Reviews - TheUnbeholden

Mod Review on Apr 22nd, 2013

This mod is a pretty amazing attempt at a survival zombie themed mod, it seems almost every engine spawns its own zombie based versions.
The visuals are so inspiring, you can tell the creator pulled every trick in the book to make this as engrossing as possible. It's like stepping into a new game. Way better than anything you'll find for UT2004 or FPS Creator.
It takes some notes from Silent Hill like melee combat being atrociously difficult, you have this wimpy pocket knife that takes maybe 10-15 slices to even get them off their feet but they can kill you in maybe 4-5 hits depending on how high you are above 100hp.
I did not find it all that scary, even with all the gore and rotting corpses & tense atmosphere. I find that after killing the first 2 the fear factor melts away almost completely like clockwork. I think its because to do zombie survival, you need a open world where its possible to get overrun bu several or even 20-30 zombies.. all these small encounters does not give you the sense of a impending doom.

+Visuals are so dirty and gritty, smoke clouds, leaves, crows, dead bodies and blood smeared. It looks and feels like a world gone to hell.
+Ammo is scarce so you have to aim true
+Some zombies use guns, unexpected and adds a bit more danger
+Quite long at just over 4 hours

-Zombie walking sounds are this squelching sound that really annoys me
-Melee combat is so useless you really shouldn't bother, tons of hits and you end up just sacrificing your precious health
-When you die you start from the beginning of the map, to call it hard is a bit of a understatement, with no difficulty levels expect to get frustrated.
-Story is well, I don't really like to much. You may get more out of it but I was underwhelmed after many hours of play.
-It's not really scary, except for 2 jump scares the mod never made me paranoid or nervous to play it. I just had to stick to using guns.

Game Review on Apr 11th, 2013 - 2 people agree 1 person doesn't

This game is very beautiful and richly detailed, a environment unique that I really haven't seen before. Voice acting is nice to.
Problem is your character although voiced this time around, he doesn't really interact with characters. Alot of the places while spectacularly beautiful don't contain nearly enough interesting stories. Also the whole alternate timeline cracks that you can peak through don't show characters so you don't know who's talking to whom. Thats not a improvement over audiotapes, its the same thing!
The gameplay improvements we where shown in videos are not here, Elizabeth's power to alter reality like make yourself a door or pull in a train to squash all the enemies is mysteriously gone in the released version. They Scaled back what she can do, completely making this otherwise unique and interesting concept pretty dull on execution. In fact even when you do move into alternate realities all there seems to be is the same posters, the same turrets and sky hooks, which is pretty damn unimaginative.

Bioshock infinite has made the gameplay a tad weaker with less depth to the abilities (ie just lots of ways to kill and no real utility stuff) but they more than made up for it by making it challenging, a 1999 difficulty setting. Shooting guns is what these games are about. Long game is good. Hard boss fight is good, that is the point, testing all the skills you've learned so far.
The game also carries over a issue we've seen before, the lack of choice. We don't really make any meaningful choices in fact we are barred from doing so when they would logically make sense.

A lot of things are not explained, like Vigors and handyman, but I don't care about that. Some non-sensical things happen like Elizabeth going right passed angry mobs that kill you onsight, eh oversight right there but I can forgive that. Overall I enjoyed the game but it really didn't connect with me philosophically or imagination wise.

Mod Review on Apr 11th, 2013

This is for those who wish a more SAS experience, as rules of engagnment are different and we have some new weapons only although their reload sound doesn't seem to work. Mainly its the silenced versions of the weapons that I really like & the more aggressive take on armed suspects.

Smoke grenades don't show up in singleplayer/custom mission mode.
It would also be nice to see those concussion grenades...

I also noticed that you lower your weapon when an enemy is putting their weapon down (and you don't when they are faking it!). This kind of psychic bs should be fixed. Instead the player should never lower their weapon unless the perp has already dropped it & raised their hands. The Browning with armor piercing rounds requires 2 headshots to take down the perps with Protac helmets, this should be fixed!

