SCENARIO In "Get a Life" you embody Alexander Zemlinsky, a subway technician suffering from leukaemia. Alex is not, unlike the protagonists in most games, an invincible super-soldier. But you wouldn't call him normal either, because there is something in his past that connects him with the events that are about to happen in the course of the story (we want to keep the suspense, so nothing more on that...). FEATURES * GaL will run on the latest version of the Source Engine, so that means you'll see HDR and the enhanced shadow system (as seen in HL2: Episode 1) in "Get a Life" as well * To give the player the best gaming experience possible, GaL will offer a custom HUD, an innovative healing system with several damage zones, drugs that will trigger a "bullet-time" effect, upgradeable weapons and enhanced enemy AI * About 11 hours of gameplay * 24 maps with varied environments * 61 characters * 13 weapons
This review may contain spoilers
3/10 - Agree (12) Disagree (13)
I'd heard great things about this mod, but after playing I've been left extremely disapointed.
It starts off pretty strongly. The story is good from the beginning, different from the many "you are a nameless rebel" or "you are Gordon Freeman" mods. The action is broken up by interesting cut scenes, which progress the story as well as explaining the additional mechanics in the mod. It also introduces some nice new elements, including a very interesting health system, where you must heal different parts of your body that are damaged, as well as some nice custom weaponry.
These are really the only good things I can say about this mod. The common grunts are reskinned combine, which keep the combine voices, despite being unmasked. Friendly units have custom voice acting, which is frankly awful. However, these are minor problems which I could have easily dealt with.
It is very buggy, with the AI scripting of the enemies often messing up and different light sources throwing solid blocks of light that prevent the player from seeing anything beyond them. Even the custom health system is extremely tedious to use, if an enemy hits you and causes you to bleed, you will continue to lose health until the bleeding is stopped using a bandage. If you don't have any bandages, you're dead. This means you can be killed by a single bullet.
Once night falls, another shortcoming and very strange design choice will become apparent. For a while, you'll be left without any flashlight, which would be fine if the developers chose to remove it to help with dynamic lighting and a fear factor, except there are no fixed light sources and the most common enemy at this point are black spiders which are impossible to see in the dark or even dim lighting. A flashlight is found later on, but for some reason, the developers thought it would be a good idea to have the flashlight as a separate weapon. This means that you are unable to fire your weapon and light your surroundings at the same time.