Reviews - Fremen's Foes: Redux mod for Half-Life 2

Fremen's Foes: Redux Last DevBuild as of Sep 19 2022

Sloppy mod that brings a lot of cool new environments and models to the table, but completely and utterly fails in terms of gameplay.

Loved the music and the setting. But why was the intro nerfed by that obnoxious vent puzzle? If I wasn't persistent and desperate for moHL2 content, I would've stopped at the beginning. Too much frustrating backtracking in a cramped vent while on a strict stealth path with zero forgiveness. Not fun.

Damn that's some crazy AI. Vibrating like a hummingbird. Impossible to hit.

Music is way too awesome for this kind of content. The star of the show. Nostalgic 80s vibes all the time, even when completely unnecessary. Guy could've doubled the mod length and still had enough tunes to go around. Could've actually eased up on the music a bit, as it often played at inappropriate times and got annoying while trying to figure out a puzzle.

Backtracking is a core principle of this mod and I hate it. It can be done tastefully, but this is relentless meandering about with no clear objective.

The game is hard as ****. SMG is near useless with awful recoil and spongy enemies. I needed to save scum a couple times on Normal.

Some of the fourth wall dialog was amusing. "You go on ahead, because we can't climb ******* ladders."

Why is it that every goal is to get up onto the roof? Almost seems like a gag by the 3rd time the roof plan is laid out.

Stealth section was super annoying. Almost impossible to beat without save scumming. Very frustrating and not very fun. And the random trap doors? Are you kidding me?

Almost stopped playing when I got to the high temperature keycard. The stealth section was just too aggravating to continue with unclear direction. Waste of time. Popped on GOD mode for a while and still couldn't figure out what to do with the keycards. How is anybody supposed to reason through this while trying to avoid the cameras?

The "puzzles" were brutal. Activating the keys to stop quarantine was unclear and frustrating until you finally get it. Then actually activating the keys themselves?! That's some Hazardous Course level of ******** that had me wondering if I needed to find a second person.

Then the invincible Combine?! What on earth?! Why would anybody do this? If you're going to ambush me with invincible supersoldiers, you need to find a way to tell me that without dying half a dozen times.

Helicopter battle was frustrating, but rewarding and kinda exhilarating. The ammo mechanic was pretty annoying, especially with the copter dizzyingly spinning around. Disorienting and exasperating when you launch a rocket into the wall, necessitating a restart because there's no way to get more health.

This mod was too hard with too many universally hated gameplay elements. I'm here for Half-Life, not budget Splinter Cell with crappy stealth mechanics. It's simply not fun to play. It's a shame, because there's so much content on display and a lot of effort involved, but it's all misguided. Seriously needs some playtesting and a competent level designer.

This is a review of the "Last Dev Build" version of Freman's Foes.

Freman's Foes is a retro-styled mini-campaign about rebels, that wears its influences on its sleeve, Deus Ex, Metal Gear Solid, System Shock, all good games, that clearly inspired SellFace.

The story is simple enough, you are a survivor of a Combine raid, in an alternative Half-life 2 universe with some artistic liberties (always fine), you join up with a new crew of rebels and take part on a raid on a Combine station to enact some retribution for *their* raid. I would say that things go relatively well, only becoming complicated once the exfiltration is intercepted by reinforcements.

SellFace had some pretty fun ideas for the gameplay, your arsenal is rather limited: a Glock and an SMG (I think it's an UMP? I'm not sure and don't care enough to get it right), along with grenades and SLAMs (oh yeah, we're slammin' and space jammin' on this one), but the guns are pretty satisfying to use, and I always appreciate the creativity that the adaptive SLAMs allow.

You are accompanied by a team of durable rebels on your journey, who between shooting the Combine for you (including the new Elite assault variant), have plenty of funny little self-aware quips to say, green-words-man in particular got me with his "looks like you're going alone from here on out, we can't ******* climb ladders for some reason".

To break up the combat encounters, Freman's Foes introduces stealth -- I know I know, I can hear you groaning, "stealth in Half-life 2? **** me that is always janky" but I think it works pretty well for this one, getting spotted by the enemies by itself is not the "lose" condition, instead you're avoiding cameras that are slow to react, navigating laser detectors that are placed in mean places and trying to not make too much noise to avoid triggering the alarm on the rare noise detectors. Because of this, you can kill the patrolling Combine as long as you're mindful of all of the detectors, and that's exactly what I did, it felt satisfying and challenging enough, which merits high praise given how often stealth mechanics fail in Half-life.

I think the shortcoming of the mod is the lack of visibility for certain key items, there were two instances where I had to assemble devices that were necessary to progress, in both cases I got all of the parts except the last one, and then I had to do this thing I normally do when navigating mazes, where I always go to the left, so I roamed the entire map in both instances, carefully inspecting everything on the walls to my left, and then looking at the center of the room, and looking up, until I *finally* found what I was looking for, in the first instance it was the chasis of the battery I was trying to charge, it was placed up high on a shelf and it did not glow, so I did not see it the first time I entered the room, the second one was an USB stick containing a security key, that one I actually never found, I looked for it until I ran out of ammo in my SMG while shooting zombies who were in my way, when that happened, I decided that I had put in enough effort, and noclipped through the door that was blocking my way.

There is one other thing that I wished was different: during the finale, I had an assistant of sorts, who would supply me with rockets for my rocket launcher when I pressed the use key on him, that's nice, but he only gives the player a single rocket per press, which can feel a bit too demanding of your attention when you're under pressure and need those rockets to fend off attackers, and you have to keep mashing the use key to get them, I wish he would give the player 3 rockets at a time so that the gameplay during the finale was more fluid, more focused on the fighting.

Freman's Foes is a charming and inventive mod that provides a few hours of classic fun, worth checking out. I think developer SellFace has a promising future, based on their work with this, and I look forward to seeing what else they get up to.

Very impressive demo, enjoyed the stealth and puzzles and all of the attention to detail and features in general, like the optional shooting range, world building through papers found randomly throughout the map. The story sounds intriguing aswell. Will be fun to see where this goes, it looks very promising.

Some of the best interaction I have seen in a source mod. Including custom scenes and the logic on how they are made.

nice

Wow, i was surprised!
This is one of those mods that needs to be judged by gameplay, not visual. This is collection of unique features, not too intrusive humor, complexity of gameplay is honest to player.
If mods Like Lost Under the Snow and Below the Ice are interesting for you - this mod will be too.

Nice graphics, but gameplay is not so good.

Better than Hunt Down The Fucklet

Played the director's cut back in 2019. Was a hell of a decent mod. Though it used to be basic, I anticipate some better things in this redux.

Ну что же...
Прошёл Director's Cut версию мода на харде, за один заход. Хороший мод, но однако назвать его "САМЫМ ЛУЧШИМ" - язык не поворачивается. Простенький левелдизайн, который автор обещает исправить в Remastered версии. Хочу также предупредить, что есть шанс того, что на первой фазе финального босса может вылететь игра. И пожалуй, это единственное место, где может быть спровоцирован краш игры.
По итогу хочу сказать, что я рекомендую этот мод к прохождению. Прошёл его с удовольствием. Будет интересно перепройти модификацию в Remastered версии.