Comments - Mangatome

Look behind the sofa. :)

I've been planning the 'new' City 14 for a while. If I can make what I want, it might be cool.
Keep standing by ;)

Hi there, I'm Mangatome from France.

I really apreciated your mod, it's rather short, but really cool. You know, that was not too difficult, and it was clearly fun. Mapping was great, the cliff maps (before coming to the city) were almost valve-like. Great job !
So, gameplay was good, fast zombies are getting you mad by coming to the city ;) (very nice mapping in the city, too, by the way). Sometimes, maps are pretty huge, but nothing really happens in there (except fast zombies). I would enjoyed some puzzles.

Sound was OK, too, but there wasn't enough music IMO. HL2 has great ones, you can use them more.

Graphics 9, Sound 6, Gameplay 9. I enjoyed it a lot :)

It's true that difficuly is sometimes very rough, but it's worth keep on trying ! Go on to the easy mode, get a quick save or auto save where you had many health points, and keep on playing. This is great.

It's amazing how well you summed up everything I hate in my mod.
About the plot, yes it's crappy, but as a noob in moding, I absolutely don't know how to tell the story I would tell. How to tell "the character you're playing through has lost any memory, because is sort of another manipulation of the G-man to defeat Dr Breen's former HQ in City 14" ? How to show why and how Dr Breen screwed up a whole city ? I dunno...
Moreover, I would have put the mod into a real city (and not a kind of... nothingness like where it is), but hey, i'm alone, i'm poor in moding...
One day i'll make this great, or at least i'll try.

Ok, hello to the dev team, here is my review, a bit long perhaps, sorry for that.

WARNING ! SPOILERS AHEAD !

Level Design

The 15 maps are incredibly well designed. I really enjoyed walking, driving through these. And I loved the

jungle/rainforest environnment, great tree models ! Although the maps were pretty linear, there were a lot of great ideas within, like the map where you have to get 2 keycards, using a boat, in order to open a gate to
follow your road with your jeep.

I just noticed some minor bugs, and a very major one :

minors :
-when the jeep gets out of fuel, if you 'use' the gas pomp around, you may die just after. I don't know if it's

actually a bug, but the first time I die it felt strange.
-in the 'huge' first jungle-jeep-map (which is outstanding by the way), i've had a little issue, trying to shoot the combine helicopter from the little house with my bazooka, the skybox was pretty near me, so I couldn't shoot a rocket high, and make it crash behind the helicopter. Just wanted to let you know... ;-)
-very later, during the "halucinogen gas" nightmare, you jump into a little street where combats are going on (combine vs headcrabs vs civilians), and you fly to another nightmare. Nevertheless I managed not to trigger the scripted scene, by jumping directly from the window to the street. Indeed, the trigger will start only if you jump on the block behind you. I skipped that block, and I was stuck in that street, nothing happening.

major :
-the final map (the one when you kill Breen, not the credits) was full of bugs. It's kind of weird since the
other 14 maps have got a great optimization. So, when you manage to pass the bridge (it's pretty hard), you'll walk on a ground that will explode and kill you 9 times on 10 (and fill up the room with manhacks), even on easy mode. I was pretty annoyed, and when I came into the next room, the cinematic bugged and I saw Gman dissapear in front of me. Then corridor fell down (I'm sure you see what I mean, everything is exploding, you're chasing Breen and Gman). So I tried to go into the elevator which went up, and I had the very beautiful bug of being into the void (when you're not in a skybox, the world sticks on the black). So I managed to go into the next room (without noclip, yeah ! ^^) and go to the final bossfight (chasing breen). Pretty hard challenge too, you really have to rush in order to kill Breen and GM before they escape downstairs. I believe it's impossible to succeed doing so for the first time, you have to see by yourself that you must sprint and kill them in the stairs, then escape in order not to be burned, and so on.

