Reviews - DJPredator

Nice little bundle of all old mods, not by the best and the most honest creator sadly.

Review done, now for the main part.

My comment about certain thing was getting deleted all the time so here it is in reviews, which author can't delete by himself.

Original comment from Swankest:
Mod Ancient Showdown was removed because its content violated the terms of moddb as well as the terms of this page under which I allow other members to upload mods to this page. In the event that an attempt is made to reupload the mod to moddb in the future, I will be forced to resolve the matter with the server administrators.

My comment which was deleted 10 times:
But uploading the so called "original" versions of Madhouse or Castle Wackersberg without the permission of Sabatu or Cyborg is ok right? Surely it doesn't break any ToU :) (I absolutely love, how you deleted Cyborg as the author of "original" Castle Wackersberg even though he is still the author of the scripts, cause without them, the FC wouldn't even work lmfao). Grow up kid!

Deleted 10x (lets see how far we can go) (ask me for screenshots if you wanna see it)
Loving the censorship.

Removing Ancient Showdown is something that "needs to be removed", but uploading mods without permission of other moders is apparently ok.

Gameplay
If you like the gameplay of Amnesia, this mod will definitely not disappoint you. What I can give a big plus for is that there is lack of oil and sometimes it is really limited, thus getting the oil management into action. What can annoy me about some mods is the incredible amount of oil where tinderboxes are given no room. Due to the player losing a lantern in one area, they have to help themselves by lighting torches to light their way, but as we know, players don't use them anyway. I also enjoyed the part where the player goes back to corridors they've already walked once and experiences a bit of nostalgia.

Story
The story is nothing particularly special, although it can be considered very well crafted. The story of the black mirror could be considered a figment of the imagination, which gives the whole mod a dark touch that is present in the mod from beginning to end. Thank goodness Sabatu resorted to notes that are easy to find and makes it easy to make sense of everything. Simple.
In Madhouse or Wackersberg mods, you might not have found a journal that might have been important to understand but since it was considered hidden (so the player wouldn’t be overwhelmed by literally a page of words). I'll elaborate on this in another paragraph.

What I consider important, is that if the player is able to make sense of the story, then it’s not really bad thing to add more notes and the author doesn’t have to make them hidden. The player can just skip them, if the notes are not interesting enough for him. The gradual uncovering of more information about other family members that we knew nothing about at the beginning and then begin to find out that they were involved was very well executed. The ending was also well done and was fitting.

Atmosphere + level-design
There's really no need to talk about level design here. Sabatu has once again shown that he can overcome his limits and create something that speaks about his abilities. The linear style fits this FC as most mods where the level design is more opened and the player has a choice where to go, there is a much higher chance of the player getting confused due to poorly designed levels and a lack of information for the player to know where to go next, which would result in the continuous wandering throughout the rooms over and over again without any progress.

There are also many things to say about the environment but one thing is clear. It is extremely rich and few FC's have such detailed environment, which makes it is also very believable and the player can imagine what could have happened after reading through various notes, which he would have found by now.

Czech Translation
There are a number of bugs in the Czech version that should be fixed, but I won't lower the points because of this, as most people will download the English version.

I would like to give my opinion on the "solution" mentioned by SwankestCZ, in which he says that the player is overwhelmed with information and therefore Sabatu repeats the same problem that has been seen in other mods.
I have one problem with this though. Look, in original wackersberg story made by Swankest, we have the character of Helen, who Niclas goes to rescue. However, during the mod we learn NOTHING about her, since there is our crappy "solution".
Hide the Helen in the side storyline (secret notes which were hidden so nicely, that I haven’t found a SINGLE one. Yes, you read that right.) which made me not care about her, as I didn’t know a word about who she was, what she did etc. There wasn’t single reason for the player to go to the castle and rescue her.

I'd like to know how to sympathize with a character I know nothing about just because the letters are hidden for the sake of people not being OVERWHELMED BY INFORMATION, which is just dumb. Nothing else. I’m sorry but WHY. That’s like trying to cut a story short in a book for the sake of people not getting overwhelmed by the story but in consequence of people being confused. Some people, myself included, aren't going to cut every corner just because of some hidden notes. If I don’t care about some notes, I’m just going to skip them. With hidden notes, I expect them to be not as relevant and perhaps just to have a supplementary story that only helps to fill the main notes but it’s not necessary for the sympathy of the characters and just helps to complete the story (by this I mean information about locations, additional information about characters etc.)

Wackersberg is an example of poor story-telling, where most players don't care who Helen is and have no reason to save her. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the story but because of these problems, it was somewhat confusing.
I rather put an example here from Wackersberg 1.5 that is available for download on different site, where one diary is 7 WHOLE PAGES. If something is the definition of overwhelming the player with information, it’s this one

Uploaded without agreement from other authors(maps, scripts). Also a nice way to demotivate other people. :)

In other words: Stolen

Don't reupload and don't remove negative comments talking about certain things, it's not cool.
And doing this for the community does NOT justify reuploading.

Disclaimer (as of August 2, 2021):
Due to recent events of everyone being called agressors, bad guys and what not, this review is completely unbiased. This is a honest review with my own opinion on this mod.

Story:
Wife that got mad because of some closet? Come on, you can do better than that.
If you would do something much longer with explanations, more story, more levels than fine but this was to short to have any meaning.
With more maps you could have more dialogs (not like there were any), more notes to justify why was the closet cursed.
This was a really desperate attempt to make a CS in my opinion.

Gameplay:
Nothing you would be amazed of. Just walking and reading.

Maps:
They are ok but they would need more care. After all, you can take inspiration from countless very well made and detailed maps.

There were some mistakes in the English translations but nothing that couldn’t be updated and fixed

Final Verdict:
This mod is pretty pointless without deeper meaning. I would advice that this mod should be longer than two short maps. Author should take more time to revise everything (story, maps, notes etc.)

I can say that this mod seemed completely useless without any value.

I can’t recommend this. Go play something else.

10/10 would not recommend