Another improvement is ammo satchels that we could take instead of a grenade. Some maps (the custom ones) don't have your team mates with you and you gotta take down 40+ guys on your own. It would really help if we could take more ammo occasionally. Theres also no nightvision/thermal vision which I'm pretty sure SAS should have rather than the gasmask all the time.

Mod Review on Apr 10th, 2013

My main issues with this is its awfully slow, no while the newer patches fix the issue of stamina running out all the time (with the inconvenience of there being no stamina bar to tell you), I still find things I hate like how slowly it takes to aim the revolver like your character is taking his time. The lack of any tags on servers so you don't know which one is running realism mode and thats the only mode I wanna play otherwise it takes multiple headshots to take down zombies which makes the rather limited ammo & slow melee swings all the more painful. This would on its own be a deal breaker for me, but I think that the best zombie games/mods are probably open world kind because it opens up all kinds of encounters and replayability. Survival is emphasized in these settings rather than the "speed" like in these kinds of maps, the slow gameplay kind of weakens the point of getting through the objectives fast.
Especially when you start running into fast moving zombies.

I rank this higher than most mods because it has alot of work done on the maps/weapons and I like the zombie/character models. It needs more characters though and its barely halfway there to being a potentially good mod for me to get into.

Mod Review on Apr 9th, 2013

I think these maps rank high on a factor I’ve been using as of late, ingenuity, most triple A titles keep feeding us the same crap we’ve seen before, anyone who plays it safe isn’t going to win good points from me. It uses non-linearity for its design allowing a few different entry points and some detours on your way to the finish line. Its level design can be average but I liked it for the most part. The difficulty ranks right up there with the hardest mods available, this can be good for those who like a challenge like me though for some if you die to much and have to reload the same part till you do it just right can seem to be to hard for its own good.
I honestly didn’t know there was a garg, I guess must have been the route I took. Worth playing IMO but I understand that its probably more like a Maybe? Because some might not like the challenge or are expecting some custom content.
It has a decent length to.

Mod Review on Mar 31st, 2013

Another short but sweet one from NoSick, this guy has a knack for level design. Its of a storage area (with some water processing for short time) and he somehow makes it feel new and interesting, even after so many mods for HL we've seen in the past. The difficulty is slightly above par and we get a variety of enemies. The only criticism would be the lack of weapons and rather short length, & no attempt at storyline. If you love to have a quick game when you got some time to kill this would be one of the ones to try out.

Mod Review on Mar 8th, 2013

No review provided

Mod Review on Mar 6th, 2013 - 1 person agrees

This mod does some things really well, firstly the pacing is quite good. The scares are paced out and rely more on sound, with a few instances of actual incoming monster. Although the level design isn't very memorable but very standardised for the most part, when we go deeper into a prison which is then water, we have a very standard moment here. Then we go into the steam control area and alchemy station. We do some standard run around the place stuff but with a twist. There is a hard puzzle, not the thinking kind but the trial and error one due to no symbols, manuals, numbers to tell you what each valve does.
It takes a considerable part of the CS to finish, about maybe half of the hour it takes to finish. We go back into a mansion and we climb up a castle but it doesn't do anything interesting with that and we have a forgettable ending.

Mod Review on Mar 4th, 2013

great voice and a light hearted humor perfectly fitting for Christmas, although the mod isn't to long it keeps you entertained, and is unique compared to all those other mods out there! The mod is not void of scares either, you'll get some of that in this baby. Plus its christmas, you can't be hating on christmas can you?

Mod Review on Mar 2nd, 2013

Its a good idea, time travel, worm tunnel... your former self leaving behind notes and in theory using it in order to get the player to incorporate tactics to outsmart enemies or avoid environmental dangers you normally would have died against. Except the problem is the scares don't happen, the enemies don't come, and not much really happens by the end.
The mod is of a decent length although the maker tried to artificially inflate the time by making a really difficult to find entrance in the room your not expecting.