Reviews - TriNecatoR

I really don't understand this mod. If this is a demo, it is not impressive, but OK for demo. If this is a final release... It is disappointing. While showing some potential and good stuff, it contains only 4 maps. Canals, despite being somewhat rough, probably, is the best of them. Cremator is good enough, but too monotonous and complicated, like a labyrinth. The other two are just slightly fixed recompiles, already seen in Leaked build. It is not actually a mod, rather just a mappack. Therefore, I can't rate this higher.

Pros:

1. Design. Well, it is not something special, but I like it. IMO, canals is the best level of the mod.

2. Sound. This mod has pretty good work on ambients. Unfortunately, weapons are a bit too loud.

3. Models. On canals just from the start we can see some cut npcs and weapons. It is really good to see them and even have some fightings. Though, I must admit, they still do need some additional polishing.

Cons:

1. Gameplay. From the very beginning of canals we're taking warning about HUD missing and tough hadrcorness of this mod. Seeing this, I thought: "LOL OK", and then choosed "easy" skill in game options. At first, there wasn't anything extrahard, but then I met headcrabs. They kill player instantly even on easy skill! It's just like Half-Life Alpha. You can't hear the enemy, and when you finally hear the scream, you're dead in a moment! With the same result the author could, say, make some deadly lightnings randomly strike. In both cases you could neither predict, neither prevent the danger. This is totally wrong.
I understand, the author wants to make his mod somewhat interesting and challenging. But these are not the right ways.
Yes, newer games tend to omit HUD. But they usually provide some other ways to display vital information (e. g., see Dead Space). IRL you know, when you're sick or feel bad. In Cremation there is no way to know, are you near-dead, or full of strength. Also, it's just contrary to Half-Life story, because Gordon has the suit, which indicates all the necessary information.
Well, you can make some instantly killing monsters, but you should provide something instead. Right now it's just unfair. If you could, at least, hear headcrab's movement (I really don't understand, how they could run in water and make no noise), and if they not magically appear behind you, the gameplay will be fair enough.
Also, if you care about realism, it requires not only player be easily killed, but his enemies too (at least, most of them).
On cremator we have another message which advises us to move "stealthy". All these messages are very casual, you should not tell to players, what they should expect or do. They should figure that by themselves. If players take wrong decision, then you should think and rework something, until players act right.

2. Perfomance and bugginess. It is playable on my pretty old PC, but sometimes fps drops significantly without obvious reason. When I open console in such places, it is filled with a lot of error messages. I suggest you to ensure, there is no any warnings and errors you're able to fix, before releasing anything.
Also, my game got crashed once on cremator.

3. Color-correction overdose. CC is an interesting feature, I like to play with it too, but it requires some care. It is too easy to get unrealistic and strange picture. Most of the maps looks good, but e3_c17_01 looks so strange and irreal... I am not an advocate of total realism, but in this case it's just too much for me, I dislike it. This map already looks good enough for me in its original form. I want rather too see its continuation, expansion, than another boring remake with changed lighting and colors.

4. Level-desing issues. On canals I easily managed to leave area intended for player, and was able to see level borders and nodraw areas. Well, for someone this could be even a plus (there are some neat areas out there), but not for the author, because it makes player path unpredictable. In this case I easily could to shortcut much of the level.
Also, almost on each map there are brace ladders. Player could not interact with them, and this is really strange and, once again, unrealistic.

5. Size. This mod is huge. There is about 1.5 GB of data! And it contains only a couple of maps with short playtime. There are some leftovers. Why do we need this "media" folder with 200 MB of videos from Ep1? A lot of empty folders, copies and obviously unused stuff... Probably, there are unused textures, models and sounds too. When you packaging your work for release, be sure, you neither forgot something, nor put something players will never need.

P. S. Also, I hate this stunstick. If you're going to fix it, do all the work required to make it cool, and only then put into mod. If not, just give us the crowbar, we'll be completely happy with it.
P. P. S. Industrial is just a recompile, even not properly fixed.

It is really good to see some release of this mod. Well, this work is still very far from a complete mod, but how many "old story" based mods were cancelled without any significant content produced? There we can see a lot of work and effort put into the mod, and, though, it has some minor technical issues, nevertheless, it is something solid and playable. Especially impressive is the fact, that this is moslty a work by only one person. Obviously, this work based on the leaked content (like all other "old story" mods out there), but everyone, who ever saw or worked with this stuff, know, how much of work need to be put into, before you get something working, playable and good-looking.

What's good.

