INVASION is a singleplayer modification of the famous game Half-Life. But a lot of innovations have been added. Among the most important new features, one can mention : - 44 maps : 5 levels of about 10 maps each. - 16 weapons, including 12 new ( infrared gun, flame thrower, sniper rifle ... ) - 2 new human enemies ( rocket launcher soldier and sniper ) and 2 new alien monsters. - a tank that you can drive and make its turret rotate independantly from the chassis. - a high definition bullet impact system, and particles blowing up from the walls on impact. - an entirely renewed protective suit, with a member-per-member damage management, and the possibility to stock batteries and medkits for subsequent use. - several gameplay innovations as digitpads use, or several kinds of ammo for the rocket launcher. - subtitles available in French, English, Spanish and German. Developed by the Invasion team.
I was very on the fence about this mod, while it has alot of things going for it, but there are a few problems.
Lets shower the praise first, the level design is great. New areas galore. I liked the locations, the larger open areas and the crawl in vents with a lighter... the cloaked assassins, the new weapons & new models for all the original guns except for the satchel.
And its a very long mod...
Even a new way to use healthkits and batteries, you can carry them and use them when you want to.
It has subtitles translated for 4 different languages.
I also liked the fact that enemy snipers are quite deadly.
The problems:
One of the new weapons (the electro minigun plain sucks, it needs more damage, a larger clipsize and why not just give it bullets for godsake... it would have been great!)
On the camera only level where you have to avoid them, espionage is a great idea that I've only seen once in a different HL mod but it was very short and easy, here its done well and lasts about 15 minutes, you have to move very carefully in the right path past cameras. If you screw up they spawns grunts, you can see that they spawn out of thin air though which is a lame move to be honest.
You have to fight the helicopters and I can't remember the last time I played a half-life game or mod where you are forced to fight them.
The difficulty is really high, for some reason the grunts have perfect reaction time that is godly and all weapons do beefed up damage, while I'm fine with that.. the problem is you take the increased damage (Headshots still don't kill) which totally throws the difficulty out of whack.
I had to play on easy which makes me feel ashamed.
HL is a great game, they should have kept the damage values the same instead of screwing things up.
and those new rocket grunts are really bullet resistant for some reason... -_-
For contrast the part in the tank was really easy.
Theres also one ridiculously difficult puzzle which requires random button pressing.