Another thing, I didn't realised how the jungle turned up to the strider-city, the change was very fast ! This can be found elsewhere in the game, environnment changing happen very fast.

Cinematics

Cinematics were pretty well directed, a good Tomb Raider feeling in these. They were useful, but some were very long. For example, the one in the jungle map, with 3 combines coming up from a big door, didn't let me see them arrive. I'm not sure if it's a bad thing, but that was very creepy. Another cinematic made my very frustrated. When you first discover the jeep in a garage, after a great gunshot.

I forgot to kill a couple of soldiers, and I went into the garage. The cinematic started up, and the soldiers
came and shot me. Defenseless, I died, and the cinematic kept going on. I think you could make the player "god" during the cinematic, or disable the combines.

BTW, great intro cinematic, with the seagull. I loved it.

On-screen Tips / Plot / Storytelling

Text tips were most of the time pretty useful too, telling you what to do if you can't figure it out (and it may happen often). That's a problem I realised soon : the maps are so huge that you forget what you've got to do. That issue can also be found in Valve games (eg, in HL2, Water Hazard, when you gotta go in a combine garage to open a gate, I completely forgot what I was here for... am I weird ? ;-) ) so I think it's not really a problem. This is great actually. Anyway, during the first part of the game, tips are "narrator"-like, and suddently, at some point Gordon starts speaking to himself by using on screen tips. I didn't understood the change.
Err, by the way, I loved the comment "you didn't find the keycard because you missed it !". That was probably the most useful I've seen ! I laught out loud and I found the card just after !

Moreover, although your main plot is fine, storytelling is kinda weird, I had the feeling that puzzle/levels were linked without logic (for the story, I mean). The overall trip (coast->mountain->reactor) was pretty
logicful. When I came into the spaceship (hard to figure out that this was a spaceship, by the way) I had
already forgot since a long time that I had a satellite to destroy. So, the overall plot isn't enough introduced into the game in my opinion. Your mod is very very long, so we really come to forget the plot. Look at Episode One (which is about the lenght of your mod, congratulations!), when you're underground Alyx doesn't stop telling you "we have to go to the trainstation !". That's a thing you can think about IMO.

By the way, I reaaaaly loved the nightmare maps, big reference to Max Payne. Definitely a good feeling/mood in these.

Err, yes, althought the credits maps was great, I really did not understood the end. After the credits, another fight ? Why ? Well, OK. And after the garage, some civilian is speaking. I really don't get it, please explain ! ;)

Gameplay

Nothing to argue here, the mod is a great fun-packed thing that you HAVE TO play. It's definitely worth the 100mb download. Difficulty level is very hard (even in normal mode), you will surely last with less than 10 life-points. So when this come, the only thing I can do is to go to Easy mode.
So, difficulty is extremely well balanced, and it's a good challenge for people bored by HL2 "easyness". Normal mode is clearly harder than HL2/HL2:EP1's Hard Mode. And difficulty is very progressive, it's getting harder before the mountains (like told by the on-screen tips).

Another bug

While I'm thinking to it, the chapters in the "New game" menu never unlocked. Even when I finished the game, I couldn't start chapter 2,3 and so on. Bizzare. (my solution is the entity servercommand set "sv_unlockedchapters 2" and so on, but I think you know that).

Sounds

It was weird to find Max Payne's musics in that mod. Finally, all the musics are fine to describe your maps, so it's OK. Great ambiant sounds in the jungle, too.

Finally :
Just. Try. This. Mod.
A lot of great ideas. A good pack of eye-candy maps. Lots of fun and action.
Story is a bit thin, yes, but it is present and that's cool.
Many great scripted sequences.

So, I'll vote :
Graphics 8/10 (I count level design in Graphics. Outdoor maps are splendid. Indoor ones are small but cool.)
Sounds 7/10 (not very original to take sounds from other games, but it melts well)
Gameplay 9/10 (a lot of fun. 1 point of malus for the bugs and the -sometimes- annoying difficulty)

Great job guys, and thank you for this game ! Congrats again !

