Reviews - Combine Destiny mod for Half-Life 2

Great perspective on the whole thing, could've used a bit more rebel fighting, and a bit less zombie blasting, but overrall I really enjoyed it.

Its one of those mods that sound good on paper but what it all really comes down to is whether the level design is any good. Thats where it falters and its the only way it needs to falter in order to be rated average at best.

+Reskin is quite a simple job. Your hud is blue now. What functional difference is there? Manhacks/barriers/camera's are on your side. Which is a nice gimmick.
-This was far from a good mod in terms of levels, I was expecting lots of artificial/samey looking hallways in combine territory. What I got was lots of samey looking cave areas and combine areas.
-Fights with humans where harder than I thought but still not at all anymore interesting than fights with combine. Its sad to see that both are so interchangeable that it really doesn't matter which way your gun is pointing.
-Being combine opens up opportunities for story telling, I was expecting something plain and simple, I got just that. Its as by the numbers as you'd expect with some non-sense thrown in. Like the resistance capturing a combine for some reason and placing him in a broken down house with no one watching guard and leaving a crowbar there inside for him (you). I wasn't expecting anything spectacular but that seems rather lazy, an excuse to teleport you to a different city like location, that ends rather quickly just to go back into some more caves before fizzling towards the end.

By end I just felt like something wasn't handled anywhere near as well as it could have been. This could have been to hl2 what Opposing Force/Blue Shift was to HL. I guess I'll search else where for that kind of mod.

Combine Destiny may have been a hit in 2005, but it has aged poorly while HL2 remains strong. Worth a play for some of those old school mod vibes, but it's certainly not taking home any awards.

The lame instadeaths were annoying and cruel. At least give me a chance and make it exciting. Mandatory deaths to progress are never fun. Kept getting stuck which I guess I partially deserved (I'm curious--sue me!), but seriously why put a health pack in a spot that can only be escaped via death? Why do this?

Extremely dark, even when shining your flashlight directly at something. Overreliance on the flashlight in general which sucks with the OG charge mechanic. Several times I had to stop in the darkness to let it recharge which fractured the pacing and broke immersion. It wants to be horror, but stumbling around in the dark just isn't that scary.

Zombie combat was kinda whatever. Far too many times I walked around a corner, only to catch a fast zombie looking the other way. All the enemies are just basically waiting around corners, not even trying to act natural. Bad enemy triggers and uninspired placement.

Too many mazes with annoying sirens blaring in the background. Exhausting.

Bland, uninteresting environments. Gets old real fast when you're expected to memorize winding corridors that all look the same. Tedious progression.

That said, atmosphere was occasionally quite good. Impressive rain scenes. Wish the rest of the level design was as thought-out as that rainy sewage balcony.

Weird mat_fullbright areas, but not unwelcome after all the dreary pitch-black darkness. Strange lighting in general, like the backlit doors that didn't make any sense.

It was kinda fun having manhacks, turrets, and roller mines on your side. Made for more strategic battles, especially coupled with the occasional spout of low ammo.

Too many dead ends that are too far out of the way with too much difficulty that had no real reward. Exploration was rough. Combined with the pitch black darkness, I mat_fullbrighted a few areas and noclipped others. My time is valuable and better spent doing literally anything other than these frustrating minigames.

There's a decent amount of content here and it's not too hard. Difficulty is at least balanced well. Combine Destiny is definitely playable and sometimes even fun at points, but be prepared to sigh heavily next time you run into an elaborately-disguised dead end.

It is fun, the atmosphere is really good, and the mod overall does what it is trying to do well! the mapping is pretty good but looks flat at some places, but I especially like the underground-tunnel areas. Could have used less zombie blasting though. No where near as good as some more modern mods but awesome for when it was released, and very much enjoyed.

Combine Destiny is one of those classic HL2 mod in the community, it's a alright mod. There ain't much any combine-related mod at least we have Combine Destiny, Combine Combat, Human Error and Entropy Zero.

pros:
the action in it are awesome
I dig the environment
the music theme is memorable
some levels can be pretty ok

Cons:
It lacked in need of some combine-support, also there was a bit too much of zombies the HUD is kinda wacky the environment is nice in term of aesthetic but need some details as well.

Overall, it's a pretty much memorable mod you should play even thought it's a bit wacky but it is still one of the best memorable classic HL2 mod I'll highly recommend it.

Nothing particularly impressive even after replaying it all these years, the difference being I can tell what I don't like, you're essentially plunged into a series of bland, uninspired and sparsely lit corridors with architecture that hardly resembles anything combine other than the textures, the rest of the corridors included are made out of concrete, broken up by the occasional corridor in the form of a cave, your enemies consist 90% of Zombies, half of it made out of an annoying amount of Fast Zombies that I would wager by the end of the mod you will have more experience fighting them, than you would get from any mod that's supposed to be set in "Ravenholm"

Speaking of, by the final stretch of the mod you're taken out of the corridors and into a town with a vaguely Ravenholm like theme, but don't be fooled, you're quickly railroaded into another cave followed promptly by a series of more uninspired corridors with slightly more lighting than the previous bunch before leaving them for a tightly packed corridor in the shape of a claustrophobic ravine where you have to run towards a Dropship while being assailed by Fast Zombies.

It's a mod that takes a theme that sounds good on paper, and manages to miss the execution exceptionally, It's unreleased sequel looks more interesting, and contemporary mods that take the same or similar theme of playing a Combine Soldier or Metrocop manage to pull the execution off better.

A perfectly mid grade mod that is equal parts enjoyable and downright awful.

