Reviews - QuiveringMan

Half-Life: Field Intensity is an example of a Half-Life mod done right. A new story, new experience and cool additions.

I think that like Blue Shift the game really shines in its portrayal of a person with relatively little importance in the grand scheme of things. Just a soldier trying to survive. The mods level design is what I particularly like, because it creates some nice enviroments: they look good, seem realistic, nicely tie in with the official games and even incorporate some pre-release and multiplayer stuff too. Speaking of pre-release stuff, this mod has a large variety of enemies: not only does it have all the Xen, Race X and Black Ops enemies it also adds unreleased enemies such as the Kingpin and (I believe) npc from Sven coop like the baby gargantua. The player gets to use all the weapons from Half-Life and Opposing Force (although some are sneakily hidden so watch out for those). The mod also introduces some interesting new additions such as a PDA which shows your current objective, thoughts of the main character and hints. It also adds something that I would love more mods would add - subtitles. Now lets get into some spoiler suff:
The story begins when the military arrives at Black Mesa and ends at the very end of the whole incident (when the nuke goes off). You venture throughout the facility and while I think some people might find the amount of fanservice in certain parts to be a bit too much I like it myself. When it comes to original characters I can see that the creators of the mod really wanted to do some funny references (like a reference to a certain L4D character).You meet several marines and scientists with new voicelines (I am no voice actor so I am not really in a position to judge but to me all of them sounded mostly the same - sometimes it was really weird when after their new voicelines played they spoke in the standard Kleiner or Duke Nukem voice). The main character who will be accompanying you through the story will be Kevin - your pal who speaks to you over the radio. Now this is a good moment to mention three things I actually dislike about the mod:
1. Kevin is voiced by Richter Overtime, who I and probably many others know from his YT channel. Because I know his channel and his voice is very recognizable every time Kevin spoke I couldn't help but think "O hey its Richter again". This also really started to **** me off at some point though I honestly have no clue why exactly.
2. The plot that is there, apart from the main story from the base game and it's expansions is, very typical (try to escape) and the plot twist, at least to me was very predictable and honestly I really would be surprised if someone didn't figure it out.
3. The length - this is really a personal issue of mine. I can understand if someone doesn't care, honestly I think even I wouldn't but for whatever reason I was just tired of the mod at some point, and even after I put it away for a day or two when I picked it up it just kept going and going and I was so glad when it was over, and at the same time I was pretty disappointed with the ending because it was honestly a bit wack.
Overall though this is a gem and I wish more HL mods were this polished with attention to detail etc. So here 8/10 because its not perfect for meh.

AlSo: please gimme option to play with old models because its just not the same without the mp5 and the glock ;P

I've played Residual Life and I have to say, while I understand where the praise might be coming from for me this mod has been an utter pain to get through. I played on medium and the enemies still dealt so much damage in contrast to the few medkits and ammo around. The enemy variety is also lacking since the main enemies you encounter through the whole mod are the Assassins and Black Ops soldiers (who wield M4 rifles with grenade launchers and sniper rifles), and thousands and I mean thousands of vortigaunts. While on the topic of enemies I have to mention that the game really doesn't know how to space them out. Sometimes there is nothing to do just empty small or large areas without any puzzles or enemies, and other times the enemies can't stop spawning and the amount of them makes me question whether I'm playing a Half-Life mod or some wave survival game. The level design also leaves a lot to be desired; when sometimes the levels are nicely done with attention to detail most of them are just large empty spaces or small labyrinths. Many of them also left me very confused as to where I'm supposed to go. On the topic of weapons there is less weapons then in the original Half-Life (unless I guess you get more in different routes) and some of them don't even work properly (e.g. pistol shots land below the crosshair). [Spoliers about the story comin up] The story was very strange and left me with so many answers. Some strange entity (I genuinely don't know if its G-man or someone else) talks to me at several points and it really tries to be spooky (and honestly I just roll my eyes at it). Apart from that there is no clear goal that I have? But that's when we get to the multiple endings. I can praise the devs for trying to do something that very few HL mods do, as far as I am aware, that being the multiple endings. But the fact is that sometimes to reach a different ending you can either go left or right and sometimes you have to go all Afraid of Monsters route and pick up several different keys or whatever to succeed. Note that most of the time you will either be shooting or just moving wherever you can to progress further, not knowing whether you unknowingly picked route A or B.
Overall this mod is ambitious, tries some interesting things, but the amount of enemies who just won't die no matter how many blasts from the shotgun to the head they receive and the confusing level design and story really soured my experience with this mod. Maybe I'll give it another go someday and maybe my opinion will change but for now I'm only giving it 4/10.