You are Gordon Freeman... It was a normal working day. Scattered Xen aliens were hiding even in the rear corners of the Black Mesa research facility. It slowly return normality in everyday work. The old not been destroyed buildings have been modernized slowly. You return from a normal disposal order, as in parts of the institution the power goes out. Power generators to keep running on the main equipment and and your mission is to restore the energy supply. On the half way you notice more and more Xen returnes to Black Mesa and the military is back ... Uncover a new, exciting plot in the Half-Life universe!
I felt alot of the areas where very organic, although most of them are open areas which contribute greatly to the common criticism of this mod being to ‘blocky’. I did feel some areas where a little to bare and apart from some game breaking glitches (like the stuck in wall syndrome with 2 of the level transitions and some other bugs), it was a largely average mod.
There wasn’t much challenge which could be solved with just a few more grunts… there weren’t any surprises with a dead easy fight with a gargantua (probably the easiest I’ve seen in any mod).
There is a noticeable lack of detail to each area which along with occasional blockiness is a shame considering I like the general areas you go through (like the dam part which I’ve never seen in a mod before).
It feels like I or we are expecting something great to come from new mods, where expecting most people to treat half-life as a starting ground for modding but that doesn’t give modders an excuse to release something without first learning from the great mods already available. I mean yes you learn from feedback but can’t up coming modders play a few good mods first? Or even learn something from Half-Life itself?… It’s one of the best games out there for a reason, not just for having a friendly map creator.
Episode 2 suffers from some of the previous problems but overall a much better project. There are assets disappearing because the maps have been badly optimised, but there are lots of new textures, songs, and overall more levels than before.