Reviews - Half-Life: Uriel mod for Half-Life

Half-Life: Uriel is an odd little duck for sure. It's opening is by far the most interesting part, requiring the player to navigate through the facility with no HEV suit and no weapon.

When the action does kick off, it takes on more of a Doom or Quake approach, shunning story and scripted events for a string of challenging arenas. This is by no means a bad thing, but starting the player off with the crossbow and then the magnum pistol (alongside the MP5 and Shotguns dropped by the grunts) you have a limited but extremely powerful arsenal.

I'm sorry to say that the later stages of the mod started to feel a bit repetitive and not nearly as challenging as I would have liked. What I assume was supposed to serve as the mods boss fight, the gargantua, simply stood in place while I fired rocket after rocket into it. The it was just an uneventful tramride and a brisk stroll through some offices to the ending.

In terms of the levels themselves, there are some really nice looking areas and some of the larger moving machines are impressive to behold. However, even they start to lose their lustre towards the end after you see the same prefabs over and over. It's also very easy to access areas with nulled surfaces or to escape the maps entirely through simple platforming.

In spite of all that, Uriel is certainly a cathartic experience, especially if you throw caution to the wind and leap around the battle arenas like the acrobatic death machine that you very much are. It's just a little bit stale and the lack of any real story past the intro makes it start to feel a little played out before the end.

Original & enjoyable mod. Some places are not so detailed, and the story is mostly linear & simple. But there are some interesting touches of gameplay & atmosphere, so it worth to play.

It's unique how you can't get the hevsuit until later half of the campaign. Liked the machinery and gameplay.

I feel beginning parts were hard compared to what I received in the later parts where it was combat heavy.
It also lacked ambience. Could use some, it feels lifeless otherwise.
I can also pick up security guard's weapons in the part where I'm not supposed to carry any weapons.
Tram rides were also long for my liking.

It's a good and unique mod. I suggest you play it.

It's Has wonderful storyline, Map, And combat. This Is Literally Good Mod and I'm Like the opening of this mod

Seems to be a mix of 98' Valve Mapping and Post 2001' Blue Shift attention to detail. Pretty damn slick from a design perspective and I do like the wonderful onslaught of Gigantic Feat's of OSHA Violation Engineering!

There are some spots where the player can fall down and not be able to get back up without noclip and the decision to forgo a suit and weapons until midway through the mod is an odd choice that might not sit well with most but I thought it was an interesting experience!

Nice little mod to play. I specifically made a ModDB account just to leave this review.

This was a fun little mod to play. The mechanics and scenery were very nice, the lifts and backgrounds felt very natural and "vanilla", like they seemed to fit the half-life aesthetic really nicely. The boss fight near the end is kinda cheesable, and the office section was a breeze. I think I only killed one zombie in that entire section because one was blocking a door. Other than these criticisms, I'd say this is an enjoyable mod if you're looking for something to complete in an hour or less. Rate 8/10

I concur with Urby on this one.
It is a mod that literally came out of nowhere and it was a pleasant surprise at that. How ever the mod itself is not what you'd expect. 50% of it are reminiscent with a "Jump 'n run" game and while I felt this to be a refreshing factor it certainly wasn't the first mod of it's kind that attempted that.

Still the game play for the most path was smooth and there very some very lovely levels and machinery to look at. Never the less if you expect some sort of Story then look elsewhere.

The story goes like this: We must deliver some files to a certain client. Despite the Resonance Cascade we keep up our end of the bargain and deliver the files. It's unclear as to what happens to the player after delivery as that's also the end of the mod.

If you're a fan of "jump 'n run" and like using primarily the crossbow and Revolver or shotgun and rifle in Half-Life then you will most certainly have a lot of fun with this one.

Mapping: The mapping as pointed out before was rather good. Not groundbreaking in many maps but in some others more than acceptable to offer some nice visuals for the player.

Scripting: There are plenty of scripts used in this mod. But most affect only machinery and riddles. Pity due to the nature of this mod more scripted_sequences for Black Mesa employees would've been desired. It would've raised the atmosphere of this mod even more. Unfortunately we get to see most of these scripts only in the early stages of the mod.

I had my fun playing this little mod that offers a play time of roughly 1.5 hours. Play it when you're in the mood but keep your expectations in the mid range. It ain't bad it ain't spectacular either.

My congrats on this release to the mod author. It's always wonderful to get to play new Half-Life mods.