A challenging mod attempting to do some things a little differently with enemy and weapon design.
Good start to a mod, cool to see those new combine models in an interactive environment and the new weapon sounds feel more satisfying. Faster default zombies caught me off guard and makes the mod more unique.
The current environments need improvements as they feel very basic and un-detailed. There should also be difficulty settings as the first maps are very challenging. I'm not a fan of the new crouching system so you should be able to turn it off.
Looking forward to more, keep it up :)
Not a bad mod, of course there are bugs, cut out the possibility of savings, as well as seemed strange thing that you can not pick up a large first aid kit. Tasty, but not enough. Will be interesting to see the continuation of this
It's hard. Hard enough that I almost looked up a walkthrough to the final boss without knowing it was the final boss and wow, I'm glad I didn't. Very rewarding firefights that truly get your blood pumping.
Fights are often drawn out beyond reasonable expectation, which pushes the player out of their comfort zone. They're challenging but rewarding.
However, lack of quick save and annoying autosave points add unnecessary tedium. The final boss being the worst offender. I shouldn't have to kill all those tiny minions every single time the big bad kills me. Make your game start to feel like a chore and you've got no shot at an 8/10 or higher.
No sprinting, although your default move speed seems to be increased and closer to HL1 which generally helps in combat, but can feel like an unfair nerf when caught outdoors with no cover, usually resulting in death. Cover, especially the structure you pick (always have a few to choose from and move between) makes a huge difference. This game is merciless when it comes to brute forcing. You can't do it.
And the doors! I have never struggled so much in any game to pass through doors. Why does every single door have trim that can prevent you from exiting when sliding along the wall? The amount of times I got stuck only to be pulverized by a Hunter was infuriating. You're lucky this is getting a 7/10 because even that's generous with how much this annoyed me. But I'm willing to look past that for everything else it offers.
That said, the stalling game mechanics force the player to be cautious. Perhaps run 'n' gun won't work here... You need to plan ahead and use your surroundings to your advantage, helped in part by gratuitously epic "horizon" exposition shots that give the player an opportunity to take it all in.
Regenerating health up to the next decade is a neat feature that rewards the player for retreat and backing off when encountering situations too dangerous to run in guns-a-blazing. Rewards patience and punishes impulsion.
But lack of long-range weapons and non-lack of frigging fog all over the place often make this game a bit of an exercise in SMG sniping and praying since this gun is absolutely amazing at range with accuracy and power. An odd combination for sure and makes the pistol entirely useless. Hell, the magnum didn't see a single use, despite me doing everything in my power to use it (kept forgetting to grab it because of the stupid autoload). Appeared too late in the game and no ammo means no point.
The weapon choice is bad for this style of combat and comes across as a cheap gimmick to inflate difficulty. Give me the right weapons and still make the game hard and you've got me interested.
It's about combat, but more tactical combat in tight situations with the wrong weapons than power tripping. Not what I expected, but I'm pleasantly surprised. Good challenge and a breath of fresh air, despite the flaws. It's worth playing as a case study in how to approach combat scenarios.
good for gun fights but cool maps man but map is hard to find exits
so 7/10
This is a hardcore difficulty mode. Your skills will best tested, as well as your ability to adjust to a new gameplay style. You will die often. You will get angry. But when you beat it? Man, you just want more! My only complaint: CTRL is set to toggle by default, without that it's a 10/10 in my book. Give it a shot!
Of the not-so-good mods I've played, this is on the upper end. The level design is serviceable, but not good. I will agree that the more challenging combat is refreshing, but it isn't challenging in a good way where the enemies and levels are smart so you have to think; it's challenging in a 'I will spawn 6 guys in this big open space so you have nowhere to hide' kind of way. The mod is visually alright, but not very good and far from special. I did like that some mechanics were changed around to make it feel a little different, but some of them I don't totally understand; I'm a big fan of holding on to health packs, I don't know why they are mapped to the Crowbar and not just a hotkey, though. Not being able to sprint and the toggled crouch were a little off, but maybe I also didn't check the control options, so maybe that was a mistake on my part.
Overall this isn't that good, but I've seen a lot worse on here. It's worth a play if you're a HL2 mod completionist.
Feels like it's more designed to be played with other mods, as the gameplay changes are amazing, but the level design is 7/10 at best and 0/10 at worst, confusing, contradicitive, misleading, and in one part straight up unfair
, the part on specific is the "final boss" of the mod so far, and because the SMG's accuraccy buff, enemies are scarily accurrate as well, but the problem with that is that due to the size of maps in certain parts you cant even see the enemies firing at you because of fog, many frustrating retries were caused by that, but in the end, It's not bad at all
Abandon: The Town is your usual Half-Life 2 map but with a small twist. That twist being some gameplay changes.
While the author pretty much stated on the page that this is a proof of concept, as you just find new guns and jump into another arena, I feel like he could do some effort to put a bit of story in this. DOOM did this and it blended with gameplay perfectly, so he can try too.
First off, you now have to heal yourself from medkits by right-clicking with the Crowbar. I find it neat and the semi-regenerative health from Wolfenstein: The New Order appears here too, which doesn’t hurt the gameplay that much. The Pistol got slight damage buff. The SMG is now an MP5K and rewards you with accuracy for firing in bursts.
There are some changes to the enemies. While most enemies have more health, there are also some changes in behavior. Zombies now run like Zombines, this is a good addition and makes them much more formidable. Combine Hunters can now jump to close in on you faster, they also are no longer be instantly killed by AR2 energy balls. Also, the Metro Police now have modified voices?
A couple of things this mod got wrong are the map details and its changes to controls. The maps feel barren at times. Like, in some places you just find buildings connected by empty streets with a couple of covers. This mod also disables your sprint and quicksave. The quicksave part can be negligible since I only died twice in a 30-minutes long playthrough. Without sprint, however, the encounters with the Combine slows down too much. It also makes the Hunters significantly harder to fight because they are movement-based enemies. There’s also the “toggle-crouch” feature that I’m not a fan off and makes crouch-jumping awkward.
If you want some good changes in your normal Half-Life 2 gameplay, check this out. While it is not much good, it is an OK setpiece that doesn't overstayed its welcome if you don't like it.
Nice battles, hard but interesting. (sometimes remind me f.e.a.r)
Greater bias in realism that in original hl2 and mods, everything is balanced, good work with nodes of hunters, hard to hide from them.
But...
but idk why removed quick saves. This is not survival horor, this is not old game, this is not strategy, why?
It dont make mod harder, it dont make gameplay more interesting, this dishonestly increases playing time. It makes player replay battle every now and again.