Reviews - Riverstyx

Of all the Freespace mods I have played, none has been able to draw me in quite as much as Blue Planet. Blue Planet manages to achieve a perfect balance between the traditional Freespace action we all know from the series, and an excellent story steeped in drama and mystery.

While War in Heaven has not been voice-acted as of this review, Age of Aquarius is, and while most of the voice acting (such as that of the main character, Samuel Bei, and his squadmates) is very good, some of it ranges from slightly over-acted to unintentionally hilarious. However, most of the bad voice acting is not enough to affect my opinion of the AOA much, since it's mostly from minor characters that you only hear from once or twice.

The new ships and weapons introduced in both War in Heaven and Age of Aquarius are every bit as fun to use as the ones in the vanilla Freespace games. All of them manage to be strong in their respective roles without being gamebreakingly overpowered (with a few intentional exceptions).

The soundtrack is also amazing in a way I simply cannot put into words. All of it manages to capture the moment in a stellar manner that simply must be heard to be believed. Downloads for the music can be found on the Hard-Light forums, and I highly recommend them.

All-in-all, Blue Planet is an absolute gem of a Freespace 2 mod, with a level of quality on par with games I would easily pay full price for. Any fan of Freespace or space sims in general must, I repeat, MUST play this one.

Cry of Fear is quite possibly one of the best horror mods ever to grace ModDB. It appears to be a spiritual successor to Afraid of Monsters, sharing several themes and a similar artstyle. However, it is done professionally enough to be its own title rather than a mod, enough that I would gladly shell out the price of a full title for it. The graphics push the archaic GoldSrc engine to limits I didn't even think were possible; in places it actually looks good enough to be a Source game.

The atmosphere of the game is genuinely terrifying and the story even more so in more ways than one. A word of warning: this is by no means a "feel-good" title or a title for kids. The story is very good, yet very disturbing and covers many real issues such as drug addiction, suicide, and murder. And that's not even going into what's in some of the notes you find scattered around. Do NOT play this mod if you are easily upset by such things.

I'm pleased to say that even though this is a V1.0 release, the gameplay is much less buggy than AoM was. As of about 3 hours in, I have found no game-breaking bugs and only a few minor visual and AI bugs that were fixed by restarting the mod.

However, the gameplay itself is not perfect and still suffers from a few of the problems I had with AoM. Ammo and health placement is still an issue, especially with one particular mid-game boss, however it is better than AoM. This is compounded by the fact that CoF has done away with standard saving in favor of a save point system. CoF team, on the offchance you read this: in future releases, please, for the love of god, give an option to turn that off in favor of save-anywhere. There's a reason modern games have all but done away with that system.

Despite my issues with it, the story and atmosphere of the game more than makes up for my nitpicks and the game still merits a 10. With a ton of gameplay in the single-player story, co-op, and unlockables, any horror fan will find a home here.

Afraid of Monsters is definitely one of the top horror mods on ModDB. The mod manages to hit a perfect balance between action, jumpscares, and psychological mindf**ks that manages to make the mod both fun and terrifying at the same time. I would recommend this to any fan of survival horror games. Aside from the atmosphere, the gameplay itself is fairly true to its Half-Life roots, with similar weapons, (albeit a nice variety to choose from, as well as occasionally forcing the player to choose between certain weapons. For example: do you take the shotgun and enjoy plentiful ammo at the cost of rate of fire and long range power, or do you take the Uzi, which occupies the same weapon slot, and enjoy massive power at all ranges at the cost of relatively rare ammo?) gunplay, and encouraging exploration.

All of that said, I really wish I could have given this a 10, but there are still a few glaring flaws. The worst of which was one game-breaking bug I found about halfway through the game: one particular elevator randomly stops working and if you try to enter it, it will freeze you in place until you reload a save.

Thankfully, that's the only major bug I've found. However, there are a few odd design choices that made me scratch my head a bit: ammo placement being a big one. Like a lot of survival horror games, you are almost constantly ammo starved, forcing you to choose your battles. However, this does not pair well with the occasional "zerg-rush" enemy ambushes, often creating brick-wall segments where your only choice is pretty much to cheat or reload a much earlier save.

Another flaw is not entirely the modder's fault: The Half-Life 1 flashlight is absolutely awful. However, I really wish the modder had planned for this, especially in the late game where there are pretty much no light areas.

Flaws aside, I love this mod and would recommend it any day of the week as one of the top survival horror mods on this site.

Underhell is a short, but oh-so-sweet HL2 mod that is quite possibly one of the best I've ever played. While considered a horror mod, the only real horror elements in this installment are in The House area, which I am perfectly okay with because to be quite frank, it's plenty scary enough to be its own game. Any fan of Silent Hill, Amnesia, or horror movies like The Grudge owes it to themselves to spend a little while exploring the house, especially after nightfall.

The main part of the mod plays very much like the action parts of FEAR or similar FPS games. The gunplay appears to be going for a more realistic feel than Half-Life 2 and it takes a little getting used to, but once you get the hang of it it feels fast and responsive. I do recommend jacking up the mouse sensitivity a little bit however, as the default sensitivity feels a bit too sluggish. All of the guns featured look, sound, and handle nicely, with a wide range to choose from to boot.

The only real complaint I have about this mod is that some of the voice acting sounds a bit off, as if the actor is reading from a script in front of them and not really adding any emotion to the lines they're given. It's a small complaint though, and not enough to knock a point off for.

All in all, I had a lot of fun with this mod and I eagerly await the next installment. I fully expect great things from this team in the future.