Reviews - Point of View mod for Half-Life

What a fantastic mod. It is so professionally done, you'd believe Valve themselves made it. Easily one of the best Half-Life mods I have ever played. It has everything necessary to make a good Half-Life mod: A good plot, some excellent new features, new weapons (creatures), plenty of action around each corner and loads of twists and turns in the story.

There is really very little you can fault about this mod as it's near perfection; I also liked the new thought-log feature, I'm surprised it wasn't done in the original Half-Life itself.

The maps were brilliant, even better, unlike this mods brother, Azure Sheep, there are only a few long corridors and hall-ways to run through, but even those had some surprises around the corner which was a relief.

Out of the entire mod, only two things bugged me. The first one is the lack of a crosshair for the standard Vortigaunt weapon, it was extremely difficult to aim and hit targets correctly due-to the lack of one. In some cases, missing your target a few times isn't a bad thing as it adds to the difficulty factor, but trying to take out targets as small as Sentry Guns, Rats, Snarks and Chumtoads was nearly impossible on the first, second or even third try. It would of been nice if there were a few extra creatures in your armory to chose from too, but non-the-less, everything you did get did their job.

Secondly, as already mentioned, there are some parts of the mod where you just find yourself running through long passage-ways with not much happening, however, there are very few places like that unlike in Azure Sheep, so the score isn't hurt too much.

Overall: A brilliant mod, definitely has my recommendation to play, whether you're a Half-Life fan or not. Aiming can be difficult with the weaponry you are given, but the brilliant game-play makes up for that entirely.

Much better than Azure Sheep, but the second half of the mod started going the same way of making a lot of claustrophobic mazey corridors with many unnecesarily long side areas and hardly intuitive backtracking. The ending goes on for too long, drops way too many more powerful enemies on you, and I don't see the point of fighting three bosses in a row, and I wish that stukabats were used more often.
There is some story in the form of a journal, from the little I've read of it it's not the best thing ever, but at least it doesn't get in the way and it's completely optional. If you want to know what the hell is happening, however, you will need to read up on it from time to time, but don't expect much.
Still, as I said, the first half of the mod set on Xen, and some of the earth levels, is really good and fun to play through, definitely worth a try just for that part alone.

You have a few key advantages (thanks to Nihilanth) such as greater strength to move around faster, most notably the electric beam can heal you whenever you attack someone… this was implemented to cover the disadvantage of not being able to use human healing devices.
You can also pick up key cards and use buttons & other simple things.

While this new way of fighting puts a fair bit of its use on your lightning attack as you can’t heal yourself with the other weapons. You can still have a bit of fun with them if your carefully.

The mod also tells story a different way, instead of throwing text on the screen like some mods do, here whenever you find something of interest or merely progress, a icon will flash on the screen, by pressing a button you can read what your character is thinking.
Its a very friendly and unobtrusive idea & it fits HL very well because it allows people to skip reading it if they like and it tells alot of story that no mod has yet come close to.

This is possibly the most revolutionary of all the hl mods and stands apart from them in a few key ways.

+The best story of any mod for HL due to a intuitive ‘thoughts diary’ system.
+A wide variety of new enemies as well as a new boss
+5 weapons to choose from, 3 of which are new.
+Consistently good level design
+Diffficulty wavers on medium to tough depending on how well you adapt to this kind of fighting.
+Some secret ‘thought diaries’

-You can’t use human weapons but it would not fit the mod if you could.. but I suppose some people may not like the new way of fighting.
-Due to batteries, healthkits, ammo being useless theres no reason to break crates.
-Some places like the tunnels, although unique, is very repetitive, thankfully it doesn’t last long and plays a part in the story.
-When you first enter the ‘secret base’ on Xen, it appears very repetitive, but it gets alot better after the first few areas.

+-Cliff hanger ending

I was very impressed by Point of View. The mod really captures the same premise of the Half Life expansions, playing from the perspective of another character, and takes it much further. It lets you play as an entirely different race, giving a completely new point of view on the story.

