Reviews - FlippedOutKyrii

Hell of a romp through Black Mesa Once more!

After 25 years of the Half-Life Modding scene reliving the Black Mesa Incident, it's still amazing the community can come up with new aesthetics and scenery to give everyones favorite Government Blacksite new life! And The World Machine brings that in spades!

In one of the rare mods where the player goes deeper rather then climbing to the surface, the levels themselves become far more claustrophobic and borderline Star War's tech-wise as every floor brings the player closer to the super computer which I ain't going to spoil, but it certain took heavy inspiration from a certain film that was a delight to see in action!

Gameplay is tight! With health and batteries in tight reserve even if the player searches for secrets with ammo even tighter, making every bullet count against increasingly overwhelming odds!

At 13 levels, it's long enough to offer a few hours of play but not long enough to overstay it's welcome. Despite everything, the only negative I can give this is the endless blaring sirens that take up most of the audio backdrop to the point of being obnoxious.

Give it a whirl, only YOU can unplug this Machine!

What an... uh... experience?

ESHQ is up there with perhaps the longest mod's for Half-life I have ever played, rivaling even Residual Life and the Official GoldSrce Half-Life releases in their entirety in terms of longevity, it's a monumental feat of modding that could only come out of Russia.

That being said, it was also an endurance test of patience and willpower not to abandon it.

The version I played was obscenely unbalanced in terms of difficulty, with combat being a cakewalk due to the damage the M4 can dish out and how little health every enemy in the game can take, but most of the deaths come from scripting and cheap traps for newbies that ensures there was no way they could have surmounted the obstacle on the first try.

Storywise, it's unfocused and I seemed to loop around from base to city environments with no rhyme or reason. Mostly basic in terms of detailing each level is 3-4 times longer then the average half-life map and makes up for the lack of details with some pretty damn impressive scripted events and with 70+ at the mods disposal your patience will probably wear thin before you even get out of the city. Especially as there are oven a dozen times where the method of progression was just obtuse even with all the pointers and spray paint to dictate where to go.

What it really boils down to, ESHQ is almost too much of an endurance test even for seasoned Half-Life fanatics and enthusiasts and borderline unapproachable for the casual player.

Yet, it's also one of the most impressive mods I have played in terms of scope and size with events I have yet to see replicated anywhere else.

This is a hard one, as someone who collected all but 12 documents and 60 powerup vials (that don't do anything other then act as collectibles?) but suffered a gravity bug beating the Super Mario level resulting in me getting low gravity for the rest of the mod and getting softlocked out of the last map I can't deny this isn't a mod I'm gonna soon forget but just can't in anyway, shape or form recommend this to any of my friends.

Obviously the creator is open to criticism as even I have been featured in the credits, so what I would recommend is to CHOP down the size by at least half, there are a ton of superficial and filler levels that could have been jumped entirely and the obscene amount of times I've lost my weapons could be stamped out, seriously, screw that.

Of course, this is easier said then done, but I do hope the next project they partake in is MUCH smaller in size. Seriously, you guys are pro's committing to this for so many years with so many updates.

Also get rid of the instagib for dead bodies, a Beretta popping a body with one shot is just dumb.

I'm happy to finally see the Counter-Strike Nexon assets used in a SP mod but at the cost of it being a Counter-Strike Nexon mod lol

The levels are well designed pacing and gameplay-wise but lack in a lot of detail. Use of weapons is pretty nuts with a large variety at yoru disposal but the RNG nature of them dropping makes the combat a breeze and not even remotely challenging when they keep giving you Flamethrower ammo.

Not a bad time-waster by any means and a feat to see so many assets ported over, even if one of the enemies is a ripe pain in the ***, seriously that Cloaking Zombie can go straight to hell!

Outside of a nasty crash bug I was able to circumvent with some file deletion, this is a pretty solid if not flawed mod!

As someone who adored Poke 646, it was great to see another take on those Aesthetics with a much higher attention to detail and larger scope. The use of textures is fantastic and the industrial level design is very intricate.