To be honest there isn't too much to say here because the delivery is so mild it leaves very little to talk about. The maps are really oddly constructed and leave the player being lost a lot of the time or at least not understanding where they are going or why. The lighting is poor in both senses of the word; the mod is mostly pitch black and the areas with light look bad. The maps are under detailed and very boring to navigate with the entirety of the mapping being a concrete hall with some pipes that leads to a concrete room with zombies in it. On that not, the mod mostly suffers from becoming exhausting about halfway through; there is no break moments just move into a room and kill enemies rinse and repeat with almost no rooms without enemies and no change in gameplay. I honestly couldn't finish it because I became so tired of it. I can tell there is a passion here, so I won't really slam on it, but it's just not good, but it's also not really bad either.

Overall, A perfectly boring mod with tiresome pacing and an uninteresting environment.

Очень пустые карты, играть невыносимо скучно и нет смысла, ничего уникального, связанного с тем, что мы играем за комбайна в моде нет, сюжета нет.
English(bad):
Very empty maps, it’s unbearably boring to play, there’s nothing unique related to the fact that we play as a combine, there is no plot, there’s no point in play this game.

So what I got from this is there was a place that the combine made their base. It was taken away from them by a bunch of citizens? But then there were headcrabs and turned all of them into zombies. So now we're back to take back this...whatever this place is.

This didn't feel like combine at all. The combine wouldn't just send 3 soldiers to a place for them to kill like 9 zombies.

I understand that a melee weapon is needed for a source game like this, but the stun stick is for metropolice. It's an obedience tool to treat citizens like pets and only sometimes for combat. Now, what would be an alternative? I was trying to make a mod called "CyclopsRED"...it failed miserably and now I cringe thinking about it, but it was going to be this mod where you are an elite combine solider, who meets a metrocop named Gavin. Long story short, you wouldn't even have a melee weapon at all. So you would just bash with your gun and that would work just like a crowbar. See? An alternative fit for a character with no melee weapon.

I read that this was supposed to be horror? Not at all. Oooooooh, there's no light. Scaaaary.

Combine Destiny looks like a good mod for its time. Not many Combine-related mods were out there back when Half-Life 2 was recently released. However, it's not perfect.

/Level Design (6/10)/

The levels are okay, but often feel mundane. Some levels have interesting architecture, make no mistake, but there are other times where it's dull and feels unfinished, such as the cavern after the town level. Also, a lot of the levels are pitch black, which doesn't help with the ****** Half-Life 2 flashlight (I can't blame the devs though, since this mod was released before Episode 2).

/Gameplay (6/10)/

The mod could have used more variety. For instance, 85% of the mod is about shooting headcrab zombies (especially fast zombies), 5% antlions and 10% rebels. I know there aren't many enemies around once the whole line of Combine NPCs are your ally now, but rebels should have took a more important part in the mod, not zombies.

Another thing that bugged me was the lack of other Combine soldiers in most levels. Sometime, you encounter them, but either they can't follow along anymore (or at all) or they die for whatever reason. When you have Combine soldiers following you, it's mostly just two or three of them. Other than that, you're on your own 80% of the time. My point being, they should have been here more often. After all, you're a Combine soldier, which means it's strength in numbers, but in this mod, you mostly feel like a Combine Gordon Freeman (even your viewmodel is a blue HEV suit). I was relieved when I saw Combine soldiers and even elites at the end.

/Plot (6/10)/

The scenario is pretty generic. Rebels took over a town and a Combine installation, the Combine shelled the town with headcrab canisters (which would explain the insane amount of zombies, except for the ones underground) and your and other squads are ordered to mop up the rest. This sounds like the first mission of a much bigger game, like just the warm-up of the mod. Unfortunately, it's the whole mod.

Now tell me, if the Combine shelled the rebel town, why risk dispatching Combine squads to infested areas? The zombie influence is so high that the rebels have little chance to survive, especially with low supplies. Hell, even the commander (I assume the guy messaging you from time to time is the commander in charge of the operation) was surprised when your squad encountered zombies at the beginning. The Overwatch should have just called it a day on this one, because y'know, they didn't need to send soldiers when they shelled Ravenholm, did they? There were no Combine soldier corpses around when Gordon passed by, after all (the Combine soldiers from E3 Ravenholm don't count!).

Anyway, after spending countless time killing zombies on your own, the whole sweep operation ended up being a total ****-up and you eventually had to retreat. Before you could do that though, rebels knocked you out back in Installation 34, carried you in a truck and left you in a house filled with decayed bodies while keeping you untied and leaving a crowbar for you to grab. Why was this even necessary, why couldn't they just kill you? No, instead they grab you and drop you in an unguarded house without even checking if you're dead. They could have used you as hostage, even though it won't work against a merciless regime like the Combine Overwatch, but they took the James Bond villain route. Pretty lazy, if you ask me.

So after that, you wander in a Ravenholm-like town, a Ravenholm-like cemetery, then a Ravenholm-like cave. Finally, you're inside another underground base, you encounter more Combine soldiers and zombies, you run toward a dropship for extraction and..... To be continued. Yeah.... The only satisfaction I got from the ending was the fact that I didn't have to shoot zombies anymore. I was hoping Combine Destiny 2 would come to revive this mod and majorly improve the series, and it looked really promising, but the whole thing went radio silence since 2011, which is quite a downer.

/Conclusion/

To conclude this, the mod is still average. Of course, it's a mod from 2005, so you shouldn't expect something big like Human Error and Entropy: Zero, but I certainly hope the devs would make everything better in Combine Destiny 2 (if they ever come back to it eight years later). Y'know, kind of like that mod created by different devs: "The Citizen: Returns", which was an improvement from its old 2008 predecessor, "The Citizen".

Nonetheless, I still recommend it to whoever wants to play a Combine soldier campaign without caring much about the details.