PS : i'm french so I don't guarantee the quality of my english...

Hi over there !

It's been a while since i've come here.
So to answer quickly to people who posted since my last post, here I go :
1) "i'm sure you'd agree that constructive criticism is fine, but isn't it annoying when some ungrateful sods complain about something that they've downloaded for free???"
- sure, constructive criticism is the first step for evolution. ungrateful complains ? well, I accept it, I'm not gonna say "hey, you don't like my mod ? STFU!". It really doesn't matter. There's lots of great and powerful comments, so that's just fine.
2) by the way, thanks to everyone's comment, i love to have review.
3) bugs : I know, it's very beta of course, and I've absolutely no time to fix it, and progress. I'm in a 2 year school that's preparing students to integrate 3-year-enginers schools, so it's pretty hard and time is running out.
But one day I'll restart working on this mod to make it great.

Thanks to all, keep on posting ! ;)

Mangatome.

@Stene, juste please try chapter 2. I feel it's a lot better than the part where you stopped.
Some day I'll learn mapping skills you refer to, because it's still great to make a mod and release it.

I'm definitely watching this ! :)

Definitely just great !

Ok, there's two blue portals in this level.
The first one is in the 'garage' (the room where the combine APC is) and must be desactivated by shooting the box at the ceiling where the ropes are leading to...

errr... sorry ?
what has going on ?

That's a small issue. You have to jump and couch in order to get in the vents behind the sofa...

Thanks for review, and sorry for the "support lag". It's been a while i haven't come here.
@krazedkaoz : try to launch the mod with console parameter...

It's so a shame that this is not a single player mod :(

I'm not sure I've understood.
Are you talking of "City 14" mod ?

'Cause I don't see what are the "Jail Escape" and " Rupicon" maps which are now out...

If you do speak of the City 14 chapter 2's map, you have to go into the garage with your boat.

Hum. Well, I'm forseeing bad mail... >_<

So bad that you didn't just played the second chapter. This one is better.

@redcoat : you should have a ventgrid to explode and go down the pipe. then another map loads (c14_m1b).

@aeron : that seem pretty weird. first try to rename the mod directory (cite 14 -> c14).
if it doesn't work, try to uninstall the mod, then reinstall it from ZIP file and add the gameinfo patch.

These screenshots are pretty wonderful.
Err, just a small thing, the woman's eyes are weird. But anything else is great !

Well, you have a vent grid to explode behind a sofa, go into the vent...

@redcoat : where are you struck ? First chapter ? Second chapter ?

@aeron : I've updated the gameinfo_issue.zip archive. you can re-download it here:
Codersite.free.fr

included in part two.

@Winterlord
You are forgetting something. In the Neterlands / Finland and so on you can speak many languages, like you said. You also said that we should do the same in France/Germany/... I agree, but you must know that it's hard for french people to speak many languages. It's a matter of culture, I guess. But, in the shools we must learn at least 2 other languages than french : english and another (spanish, italian, russian ...).
But it's impossible to increase that number of learnt languages because of our impossibility to speak many languages like you. Sorry :)

But if I could help to translate subtitles to french, well I really would. :)

Seems pretty exciting. :)
I'm gonna watch this mod too.

@Winterlord

I do understand what you mean. I sure do, because I've learn english a lot with reading in english, playing in english, watching movies in english, programming in english (of course) and so on.
Playing BM:S in english isn't a problem for me.
But a great part of the HL's fans are not english-speakers. And if there's not translation to any other language (even in the subtitles, like Valve did in lost coast), it may be a mistake that could put a great part of the HL's communauty apart.

These shots are very very wonderful. :)

Damn, I love that shot !

Looks like the map will be bigger than the original one... :)
But that's so great !

I love that screenshot.
It definitely looks like a tram station.
Really good work.