Typical disaster is a small single player episode for Half-Life. It tells a story about Gordon Freeman's job in one of those dangerous top-secret research facilities.
Its one the most repetitive and boring maps I’ve played. There is not much in terms of exploration/secrets/length or even gameplay. Xen is done and very much out of the ordinary of what we’ve seen come before. You just have to make some tough jumps onto floating small metal parts… excuse me? There is no way something so light weight could float in Xen… Xen has reverse gravity, only a heavy object will float in the air… so why am I jumping on small floating pieces of human machinery that was taken to Xen by accident? and the part before it was even more ordinary.
The gameplay is boring, there isn’t much enemies and the mod ends before we really got to see anything interesting or fun.
4/10
Typical Disaster lost levels is the opposite, it takes solid level design and actually fun and quite challenging gameplay. Theres one little puzzle that just requires common sense and some exploration the level design is of a attention to detail in a 3 small storage areas that look grandeur than they are because of some blocked off areas. Theres even a secret here if you do some really tricky jumps onto those crates in the ceiling rail... if you give the player a sense of things happening before you got there or interrupting something big, you give the player the sense that things are grander then they are. Half-life can do that well to make you care, rather than investing in characters. You get only a tiny glimpse of aliens and the mod ends pretty quickly so its not Emo's big comeback. It is however a big step in the right direction.
lost levels 6/10