Reviews - LordXamot(Cavou)

Makes HL2's combat feel like a modern game.

While it does follow the vague structure of what Episode 3 was intended to be like, it is warped by the wonderfully absurd, offbeat weirdness of Leon, making it a constantly entertaining experience akin to a Neil Breen movie. It's the kind of thing you have to understand what you're getting into before starting, or I imagine someone would be disappointed by it not feeling like an official high-budget Valve product from a decade ago. I have played Leon's previous mods and had become in-tune with their charming madness years ago. It's a kind of honest humor that I love, full of Leon's personality.

Because of this, the mod is full of questionable things; for example, Dr. Magnusson is living in a Japanese manor, rebels fly around shuttles literally right out of Star Trek, Dr. Kleiner is 'infected' by a headcrab without having one on his head and he rambles nonsense to Gordon, Dr. Breen is alive again, and there are modern cars and planes all over the place. Some of these anomalies are much more subtle than others, but throughout most of the game, much of it feels 'off' from what you'd expect from Half-Life in general in ways that aren't just because it's made by one person; it's like a Half-Life 2 fever dream.

It doesn't matter if parts of the mod were meant to be funny, or funny for the same reasons as intended. What matters is that it's fun, the maps flow well 90% of the time, the combat with the "more enemies" option is intense and balanced, the environments can often be really great and detailed across most of the very long run time. Despite likely being painful for a hardcore Half-Life purist to experience, I enjoyed it so much I can't possibly bring myself to give it lower than an 8/10. Besides, it is infinitely better than having no Episode 3 at all.

Adds to much more to the world of Skyrim, removing the problem the game had with a general lack of enemy variety considering the time you'd spend in the game. An absolute must-have mod.

Art.

Amazing and unique survival horror mod with good, logical puzzles that never get you stuck for too long, a constant feeling of helplessness and being watched, and never uses jump scares, making it one of the best horror mods out there, even better than Nightmare House 2. I greatly appreciated the semi-open exploration in this mod, which is something you don't often see in HL2 mods. The only downside of the mod is the rather short length, but the quality of the experience more than makes up for the length.

Extremely scary, but the story is too generic.