Resourceful Protagonist is a mod all about being smart and thinking before acting, you play as a regular citizen in a non-named city under combine control however things are about to take a turn for the worse and obviously you have to get out of dodge. The aim of the mod is to make an enjoyable experience that challenges me as a level designer to push myself to the edges of my experience and beyond!
I've now finished Resourceful Protagonist once more, and feel it's time i write a review.
One thing mentioned about this mod, is that it's based around the player analyzing a situation before acting.
This just does not seem to come true, more then once or twice. What i think is missing, is a better description of what "analyzing" means.
Will doing so benefit the player? Will he avoid difficult situations, or perhaps be rewarded? I guess everyone has their own way of viewing this, had you dropped someone into this mod without telling them this. I suspect they would never of thought of it. There are simply no situations where you are screwed if you don't think before you act.
However, the part about exploration is certainly true! What makes this mod very interesting, and worth playing, is the vast amount of areas to explore.
Traveling far off your set path, just to see whats on the top floor of this building. This is the simple reason i rated this mod so high.
Other then that, ammo actually feels very scares, and you'll be happy to have just 1 spare mag for your SMG. This is also why exploring is important, if you just rush through the level you will run out of health and ammo.
All in all, the maps are nice, the challenge is good, and the mod is fun.
If anything, we should view this as an experiment, or a prototype of how to make a very interesting, and certainly different kind of game/mod.
Resourceful Protagonist is a decent mod that has exploration as one of its aims. The level design is simple but effective and I like that they used some custom animation for the weapons. The use of exploration is used well as the player is able to go off track to find some more ammo and weapons and occasionally the odd hazard. I also enjoyed exploring the forest at the end.
However, I feel the mod was too short and an example of this is how quickly you can finish the 3rd map. I also feel that some of the level design could have been thought out better to provide more of a feel and background to the city as well as further enhance exploration, an example could be the player finding a secret route that lets them bypass a level.
The hazards you face when you explore weren't very challenging and it was something I could easily deal with.
I think it would be good if more levels are added to the mod and the design is partially rethought so exploration is more interesting to do and each level provides more length. I would also like to see some more fights with the combine added in and the story told slightly better. Perhaps some levels could take place during the day?
All in all, this is a decent mod that still has room for improvement. I hope to see if more is added in a Public Release 2 as the mod is currently on the right track.
hmm. this is pretty good, just needs some polish. the maps where great, and the custom sounds where nice too. i found myself wandering around without a crowbar a lot of the time and had to activate cheats to get it.
but the maps don't really seem to have much flow or connection. and it would be nice to see some daylight and friendly characters.
it's worth a shot though.
Nice map design, but just average gameplay:
- exploration is seldom rewarded (even when it's dangerous)
- few weapons (I missed grenades)
- despite being named "Resourceful", the gameplay seldom invites you to strategy
- linear most of the time
- ending is just "meh"
- NPC are often dumb
- NO Gravity Gun (it's HL2, for God's sake! Without GG it's like a cake without frosting! :-)
Good game for good people :-)
not bad, needs polishing and testing
As a small HL2 mod, this would be a passable piece. The level design is ok, monster placement is ok but it doesn't really excel at any level. It's also quite short. At this point I'd say 6/10.
But what drew me to the mod was the title. A mod where you have to be resourceful seemed really cool. In the sewers, suddenly a CP voice sounded. My expectation: CP's will patrol the area and I have to carefully sneak past them or trick them somehow. But: No CPs, I could just walk through the sewer.
Then in the prison. Armed with only a pistol and limited ammo, I encounter 3 heavy armored combine soldiers with shotguns. It's a completely unfair fight, so I imaged: now I have to be resourceful! I pile up the boxes and carefully block their views so I can sneak past and try to find an alternative route. But: no alternative route. I actually have to engage those soldiers to get past them.
Later I'm in a city. Up ahead I can see a combine outpost but it's far out. Where I'm currently at, there's a bunch of zombies which pose no immediate treat. Maybe here I have to finally be resourceful. Maybe the mapper wants me to use these zombies to distract the combine. So I lure the zombies up to the outpost waiting for the firefight. But: there's no-one there. I can just walk straight through the city and the combine outpost. There is some howling from fast zombies, but they also do not show up.
After that I just literally ran past every encounter and finished the map within minutes without firing a bullet.
I realize my review tone is quite harsh but none of my expectations were met giving the single goal of this MOD: being resourceful. Currently the maps are just empty shells of 'what could have been'. However, this can be remedied. If the maps get a visual update they are good enough to be used again. But this time: think outside of the box! Come up with at least 3 ways to beat the encounters in these maps and make sure the player has the opportunity to use those alternatives!
It's short and simple, but it is good. Also, it doesn't quite live up to the name though.
This mod is decent. The goal seems to have been to make a less linear set of levels as in the levels are linear but there are a whole bunch of areas that are available to explore but almost all of these are dead ends and generally it is not particularly rewarding to explore them. It feels like the author ran out of ideas for these areas as they did seem to be quite formulaic. It just feels like it's spread quite thin.
Still, it's cool that the author tried to do something different, the lack of health makes encounters quite tense although some auto saves need to be changed so that they don't reload to a point one second before the player gets their head blown off by a shotgun.
In this release the mod is distinctly OK I think if the authors put some more work into story in order to add context and better rewards for exploring side areas it could be good.
A nice little exploration mod, with some improvements to the stock HL2 rolled in.