Dissolution is a science fiction, single-player mod for Half-Life 2 that mixes adventure and action game-play. Set in the year 2089, in a universe dominated by a mega corporate entity, Xterrier, the player awakes in a hidden lab to the voice of the mysterious Wilson. Guided by Wilson, the player must make their way through the ravaged Xterrier 581c colony, making use of any and all resources they can get their hands on in order to survive, all the while attempting to piece together the events leading to the colony's collapse and their own identity.
This mod is boring. Pure and simple. Good attempts at a decent story and voice acting is done well for the most part, everything else is lacking. Terrible modeling, all I see are rehashed hl2 models with a different skin color. This is especially apparent with the character models, who are all literally hl2 characters with green uniforms. The weapon modeling is horrid, looked as if they came from a hl 1 mod. Game play is just as bad.
Combat is terribly unbalanced, why the hell does it take 3 shots to the ******* HEAD with a pistol to kill ONE enemy? And half a magazine of a M4 to kill one guy? Does it make sense to make the melee weapon be a one hit kill weapon? While the weapons the player uses are terribly underpowered, the enemies on the other hand have OVERPOWERED weapons that seemingly kill the player within a few shots. In the mod's first gun fight, the AI spawn with at least 5 men shooting at the player with pistols while the player only has a small desk for cover. I was forced to use CHEATS to get past that part.
The atmosphere of the game is somewhat there, it attempts to present a Bioshock/Deadspace like theme to the mod, but falls flat with the crude presentation (the introduction was a spinning planet that looked like a ****** claymation movie with a moon and satellite rotating around it for 15 minutes while a british dude rambled on about how humanity was almost wiped out. *yawn*) The constant corridor map layout doesn't help at all.
In terms of pacing and progression, the mod resorts to the overused "find key card and go to locked door" concept way too many times.
Overall I'd say this mod had potential, but just turned out to be a boring mess. It's kind of hard to believe that it took about 2 years for this mod to be made. It seems to me more effort was put into the voice acting, music, and story rather than actual game play and presentation. (There are actually people there who gave this an 8/10? Get real people)