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!
Ok so here we have nice maps, cool basic story and acceptable combat scenarios all over the place, so is a nice medium lenght mod.
I liked the interesting mysterious g-man sightings, and some of those were quite good planed.
In the bad points I think a big WTF moment is about the music, a heavy metal super hardcore stuff is just not quite appropiate for a hl1 mod, i’d love to hear something electronic or anything different from that heavy metal concert definitely!
About the episode 2, I'd say it improved a lot the original and previous Ep1. The whole mapping design was improved and now it doesn't feel quite boxy, and a lot of work were put into the "open" areas, which makes you feel you're definitely inside Black Mesa.
The combat was also enhanced in this current ep2, and always was intense and kind of hard both against xenians and grunts, the mounted gun part was just lovely to play. But the med kits supplies were very, very scarce and that just sucks as battles are hard and can turn down your health points very quickly.
The story is developed into the mod and that's a nice detail, though I honestly have to say that voice cast is horrible and it doesn't feel very realistic. Also another thing that I dislike it was the end, it was very lame, and almost absurd you never see it came and literally ends up in a boring hallway so I hope an ep3 could expand the story and gameplay a little bit more.