So the trilogy is completed: Operation Rosenberg - Operation Rift - Dark Future.
Half-Life: Dark Future is the final installment of the Operation Rosenberg trilogy, and unfortunely it ends on a whimper.
First off I am not a fan of the timeskip. I think the story should've stayed on the HL timeline and wrap Collins story there. What even happened anyway? at the end of Operation Rift Gman puts Collins in stasis and then decides to release him a few years later to do...what exactly? I guess we will never know since this is the last chapter in the story and Collins ends up joining the resistance in the conclusion so whatever he ends up doing there is up in the air.
Graphically it looks pretty good. Im impressed on how the developer was able to emulate the HL2 look in Goldsrc. Whoever, the environments look pretty uninteresting as a whole and just like in the previous mods everything starts to repeat itself a little too much as time goes on.
Gameplay wise im stumped on how the developer keeps commiting the same mistakes over and over. Fights are either completely unispired or just unbelievably hard. The initial fights with the combine are crazy due the low amount of health packs and batteries provided. After that every fight is exactly the same against waves and waves of zombies and it just gets really boring fast. The final fight is the worst of them all as you have to deal with a whole platoon of combine assasins (the female spy replacement from HL1) and I dont know whether the modder gave them a buff or not but I swear they are near invulnerable to hitscan weapons and once again, just like in the final fight of Operation Rift, you are not provided with the right equipment to deal with the situation (you should be given explosives here like grenades or satchel charges instead of regular ammo which for the most part proves innefective against the indestructible assasins). I was almost ready to quit the mod at this point but I persevered through sheer force of will and save spamming.
It's a shame really. Operation Rosenberg wasnt perfect but it had its moments and you could tell the developer really put a lot of work into it. Then came Operation Rift and it was a huge dissapointment both in gameplay and level design. Finally we have Dark Future and while it's not a mess like it's predecessor it could've been much better if the modder would've learned from the mistakes commited in his past projects. If he ever decides to revisit this saga I can only hope that he takes a long hard look at the missteps he committed and produces a worthy sequel to Operation Rosenberg as I feel both Rift and Dark Future simply didint land the mark.
a nice mix of half life 1 and 2
An average experience in all. It's nice to see a Half-Life 2 environment brought over to Goldsource, but sadly this mod doesn't really do anything to take advantage of the opportunity.
The whole thing becomes a slog through the same enemies over and over with the environments not being terribly interesting throughout.
What's more, the basic porting of Source assets over to Goldsource is never a good thing. Source is capable of high fidelity textures and some decent lighting effects. Bringing assets over to the older engine looses a lot of that, and at the same time strips out a lot of the charm of Goldsource.
What this results in is a very repetitive mod with little to no story, fighting the same uninspiring enemies through bland environments.
It's not "Bad" but it is decidedly average and can get pretty boring as time goes on.
Great work on this as usual. Only thing I'd say it needs is more. More variety in locations and perhaps more detail in the plot. This fusion of Half Life 1 and 2 is very intriguing! Otherwise just good stuff :)
A conclusion to adventures of brave HECU warrior - Corporal Timothy Collins.
Levels in DF are simple, yet quickly become repetitive and tedious - a step back from "Operation Rosenberg" and "Escape from Area 99" in terms of design and puzzles. Player gets to fight soldiers and zombies, the latter barely offer any challenge. Some really annoying sounds like zombie screams and prison alarm in the beginning. HL2 weapons and NPCs are just reskins of default HL1.
Though, I liked scripted scenes and how this mod utilized elements from HL2: Classic
for me
this is the weakest installment of the Collins trilogy
a half-life mod taking place in half-life 2 timeline is very interesting
but the level design repeats itself very fast and gets boring
the shooting galleries also pretty repetitive too
the ending is also the most weakest of the entire trilogy
super este mod 10/10