1. The visuals. The design of this mod is just impressive. It was already known by seeing those numerous screenshots of work-in-progress, but now we can "touch" it and see in every detail, in "live".
And still, playing the mod gave me some surprises. Some places really look like continuation of Viktor Antonov's concepts! Probably, I spent hours on these maps by just looking all these details.
Also, the mod includes two version of "industrial": ch01_industrial (the "official" one) and rej_industrial (the "rejected" one). It is interesting to compare, how the level was changed during development, and shows to us, how uneasy could be level-designer's decision. So much were cut... that's pity, although the final version, indeed, much more solid in gameplay sense, and has the great visuals too.

2. Perfomance. I have 8 years old middle-budget PC. And, though I played at almost highest settings, I can't complain about low framerate or lags. The mod runs pretty smoothly.

3. The gameplay. It is not just a collection of some redesigned "beta" maps. We not just walking around, at least, not the most of the time. Sometimes, one should put some effort to find his path. Sometimes, we need to interact with friendly NPC, and there are even some enemies to fight. Although, in this chapter we almost have no weapons, fightings are not tough or unfair.

4. The sound. There is a good and unique ambient atmosphere on each map.

5. It's alive! Some players (including me) just love to see pre-incidental levels, in which we can see the life before something goes wrong and player enters into fast-pacing action (like the first maps of Half-Life and Half-Life 2). Chapter 1 of Dark Interval is completely "pre-incidental". Nevertheless, there is some action too, what differs it from HL and HL2.

What's bad.

1. Bad playtime-to-size ratio. Although, the mod takes a lot of space, it could take less than an hour or even half an hour (if you already know where to go and how to act) to complete. It is actually not a surprise, because the mod is highly-detailed and has much of content. And there are only a few maps. I think, when there will be much more levels done, this ratio will become much better.

2. There is almost no new monsters or weapons. Because this is an "old story" mod, our highest expectation are concerned about cut NPCs and weaponry. Most likely, their time still has to come. In the end, only one, introductionary chapter, was done by now, so, we could expect to see new stuff some time later.

3. Some level parts tend to disappear. Most of the time you probably won't notice that, but if you examine the level carefully, eventually you will see it. At first, I thought, it is perfomance problem of my old hardware, but after talking with the developer, I understood, that his levels just reached some limitations of Source engine.
Anyway, I don't think this is a critical thing, at least, it does not affect gameplay, and, as I have said before, most of the time you even won't notice it.

4. No voice act. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible for one-man team to create full game from scratch with all new contents, characters and voices. One still can make the game by his own, but something should be sacrificed. Voice act is the hardest part, because voices should be unique to make no confusion for players.
And this is when the community should come for help. I hope, eventually Cvoxalury will find some good-sounding volunteers for his mod.
Currently, instead of voices we got text messages. Probably, it is better, than to have poor voice-acting.

5. Besides the great visuals, I haven't seen much. In Half-Life 2 we saw and heard a lot of interesting things, watch some scenes, etc. No, in Chapter 1 there are some scenes too, but they were took directly from Half-Life 2, and they didn't attract much of my attention. It would be good too see some new scenes... Probably, this is another thing, the author had to sacrifice to make the release possible.

I omit here some minor technical problems, but I spoke about them directly with the developer. Anyway, most likely, all these problems are temporary things, and will gradually disapper whilst the mod develops. Because of it, I am not going to judge this mod strongly for now.

One of the oldiest, and — still — one of the best mods for Half-Life. A lot of weapons (mod both sing- and multiplayer), enemies, good level-desing, and no relation to Half-Life except engine and some resources.

Classic mod from They Hunger`s creator! Although, it's not a horror, rather a sci-fi.

Good classic mod for classic game, very nice level-desing, good gameplay and pretty long playtime. If you like original Half-Life, I think, this mod you'll like too.

This is an excellent game, amazing level-design, impressive features (e.g. blood decals on weapon models and hands), pretty long playtime. The most horrible drawback of this game is... this is not Half-Life. This is very very different game. If you've played Black Mesa, don't think you now know what is Half-Life.
Although, I'm not giving to this game only 8, not 10 because of this. Actually, I wanted to give mark 9, but then I've changed my mind, coz they still didn't release Xen (my favourite chapter). And I'm waiting for multiplayer. Because of that I've subtracted one point. Another point was subtracted because BM still has some issues, escpecially I don't like the music. Soundtrack is just horrible... no, terrible! And what they did with Mesa Lady?! I'm hardly hearing, what did she say. In demo-tracks on the official site of BM was a couple good tracks, including Mesa Lady track, and on this track she sounds pretty good, much better than in the game.

Funny open-source toy :) I've played it on Linux!

Good game for its time, I don't like only its engine.

Excellent mod! Very original, although, AFAIK, in Decay is present secret mission for the vortigaunt side...

Good remake, though, original mod I like a little more.