Sadly, it's pretty samey, with a good half of the mod taking place in a Sewer setting before stretching it's legs in a beautiful hospital and run-down apartments, and the use of the HECU feels weird as they are pretty far from Black Mesa so their containment procedures seems to be of service to gameplay more then anything else.

Also worth noting is the difficulty spike near the end when the HECU become an enemy combatant and without armor the firefights are extraordinarily difficult given the close-quarters combat.

Regardless, Urbicide is a fun little romp and I can't wait for more, if there is any! :D

A great feat from a single modder but not without a lot of fallbacks.

eXperiment starts off simple as clockwork, you arrive in an underground facility and now, find out something "Got Out" and now you gotta follow suite while fighting and evading an army of mutatating Hazmat Crews.

That's it. Even by the standards of a Half-Life mod the storytelling both in-lore and environmentally wise is very minimal. I was hoping to find scant logs here and there but even those were oddly non-existent so the idea of what is happening and where you are is either up to the player to decide or entirely not important.

Gameplay-wise, there are a lot of new weapons at the players disposal and there are a few new enemies to fight back against. Most are the melee variety and appear from every nook and cranny, meaning no place in the map is truly safe for the player to hide and mid-way they start coming at you with guns and sadly these aren't nearly as fun to fight.

From an art perspective, the levels are masterfully crafted and textured but they are astonishingly scant in rational and detail, with most levels looking the same and you never get a real sense of progression despite the fantastic shadows and lighting effects. Speaking of which, the maze-like navigation is head-ache inducing and makes zero sense for a facility unless it's trying to be the prison from the Horror Movie "Cube".

The real standout for me however, is the encroaching tension in the sound-design and fantastic music which reminded of the environmental cues in "The Suffering" soundtrack inspired by the levels the tracks played in, with most of the tunes implying heavy banging of pipes and pounding on steel doors.

Regardless, the mod still has a lot of problems that make it hard to recommend.

Firefights are astonishingly arduous and almost physically painful to endure, with your health easily depleted in a matter of seconds from a single grunt and your visuals are thrown off with every bullet, meaning just two could send you into a seizure making it nigh impossible to fight back. This is especially awful in the final leg of your escape in the last level where you have to fight off over 2 dozen Assassins!

It's also just WAY too long, with the winding maze-like levels easily trapping even the most resourceful of players and even I myself took about 8 hours to reach the end!

eXperiment is a fantastic modding achievement but unless the combat gets a bit of a patch I can't go higher then a 6. Give it a go if you are curious but be warned, it can be quite hard to navigate!

An absolutely wicked and insidious little mod that serves to be one of the most memorably grotesque mini-campaigns I've played in recent memory.

Great weapons, amazing level design and wonderful pacing that is just the right length. I only wish the zombies had more unique textures and models but otherwise it's a fantastic and absolutely unique Half-Life 2 mod!

Great to see this finished but it's sad to see the level design both detail and gameplay wise really began to taper off as it progressed.

I can't deny there is a lot of fun with the extra zombie types but they feel SUPER under-utilized during the zombie rush arena's and to my disappointment they just kind of pop into existence for the most part and are promptly abandoned midway to fight combine and synths and the sheer volume of excess supply crates means combat is never really challenging.

Many levels are also too narrow such as with the airboat and the puzzles are pretty annoying. The only thing that really engaged me was the exaggerated Uncle Ruckus character that I have to admit got a few good laughs out of me.

Not the worst I've played but definitely not much of an improvement over the initial demo sadly. I do hope the mapper learns and improves with time, though!

Gives Metastasis a run for it's money in the Combine Architecture department. Really goes hard with the Oppressive Aesthetic we know and love and even creating some new ones that feel just at home in the Half-Life Universe.

Short, but damn is it sweet!

A short intro and nothing but ear-splitting screaming and about 20 broken maps that fail to load.

The cherry on top is ear-wrenching screaming replacing the "Exit" functionality, definitely a troll-mod.

Properly accommodates circle strafing, monster infighting and has been ported to every version of Chasm there is. What's not to love?