After the "Assault on Roswell" you destroyed the Alien Virus. at least you think you did !, it seems you yourself were infected and have become a carrier of this mind altering disease and are the unwilling host bringing the virus to your place of birth Portown...
This review may contain spoilers
**DISCLAIMER***
This mod is very well known into the modding history, because of its sometimes insane difficulty and some annoying parts including the fact that you can’t free quick save (as you are penalized if you don’t have gem-saves), so you have to collect many gems saves if you want to play it “legal”…. So it is hardly recommendable if you want to enjoy the mod and play without any troubles that do the procedure that says Wraith777!!!! I did and I’m glad I did it, I could only that way finish the mod and actually enjoy it.
—————————————
So once the disclaimer has been stated, let’s review this mod
Riot in Progress (RIP) is possibly one of the hardest and less valued mods in HL1 modding collection history. Possibly because its general layout is intended for advanced players with so much experience into the HL1 mod gameplay.
Also for many, and I can count myself in there. The worst decision of this modding team was to mess with the player freedom to do quick saving without being health penalized. I can say for sure that really sucks, and for many, many gamers that little fact was the main one to make them hate this mod.
That’s being said, yeah, I can say this mod is one of those that you’re gonna love it or hate it. In my own experience, I just loathed it when I played it 10 years ago!! Of course back then I definitely was a rookie mod player and a terrible one!!! So the dynamics of RIP just didn’t work for me… Anyway the bad taste and the feeling of one day wanting to complete the mod properly, and I mean by that just following some video-walkthroughs for some help, reminded until now that I did that and completed the game. Which by the way for me it was only playable in the HL1 WON version.
This is also a very, very long game, easily you are going to be playing this for more than 3 hours in a row, so be warned. And also as I said previously, you will surely need some help via walkthroughs, so here I thank the Youtube User “TheMegatonBomb” for his fantastic effort of uploading its 53 episode walkthrough!!! Without it, I’d be just fried as heck into the mod.
Now, the story of the mod is quite cool and picture the old boring G-Man into a very spooky annoying creature that we just will have to kill at the end. Also, another thing that I just loved from this mod were those fantastic custom weapons available and overall the all-new enemies models, it’s quite impressive how they transformed the old classic HL enemies into these new cool ones.
The mod is also as like to categorize it, one of those of the “Old School” HL1 mods. And by that I mean, is one of those mods which heavily rests on retrieving keys or key cards puzzles, and a lot of backtracking is included. In personal I just hate backtracking, and possibly here in RIP that’s the main reason for you to get a proper walkthrough to just don’t get confused and lost into one of the 29 maps this work has!!! Yeah, we have 29 maps in RIP…
Also, we found plenty of secret areas where they just prize the player by discovering them with some handful ammo and health and armor items. I don’t know, but from my point of view that just feels nice, I mean to be a gamer and found a secret area with useful items is just a nice incentive to explore the cool maps.
Now, the overall mapping in this mod is just pretty nice. I just loved some maps, and they also have this sweet “Old School” layout and texture looking, they’re very from the early 2000’nds era, some of them are only comparable to some in the classic CS, or the fantastic “Brain Breed” mod. I loved many maps in this mod, like the initial Portown Bank, and overall the whole Portown urban areas. And the Portown subway was a really cool map and how it connected other crucial areas of the mod via this subway!
Here I also remember there is one of the hardest maps in HL1 modding history, and I’m talking about the Portown sewer system, if you make it until that point I recommend you to be very patient, as you will require a good walkthrough to solve the puzzles, and be patient with “Luther”, yep, that annoying friend you will need to escort to his house outside the sewers…
Also, the battles in there are quite cool and they’re always exciting. And here I also recommend you to play this mod in an easy skill. as the normal skill is very challenging and the hard one well is just a madness I don’t recommend you to try.
Overall this is a fantastic mod that has some very impressive maps. In my opinion, I say yeah, it can be very annoying at some points, but if you dare to play it and don’t get frustrated and just work it out and play it, it’s definitely worth it as you surely will get entertained. Now that I'm thinking about it I did get entertained, I overall enjoyed the mod, and it was nice to have many maps in it until you reach the end.