Reviews - DeadwaterGaming

The voice actors in this mod are amazing, Deadwater Gaming is my favorite YouTube channel.

This mod gets an unnecessarily bad rap.

Everything past the opening sequence (from Gman's intro speech to the teleport scene in Kleiner's lab) is GLORIOUS, in my humble opinion.

The gameplay and firefights with the metropolice are incredibly fun and well thought-out. The weapons feel punchier and deadlier than their release version counterparts, and the models don't look half bad either.
I dare say I enjoyed the combat sequences in this MUCH more than I did the combat sequences in release Half-Life 2. Which is really saying something, considering that release HL2 was already a masterpiece as it is.

The art style is beautiful and much more pleasing to me than the release version of HL2. The developers did an amazing job at recreating the Beta style.
That's one thing about the beta art style that's so eerie and magical, that fact that it somehow manages to be more bleak and depressing whilst being VERY colorful and vibrant. The off-whites, grays, blacks and blues of the release art style are replaced with deep reds, greens, and yellows.
Quaint Eastern-European buildings are replaced with huge looming American architecture. Skyscrapers, factories and corporate complexes all loom overhead, jutting into the sky, making you feel incredibly small and inconsequential (exactly the way the Combine want you to feel).

The overall atmosphere is haunting, beautiful, and palpable. And this mod does a great job replicating this in near Valve-quality past the opening sequence.
The HEV suit also looks amazing, as do the other custom assets and models (besides the manhacks, which look cool on the up-close renders but in-game look like they don't even have blades attached to them at all).

Those are all the reasons I love this mod. But of course, there are always negatives, especially in beta (no, I mean beta as in the early version of a mod, not Beta HL2).

The opening sequence was rough, really rough.

The largest issues with the opening sequence are both the level design, and the length.
The level design in the opening sequence is really weird. It's very difficult to tell where to go, and there are many pathways and doors that look perfectly accessible but are not. There are a lot of times where the level design doesn't even make sense (i.e. at one point you're supposed to run TOWARD a metrocop during a raid / slaughter).
There are many things that lead you to believe you're going the right way (aka lighting hints, events that funnel the player into certain corridors etc.) but many times they are misleading, and the real "way out" or true path is in a really awkward or strange place.
The atmosphere didn't really kick in for me during the opening sequence, I think I was probably too focused on the confusing layout to pay attention. Many of these level design flaws are absent from the rest of the demo though, as everything past Kleiner's lab played like a dream for me.

The opening sequence is EXTREMELY long (and uneventful). I'm not sure if the original Beta was supposed to be like that and they were just being true to source material or what. Point is; it was too long.
In the amount of time it takes you to get from the trainstation to the teleport at Kleiner's lab, you could have made it to the end of Red Letter Day in the original HL2. This coupled with the poor level design makes it kinda frustrating to play through, and not very immersive.
But like I said, don't let this deter you from the rest of the game. Everything past the opening sequence is really really enjoyable.

The voice acting, for the most part, was mediocre. I'm sure these voice lines aren't final anyways, but it's worth noting.
The Gman's intro speech was meh, it wasn't terrible but it wasn't that great either. IMHO they should have gotten JapaneseBushBaby to do him.
I know that sometimes Beta mods use existing voice lines recorded by Valve that were recovered from the Beta leak so I'm not entirely sure what's custom and what's original material, but I'll give an overview of the voice acting anyways.

Barney definitely needs some work. Pretty sure he said "Garden" instead of "Gordon" multiple times during his intro. His voice is too deep and he doesn't have enough whine. He's missing a couple mannerisms as well.

Kleiner is spot-on, so much so that I had trouble telling if the voice acting was custom or the aforementioned leaked voice lines. No complaints here.

Mossman was almost as good as Kleiner, but was a little monotone during the teleport incident sequence.

I saw some of the other reviews saying that the graphics weren't good, but I honestly don't know what they're talking about. It looked great in my eyes (save for a few spots in the opening sequence that had some janky lighting issues). I definitely think there were a few spots that looked a little more dated than release HL2, but that just gave it more atmosphere for me.

All in all I enjoyed my time with this mod and I wish the developers best of luck! Don't give up!