Reviews - pretty_ugly

Really nice short and sweet campaign. It feels like a real expansion pack for the main game.

Definitely a must play.

There's tons of potential here but it just doesn't have the oomph I expect from Quake 3. Weapons feel like peashooters. There's not much visual feedback when you shoot anything.

Enemies from Doom 3 don't fit Quake aesthetic... why not use Strogg or hell even Quake 1 enemies would have worked.

Maps look great and are totally in line with what you would expect from Quake 3 SP but the encounters are just your usual slaughterhouses with each new area having so many enemies to kill it's not even funny.

Amazing mod with tons of content.
It's cool to play through some of the old maps with new twists.

The original campaigns are pretty good as well and I had tons of fun going through all the new maps.

It does exactly what it says and I recommend it to every Duke fan.

Pretty fun mod. It's short and sweet just how I like it with loads of cool set pieces.

Feels like you're playing an official expansion for Half-Life.

Graphics and art are on par with Black Mesa. It may seem like a joke but the visuals are really tuned up here and it shows that with some tricks the GoldSrc engine can still shine.

All in all this deserves a play through from anyone who calls himself a Half-Life fan.

It does exactly what it says. Half-Life with a slight twist.

Very good campaign that feels pretty fresh throughout.
Love those little parts with cracks in the earth, kinda reminds me of Max Payne nightmares.

Having it's own soundtrack is also a very big plus and the tunes fit the levels like a glove.

Only downside is the reuse of certain tropes. Like do we need another train level with a twist? It's a small gripe from me, but I'd rather a completely new type of level. Though I understand there's always going to be some overlap with base game since they did pretty much every type of level possible.

All in all it's very solid piece of work that every fan of Blood should give a try.

A must play mod for any Blood fan out there.

There's just so many great ideas here that it never gets boring.

Only one thing that comes to mind is the overuse of explosions at certain points, but that's not really a downside.

Here's my thoughts after playing the first slice (with the recommend DX9 renderer). It's a mixed bag. Some things are nice while some not so much.

- The Duke model is just off. Looks nothing like I would expect Duke to look.

- The game is still in a very buggy state so random crashes, FPS issues and visual bugs are all there. I kind of expected this to be one of the things they would iron out first.

- The new voice lines are hit or miss but nothing that would break the game for me. The low volume of it all is probably the only issue I have. Hopefully the full release will have options to change volume of different elements. It all needs a bit of balancing.

- Big changes to some maps. Some of them are cool while some of them feel pointless and kind of detract from the experience. Lady Killer was one of the chapters that felt pretty much feature complete so changing big chunks or adding completely new parts seems just like flexing dev muscles. It's cool though since for people who tried the leak before it gives a new twist to it all.

- Some of the added areas seem a bit barren.

- The sprinkler puzzle area kind of ruins the whole point since you no longer see it happen in real time since you need to go over to the other side to activate it (well, you actually need to hurry up to see it work - on my first playthrough I missed it).

- The very first area that leads up to the elevator fuse puzzle completely threw me off. The key card is just laying on the table - having an NPC give it to you seemed more logical and less of a pixel hunt.

- The dark hotel area is now brightly lit. There is no reason to guide the NPC anymore and there is no point to getting the glasses upgrade either since you can see just fine.

- The new pool area is interesting but definitely needs some work. Now it's just a big sprint to activate whatever needs to be activated and then back out. Also a huge FPS drops here.

- The reflections in the final area are overall an FPS killer. I don't remember having any such problems in the original. Hopefully an optimization pass is going to be made for the final version.

Other than this, the demo is real fun and it's nice to see the progress as it's happening. Hopefully the devs will listen to the feedback and see this project through.

It has great potential and what is there so far is really promising.

The mod is decent. Most of the changes are so subtle you won't notice them unless you're really familiar with the game.

I figure this is good for an overhaul mod that wants to keep the vanilla feeling and just improve the base game.

There's definitely some more work needed to flesh this out a bit more.
The AI is still extremely stupid but I'm not sure how much modders can change this.
The water completely disappeared from some levels which is probably an oversight.

I finished the whole campaign and the nightmare levels with this and it was fun to replay the game.

Overall it's a good effort and I hope the author keeps at it and continues working on this.
It has potential to be really amazing. I definitely like the direction of this mod over Extra Crispy.

Awesome mod. Quality wise it holds up alongside the original campaign. You can tell a lot of work went into this.

There might be some downsides like the English voice acting not being the best (but it has it's charm), but you can look past that and still enjoy a very solid campaign.

My biggest complaint is the ArenA levels once you get the three suits - having to do the same level thrice feels like padding and then the next level seems to be designed in a way that you should be able to switch suits yet you can't (or at least I haven't found a way).

But that's probably just a me thing and I could have missed a clue or something.

Overall: 9/10, had a loads of fun playing Duke again and I recommend this to anyone who got that Duke itch to scratch.