Random 17 news

I love Half Life 2. Who doesnt? Well a few people, but my opinion obviously counts for more than theirs. Anyway. I absolutely adore Half Life 2- but my very favorite part is City 17, both before and after the rebellion. The detail placed into the maps, the NPC interactions, the unique dystopian architecture: it blew me away. So when I heard that there was a mod by edvincent being produced that planned to recapture this feeling, I was very excited, to say at the least. Does it live up to expectation though? Let's find out!

MAPPING:
The mapping is one of the mod's strong points. It really fulfills the promise of recapturing City 17's feel- it felt almost like a Valve-quality map, and it duplicated the architecture perfectly. The whole area felt well set-up, not unlike the Mission Improbable maps, where everything seems to naturally flow together. The old tenements and decaying structures really brought me back to the times of playing through Half Life 2 for the first time, and there's nothing more I could've asked for.

MAPPING SCORE: 10/10

STORYLINE:
In my opinion, the mod's weakest point, as there simply isnt one. Granted, this is not a long mod- in fact, it all fits into a single very large map if I'm not mistaken. It was only maybe 20 to 30 minutes in length, and while that's not much time to make a story, I think that at least a very basic premise could've been constructed. There was vague mention of getting past the snipers by NPC's, and a general feeling that you were heading somewhere, but that's more of an objective than a story. Mods like Eye of the Storm, Mission Improbable, Outpost 16, etc. have pulled off storylines in about the time, and this mod is rather lacking of one unfortunately. I regret this, as a background story would've been the icing on the cake for Random 17.

STORYLINE SCORE: 4/10 (Not a 0 due to vague mentions of one and gameplay length challenges)

GAMEPLAY:

Like the mapping, this is very similar to the original HL2's, but with some changes, both for good and for bad. There seemed to be a few too little enemies. I often felt like I was going through a map partially finished with developement, but missing a few enemies. While it gave several nice quiet moments to reflect, in fact it gave a lot, a lot of the places would've been more exciting with a few more Combine thrown into the mix. On the other hand, it has a very interesting puzzle at the beginning of the mod that I haven't seen done before and found fun, though unfortunately this is the only significant puzzle in the gameplay.

GAMEPLAY: 6/10

CONCLUSION:
In the end, Random 17 is a fun mod; its mapping is very good, its gameplay is decent, and its only truly lacking area is the story, which half of mods don't bother with anyway. It's not a stunning, groundbreaking mod, but from the sound of it, it wasnt meant to be- which is quite acceptable. There is a certain art to making modifications based on the Half Life 2 world, and this nails it right on. If you enjoyed City 17 or just Half Life 2 in general (And god help you if you don't *holds up bloody knife*) then this mod is definitely worth a play.

FINAL VERDICT: 6/10
Link to Random 17: Moddb.com

Hope you enjoyed the review!

Mr.Walrus