This mod continues the story where Half-Life 2 finished and offers one possible scenario. After the big explosion you fall to the ground and are very badly injured. Some people find you and take you home to a small village outside the city where the citadel was built. After 3 months you’re strong again and want to fight on. You have never seen Alyx or any of the others since the explosion. But you try to find new people that will fight with you against Breen. Nobody wants to help, some are afraid, others think that Breen has learned his lesson and won’t start again. It also seems that most of his organisation was lost in the explosion. Then you hear that along the coast Breen is starting again and trying to take control again. So you decide to go to the coast. There you take a little boat and go along the coast so the Combine won’t notice you coming.
First few chapters were fun, the rest of it were quite tedious and confusing. Had to activate godmode just to overcome some parts of the story. Overall a fun mod, giving this a 7 out of 10. Love the Max Payne 2 soundtrack!
Similar to the mod "Strider Mountain", Coastline to Atmosphere struggles to entertain after playing the first few chapters of the game. While the beginning is very entertaining with dynamic combine fights and jeep chases, the rest of the game becomes mediocre as the same repetitive gameplay takes over. The environments, while appealing at first, start to become lackluster, and the gameplay on all fronts begins to fall short. This was also caused by very confusing, tedious, mission objectives, that proved more aggravating than fun. Despite all of its flaws, Coastline to Atmosphere is still a decent Half Life 2 mod, so long as you play it for its beginning. The devs should stick with the concept they started with "Strider Mountain" and recreate the same gameplay from the beginning of that mod into a full length game. That would seriously make the game a whole lot better, as I absolutely loved the first couple chapters of "Strider Mountain". In the end, good effort to the devs for making such lengthy mods, but you guys need to work on the quality of the entire experience, not just the beginning. Final verdict for Coastline to Atmosphere: 7.2/10
It has to be said, that so far, this mod features some very poor level design. The number of times the controls are wrenched away from the player, or a text prompt appears on screen to guide you, is really quite telling.
I appreciate that every level designer has their own way of doing things, but there are still golden rules that everyone should follow. A major rule that Leon appears to struggle with is "show, don't tell." If pressing a button in a room then requires a cutscene to show me what it did, then the layout is poor. If entering an area without a key item requires a "Go back!" message, the guidance is poor. Source has the tools to guide the player without ripping control away from the player every time they press a button. Need to open a distant door? Use a monitor to show the door, or have the door in sight. Want to tell the player that they'll need a keycard? Show them the locked door first!
If the player enters your level and you have to immediately tell them, "There is a keycard in one of the buildings outside," then I'm afraid you've done a poor job.
I've heard Leon's releases compared to the boomer shooters of the late 90s, but even they had level design principles. They NEEDED to follow them, because NPC dialogue and cutscenes weren't a thing. You were always in control. You were expected to find your way and levels were designed with this in mind (most of the time anyway).
Playing this mod on Medium is unjustifiedly diffiult with the ridiculous amount of enemy waves. Some weird design choices that can easily mislead the player who is unfamiliar with common shenanigans of Source map-makers. Other than that it is a decent lengthy addon with kinda oddball but interesting story elements.
Don't play in Hard Mode.
Don't play in Medium Mode.
You will become very upset very quickly
I'm surprised at the high ratings that this piece-of-crap worthless mod has received. Polygon count of the islands in the opening of "Coastline to Atmosphere, immediately off-the-bat, are pathetically low; the custom textures kind of suck.
I don't have 'God-like' FPS skills....but they are very, very good. Notwithstanding this fact, I was killed several times in the first 5 minutes that I played this mod -by either combine 'pigs' (cops) and/or annoying fish/eels in the lagoons that one must traverse across the islands in opening of this mod.
Hence, I am proud to say that I gave up on this crappy mod very soon afterwards; I had had way too much...
I rate "Coastline to Atmosphere" a 2/10.
This mod is waaay too hard, the levels are not very well designed around this fact and often have you metaphorically fighting your way up a 90* angle with 10 health and no ammo.
Probably one of the worst Half-Life 2 mods I've ever played. It hasn't aged very well, and it's one of few mods I gave up on halfway through. The mod is far too unbalanced due to an abundance of enemies and insufficient ammo/health, has perplexing yet terrible level design choices, and contains unfitting music ripped from other video games. Some of the level environments look cool, but overall, it is not an enjoyable experience.
as of right now is it absolutely broken in every conceivable way. Until the author fix it . Stay away.