zombie.

My only criticism is the fact that you can’t climb the crane (instead theres one scene where the screen goes black, and then when it fades back in the crane starts moving so I don’t understand why the modder skipped the “Make ladder climbable and add button on the crane” part)… oh and the ending is a tad cliche and strange considering the army was trying to kill you a few moments ago.

Mod Review on Jan 27th, 2012 - 1 person agrees

I was very on the fence about this mod, while it has alot of things going for it, but there are a few problems.
Lets shower the praise first, the level design is great. New areas galore. I liked the locations, the larger open areas and the crawl in vents with a lighter... the cloaked assassins, the new weapons & new models for all the original guns except for the satchel.
And its a very long mod...
Even a new way to use healthkits and batteries, you can carry them and use them when you want to.
It has subtitles translated for 4 different languages.
I also liked the fact that enemy snipers are quite deadly.

The problems:
One of the new weapons (the electro minigun plain sucks, it needs more damage, a larger clipsize and why not just give it bullets for godsake... it would have been great!)

On the camera only level where you have to avoid them, espionage is a great idea that I've only seen once in a different HL mod but it was very short and easy, here its done well and lasts about 15 minutes, you have to move very carefully in the right path past cameras. If you screw up they spawns grunts, you can see that they spawn out of thin air though which is a lame move to be honest.

You have to fight the helicopters and I can't remember the last time I played a half-life game or mod where you are forced to fight them.

The difficulty is really high, for some reason the grunts have perfect reaction time that is godly and all weapons do beefed up damage, while I'm fine with that.. the problem is you take the increased damage (Headshots still don't kill) which totally throws the difficulty out of whack.
I had to play on easy which makes me feel ashamed.
HL is a great game, they should have kept the damage values the same instead of screwing things up.
and those new rocket grunts are really bullet resistant for some reason... -_-
For contrast the part in the tank was really easy.
Theres also one ridiculously difficult puzzle which requires random button pressing.

Mod Review on Jan 25th, 2012 - 1 person agrees

Very short but it has some good content, a half-life mod that uses opposing force weapons. Its got the SMG modified to hold 30 rounds and the desert eagle to hold 9. Its got some vent crawling, a intro text on the laptop, blast a wall go down some low lit tunnels, break wires to avoid a electrical security vent shaft, kill some hostile barneys armed with deagles.
While it was a very short demo it was fun while it lasted, and it had alot of potential from what I've seen.

Mod Review on Jan 25th, 2012

There are a few puzzles here like the rotating machinery, and some weird sequences like a world with ghosts (transparent aliens), it has probably one of the weirdest 'what if' scenario's I've seen with the storyline.
You and aliens are all friendly :D
It takes this concept and actually puts it to practical use, the aliens all help you (even the Gonarchs and Gargs which seem to have their brain's altered through some device as we see early on), they never attack the humans and instead get imprisoned but they all help you progress by breaking things down ect.
The level design was interesting in that it placed some Xen environments in between lab/industrial areas. And by industrial I mean having catwalks, large machinery which seem to categorize the mod as epic. All these areas look and feel different due to some interesting texture combinations.
It has pretty good length, about half an hour.
There was one new music track in that other world which was a nice touch to what would have been a drab level without some sort of ambiance.
And the ending was satisfying I think :)

Mod Review on Jan 24th, 2012 - 2 people don't

This is better than the other Halfquakes, the gameplay is similar requiring the user to jump/button hunt but it manages to do it in increasingly interesting ways. Theres still the trial and error death traps and some are unavoidable the first time but the key difference is you actually have to think as to how to solve them.
It takes all the good things from Amen, like cool music and humor.
And thankfully leaves behind the black and white nightmare.
It uses some custom textures like stone/wooden doors and metal spikes with a grey colour scheme that makes it look like a black and white film. I would say that the textures at times look like Quake, which is what this series should have been like from the beginning.
But the level design is actually good this time around, the labyrinth you go through feels cramped until you get to the puzzle areas which are only as big as they have to be.
Smaller levels than the first Half-quake which gives us that claustrophobic feeling, which along with death traps reminds me of a movie, the Cube.
Which was referenced in the first Halfquake I believe.

Play it for the challenge which will leave you satisfied, not just because you survived a hard journey... but because you did so due to figuring it all out.

Mod Review on Jan 24th, 2012 - 1 person agrees 3 people don't

Its got more style than the first Half-Quake, its got the black and white thing which I really haven’t seen much of before. It also wins bonus points for being more sadistic.
Its got some nice music though I would have preferred more of it.

But the gameplay is still as boring as ever.
…the gameplay, its essentially mindless jumping/button hunt puzzles. But this time around theres alot more running around in big environments which gets dull quickly when you play in such bland environments (stylish yes) but they are literally empty apart from the occasional phone booth that you choose whether to live or die, and the custom textures on walls. Oh and there are some crates in a few sections.
There is a bit of comedy but not my taste…

I liked the way the NPC’s look which fits the world, but the mod is far to empty and boring gameplay wise to possible consider playing unless you just want to be frustrated. There is challenge, but not on a intellectual level, just trial and error.

Mod Review on Jan 24th, 2012 - 2 people agree 3 people don't

This is the sort of map pack that leaves you disappointed and annoyed. Not in the sense that it was hard, apart from 3 parts I really didn’t have much trouble at all.
…and I’ve never really been good at these sort of things.
Its got nothing to do with Quake so you pretty much have to ignore what you think its referring to, a bit shameless to draw people in with its name… I’m tempted to downgrade it just for that but I won’t.
When you look at this mod objectively, you see
- some bland levels with some very simple combat (and not just because you only face 2 types of enemies),
- enemies that silently teleport into a room you just cleared
- bland voice acting, sounds like a few french mod developers who seem to be friends (probably because it is)… it put me off. What ever atmosphere it could have had is absent.
+ a single new texture (a weird symbol on everything)
+ a unique boss with a unique way to kill it, and liked the stuff it spouts to you while your running around :)
-+ Jumping puzzles, button hunts … I’m not into it, the blandness of the levels and mediocrity of doing these random things is hard to do without a atmosphere or music to keep you awake (apart from 1 or 2 ambiance tracks we get later on, which don’t last long)
and finally does not accomplish what the mod makers said it would. It wasn’t that hard.

It does however have color and enemies to gun down unlike the sequel Half-Quakes, but this isn’t going to win any brownie points for having that unless it can do it well.

PS- oh the grunts have a new texture, it does fit into the mod eventhough it looks plain.