Reviews - GeneralTrivium

Look at me, I am the Bad Cop now.

The maps are well made and great to look at aesthetically within scope. Absolutely no complaints about gameplay or player direction, and the Mapbase enhancements are tastefully used, though not quite used to their full potential. The differences between the difficulty modes is a really nice touch rather than HL2's standard enemy health/weapon damage changes. The custom music is very nice as well.

Overall, a solid small campaign made by a single dude, very very impressive. It doesn't try to do anything crazy or ground-breaking. Just a really solid short HL2 experience.

I want to give this mod a higher rating, I really do. The quality of mapping from a scale and detail point of view puts it at a 10/10, it's nearly everything else that drags it down.

For starters, having no sprint in itself isn't a bad thing... However when you have large sections of the mod focus on platforming, it is. Platforming in Source is already quite basic and a bit cumbersome, take away the sprint and it's just plain painful and un-fun.

Secondly, player direction is quite abysmal. I've been playing games for most of my life, and HL2 mods for over a decade, and I often got incredibly tired and frustrated simply trying to figure out what I need to do and where to go next. I did find out that I got stuck due to a bug in one area, where certain control pads wouldn't be activated until all the enemies in the area are dead, and one enemy must have somehow gotten stuck where they couldn't reach the player. One particular area where I got lost is in the garbage compactor area, which highlighted both the terrible focus on the wonky "parkour", as well as the lack of a clear path for the player to follow.

Now for the nit picky stuff. The subtitles aren't written very well, with numerous mistakes in many lines, and there is often dialogue that is said quite awkwardly, and clearly not written by a native English speaker. Why the voice actors didn't just fix it themselves when recording, I don't know, when most, if not all the voice actors seem to be native speakers.

In summary. Beautiful maps to look at, with mostly sub-par level design from a gameplay perspective, lot of player direction issues.

Very high quality, legit terrifying.

The presentation, atmosphere, and world building are all top notch. This is a MUST PLAY, however it does have its issues. If you're worried about spoilers, don't read point 4.

1. The lighting is clearly broken in some areas. Literally pitch black, can't see a thing, but it's clearly meant to be lit at least a bit due to some of the textures being bright, and nothing else. I had to mat_fullbright 1 just to navigate through some areas (and no, I'm not talking about areas where flares are available.)

2. It's possible to get yourself into a "no win" scenario, where the "monster" is blocking your path, and you have no way to safely get past them without being hit, and there being no health source nearby.

3. Had to use a walkthrough once because I got stuck, turns out I completely missed a prop lying on the floor of the gym that contains a key.

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MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
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4. It feels WAY too short, and feels like the devs gave up 3/4 of the way through and just said "Alright we can leave it there." You're meant to collect a series of items so that you can pilot a Snowcat out of the facility. But you can only get the second to last item, because as soon as you do you get blown out the window by an explosion, and then the game ends.

That's it, nothing is really explained, nothing is wrapped up, the game dangles a bunch of interesting concepts and mysteries in your face and then doesn't even begin to satisfy your curiosity.

What SHOULD have happened after the explosion is that you get up, explore another part of the facility and learn some more things, perhaps some shocking reveals or revelations, maybe even find a deranged survivor who babbles some incoherent nonsense that actually makes sense when pieced together. Find the last piece of the snowcat and potentially escape, with the twist being that you're a carrier of this "fungi" now, and that you're going to spread it to the rest of the world. Or perhaps give the player some other choice ending.

I want to give the mod a lower score on the lackluster of an ending alone, but it's such high quality otherwise I can't bring myself to do it. If it had its lighting fixed it would be even better.

Breathes new life into an old game.