I really enjoyed Point of View's story. Instead of relying on visuals and dialogue, it reveals exposition in the form of a journal recording the Vortigaunt Xonxt's thoughts. While some might find the entries too long and bad for the game's pacing, I loved the insight into the writer's view of Half Life's aliens. It contradicts Half Life 2's lore a little, having been written before HL2, but that didn't prevent it from changing the way I looked at the Xen creatures.

The gameplay of Point of View feels unique among Half Life mods. The player is given alien weapons exclusively, including a few new grenade types that are more or less variations on the Snark. The Vortigaunt's main attack regenerates the player's health. The result was that battles felt almost backwards compared with other Half Life gameplay; I started with very low health and ended with high health. It changes up the game a lot. The downside is that there aren't very many weapons to uncover. I found myself only really using the main attack and occasionally the duel hive hand.

I liked the way Point of View uses retail Half Life models alongside Half Life HD models and even cut content to give more variety. A lot of the cut Half Life beta characters and creatures make appearances. I was confused by the change of appearance in the Black Ops Soldiers, however. They look very similar to the HECU and are given pulse rifles instead of silenced MP5s. Yes, pulse rifles. From the movie Aliens. It even has the correct sound effects.

Overall, Point of View was a fun Half Life mod that shed some light on Xen, the Nihilanth, and the G-Man. There were a few difficult or frustrating sequences, but not enough to make me put it down

Point of View is a unique mod, and to my understanding the only one that allows you to play as a vortigaunt. And not only do you play and fight as a vortigaunt, you get an entire storyline, and excellent one I might add.

The story is very well written and is told through logs you keep in the game. There are 40 logs which you will nearly all collect by just following the main routes.

Fighting of course is different, as a vortigaunt you now use your weird shocky shocky electric fighting beam thingamagic. You gain health by shooting your main attack at organic enemies (mainly soldiers).

Aiming your lightning is often a bit difficult because of the lack of crosshair. Some smaller enemies like turrets or distant enemies are hard to hit and sometimes the lighting will even seem to go through them.

It's a great mod with a great story and great ending so yeah it's great. In the end though it's not something that made me think: "wow this is the best mod ever".

Truth is it didn't really leave a great impact on me, and the mod still has a few little flaws. Therefore I give it a 9/10.

A very satisfying mod indeed. It does have its share of minor flaws which keep it from being an absolute 10/10, but I will highly recommend it. A veritable must-play for any GoldSRC user.

STORY

In my opinion, tons of Half-Life mods just lack the necessary story to carry themselves in the fully-realized world of Black Mesa. This one isn't one of those mods. Through a system of reading the character's thoughts in the form of diary entries, accessed by pressing a key [though I had to rebind because the key was initially bound awkwardly for me], the player has access to the Vortigaunt's thoughts as this lone wolf progresses through his homeworld of Xen through to the "alien" world of Black Mesa. Although personally I don't mind it when a story hits you over the head, and in fact I enjoy that, this unobtrusive system balances out the story quite nicely with the game.

GAMEPLAY

I'm going out on a limb here: I'm going to say that the actual raw gameplay of this mod is highly unique. Although the concept itself is not as unique as initially thought [those of you who have the PS2 Half-Life know what I mean], the addition of cut Xenian creatures as weapons for the player to use was highly clever and a solid way to redo what the PS2 co-op game did years ago. Some cut enemies also returned, like the Minigun Soldier and the Panthereye, although with the latter I would have liked to have seen more of it overall. Plus, the game expands a bit on what I'd assume are the Black Ops forces, although it's never quite stated because the player's character doesn't actually know what they are. As for mapping, modelling, and such, since I'm running out of room, I'll say this: it's HL1, what can you expect? It looks like GoldSRC. Not a bad thing, but the engine shows its age.

OVERALL

Easily one of the top mods for GoldSRC still on the market, up there with Afraid of Monsters and Cry of Fear. It's a little gem that, though not without its share of flaws, is a nice Xen story to play.

