Reviews - hardhead970

I give a 1 only because it doesn't even show up in Steam menu. How do you start this thing?

When Doom 3 first came out, I bought it and have to admit it was a sour experience. First of all, my meager PC could BARELY handle it. And that with the settings turned down. Couple that to the darkness/flashlight feature and I just gave up on the game. Sold the disk and that was that. Just recently I decided to buy it on Steam. That is, the BFG version. Of course it also comes with the original version (or close to it). I played through it and I kind of enjoyed it. I didn't see what the big deal was about it. Then last week I saw a video with this enhancement. So I went ahead and downloaded this and installed it with no problem.

I'm about halfway through and all I can say is WOW! It makes the BFG version almost comical by comparison. A big thank you for this!

I just decided to give this a whirl for old times sake. The last time I played this was in 2014 on a regular-ish but high end Dell laptop. Of course I had to turn down a bunch of settings and I played it on Easy mode. OK, it's 08/16/2022 now. I have a fairly powerful PC. So I installed game (no problems) and started out on Hard mode.

Here is my biggest beef and it's a game killer for me. The weapons are completely nerfed. I would love to hear someone, anyone say that they made it all the way through this on Hard. I wouldn't hesitate to say Bull Sh*t! LOL...

This mod on Hard makes Halo (any of them) on Legendary gameplay reasonable.

I admit that I had no idea about the stolen assets until after I had played the game. Had I known that I would just avoided it all together. However, that not being the case I'll give a quick review as if I had not known about the stolen assets or the Youtubers as voice actors. Lastly, I'm an old dude (still young at heart) in his mid-sixties and I still love to game. Online multiplayer's are a problem because I don't have the insect-like twitch responses that you youngsters still have. So be it.

Cons:
1- L.O.N.G. load up times between levels. One might think the game stalled...
2- I had to God-Mode through a few areas i.e., the underground garage with the big aliens + killer man-hacks and protecting the escape train against the Combine Gunships with the pathetic short-range Gatling gun with no cross-hair!
3- No cross-hair! Yes I know this is supposed to make Half Life more realistic but Half Life's gun ballistics and game-play do NOT lend themselves to this style.
4- WEAK *** weapons... W.E.A.K. The bullets are all made of tin. I admit to you all I cheated and pumped up their punch in skill cfg. Much more satisfying.
5- No navigation help. This is a particularly nagging problem in some of the larger levels. This is unforgivable.
6- Mr. Mustache! LOL...

Pros:
1- Voice acting was not as bad as many of you make it seem. No, it was not PRO-level but it wasn't bad. The guy who did the G-Man, all he had to do was put in more sibilance. He had the pitch and timbre closest to the original voice actor of ANY mod I have ever played. I'm willing to be corrected.
2- Story-line, non-canon. So what? It was still in the Half Life universe and it had some charm to it at times.
3- Being able to go prone and seeing your hands as you go up a pipe or grasp the edge of a ledge (a la Tomb Raider) was interesting to see in a Half Life game.
4- For all its faults (many many) this took some hard labor to produce. I kind of enjoyed it only because it was "some kind of" Half Life long mod. Worst game mod ever? Not even close...

Here's my two cents. Overall fantastic mod. Not an extreme do-over like the Cinamatic mod but introduces some very cool effects and tweaks. I really liked it!

The downside? What took so long? LOL... I'm being facetious here. I stopped playing halfway through ONLY because I am so sick of playing Half Life 2 and Episodes 1 and 2. After this, no mod will bring me back to original HL2 story. Curse you Gabe, err, Valve...

OK, so I played the game up to finding door #27 (I think). You know, code 777. Anyway, although yes there is "some" English incorporated, the size of the base and the running around you have to do I decided I'll leave it alone until a more thorough English translation is incorporated. I decided to keep the Zip file and the English titles on a USB storage for later use.

When going to uninstall Area51 I was given the not-very-pleasant surprise that it does not show up on the Uninstall option. It also does not show up on IObit nor Revo uninstallers! This is not good. What are they hiding? I dumped everything associated with the game. I even looked through the Registry and could find no mention of Area51... Am I being paranoid? Maybe, but this is unacceptable in this day and age. Yes, it's a beautifully rendered game but the "secret" install is B.S...

FIRST and foremost, hats off to your dedication and effort that I know you put into this. There are BIG parts of the game that deserve a 10 rating. Unfortunately, there are also parts that I would give a 3.

SPOILER ALERT!

The low points:
1- An overbright flashlight that you can't turn off.
2- NO flashlight and a pathetic flare gun.
3- HL2 has a rather dark gamma as it is. The darkness man...
4- The catacombs. Beautifully rendered but what a pain in the ***. I noclipped through this.
5- Underwater passageways. I can hold my breath longer than ANY HL2 in-game character. God Mode here.
6- The crane and container + TNT and Detonator level. Ughhh... Noclip again.

The BOSS fight was a MoFo. ONLY because of lack of "what's next?" In which order are you supposed to blow up the energy amplifier thingies... This is not really a Con but damn my man... LOL

I REALLY do hate using cheats and only as a last resort. Cheating always takes away from the game as intended and I believe that. However, you also took away some of the fun from me with your design decisions. At least there were no "move the little mirror just so for the lazer, move the little plate so the ball can drop down..." you get the idea. I hate that type of puzzle. That's on me.

These ratings are based on the fact that I'm an Old dude (relatively speaking) in his 60's now. I still love to game but I'm also on the short end of the stick and have a "real life" to attend too. When a game requires me to go back to a task over and over again to try and complete, yeah, I lose interest in it. Again, that's on me.

The HIGH points:
MOST of the game! Thoroughly enjoyed for the most part! Well done!

Beautiful mod! Very creative too. So why the 5 Rating? On the 3rd puzzle onward I had to keep going back to the pdf cheat sheet... Ugh. I guess I'm just not that bright, so be it. Once a game, even a potentially fantastic game becomes a "oh nooo, another puzzle", forget about it.