Mapping is pretty, with some great brushwork details, but sometimes really mazey and depending on same-looking tight corridors with lots of closed doors - and no, Xonxt calling it out doesn't fix it. Neatest detail probably was all the ammo and other pickups scattered around, just like they would be in your regular HL mod.

The rest was great from start to end (maybe not the sarges, but you have double hivehand for that) and mod didn't outstay its welcome. Aged very well for a classic HL1 mod.

The first part of the mod in the Xen universe were a masterpiece regarding the staged war between Xen creatures and humans that entered it to do research. The middle part was still cool I guess but the farther you progress in this mod, the less frequent the really interesting parts of playing an Alien creature are being provided.

Fighting alongside other Xen creatures i.e., maybe having a little Vortigaunt squad to follow you or set some creatures in the laboratory free to support you on your quest. Maybe make Xen weaponry like these frog grenades more frequent or at least more efficient if that rare.

While the maps and theme of the game were still interesting in the late-game, it just wasn't as interesting to me to just be a Vortigaunt. It's just like with many HL2 Combine mods. Just playing a Combine and fighting Zombies/Antlions or Rebels isn't really interesting. For the love of god, give me a lot of different Combine toys to play around with. Let me fight alongside other Combine and go into a war against the Rebels. Let me place turrest and mines, drive APC's, have helicopter and Strider support, activate Combine energy barriers, etc. etc. - you name it.

That's my main criticism with this mod. Imo the Xen/Vortigaunt theme should've been established more defined. And (SPOILER) the last part of the game where even your Xen allies fight you should've been a f*cking lot shorter than it is. Everyone trying to kill me is the least interesting video game theme I can imagine.

But to be fair:
Xen part = 9/10
Certain short parts of earth = 8/10
The remaining mod = 7/10

Definitely a mod that has to be tried. The beggining is a bit slow, but then, game gets interesting. It's a new experience play as a vortiguant and, of course, has its weaknesses, but has new weapons (not plenty of them. Just the necessary) that requires think and adapt to the mechanics of the attacks. Gameplay gets progressively intriguing, and background and new models help to enjoy it (though some of them, like the human workers, aren't esthetically good).

A couple of things have to be said about the story feature. This is what makes Point of View an unique mod. It allows know what the protagonist thinks about what happen around, and not only tells its inner emotions and thoughts. What I most remark are its reflections about its situation in Xen: a worker controlled by Nihilanth. Also, this thoughts realize sociological issues about the relations between masters and slaves, that could be a depiction of human slave societies.

However, story feature has a big downside: a window full of text that is not dinamic enough to draw the attention of the player, so there is the risk that this could be left out, ruining the particularity of this mod.

As a final anotation, entire gameplay and plot is eclipsed by the end, which, in my opinion, is the most interesting and entertaining moment of Point of View.

Wow this was an amazing mod to go through, and I'm sad that it is over. For the short version of my review for people just wanting an idea of it this mod has an amazing storyline, gives you new ways of thinking about old enimies, new well cut weapons (that explode!), and enimies. There are a few flaws in the mod, but the pros outweigh the cons so download this great mod.
pros:
unique gameplay
Fun Combat
Nostalgia
fun bosses

Cons:
Really difficult spots
no crosshair with the electric charge
Repetitive hallways
weird controls for the journal (though it can be changed)

Story: This is a highly unique story that is quite diffrent from the run of the mill mods (escape from Black Mesa) , and it tells the story in a way that doesn't interfere with game play (reading the thoughts of the protaganist through jjournal entries). The story does not only cover Xonxt, but gives you a bit more insight about the creatures of Xen, and a whole new perspective of the Nihilanth. Overall it is a great unique story that no one should miss out on.

Gameplay: Point of View offers an original form of gameplay with using a vortiguants electric charges although it can get tiring without a crosshair as you often miss the smaller enemies. I also found myself often getting lost in spots especially areas where I needed a keycard as I often missed the keycard entirely. I found difficulty to be really wasy in spots, and impossibly hard in other spots all in all though gameplay is really great offering a unique experince in half-life mods.