Reviews - thedeadcamper

To start with:

It's solid and very well-polished. The game feels like it's in HL1 and hits the nostalgia vibe it was going after. I definitely enjoyed the environments and the challenge it threw at me, as someone looking for Half-life content.

There are some gaffs with how it handles its new characters, and it ends very abruptly. Also, the difficulty has some pacing issues, sometimes throwing the player into really hard battles with very little warning.

However, overall, despite that, it's a solid "8". It's not perfect, it may not be as memorable as other mods, but it succeeds at what it aims to do.

And that's reason enough to play it.

Very well thought out mod. This hit the Half-life 2 nostalgia spot.

I liked that it had little achievements and little bits of personality here and there.

I really enjoy the amount of effort that went into a small project like this.
The developer commentary was a nice touch and hopefully was fun to add.

This is a great mod adventure.

My only major critique is that bunny-hopping mechanics and death pits don't mix well.

Also, the voices for the friendly bears are a little *too* grating. Maybe removing some of the more annoying sounds would improve it (particularly the falsetto 'whilololol' is too loud).

Otherwise, this mod is amazing.

It feels like a solid extension on Half-life 2, with elements borrowed from Lost Coast.

The architecture of the church itself is fun to look at and the gameplay is simple enough that it doesn't overwhelm the player. It's perhaps a bit too simple; there wasn't a lot of challenge to more veteran players. However, it's ease of play gives the player a chance to admire the architecture more, which is a plus.

There are some technical mapping errors around area portals and doors. There are also easy exploits that allow the player to skip enemy encounters (including an extremely oblivious Stalker drone). The new soundscape/music (specifically at the beginning against the zombies) was a bit droning and too repetitive, somewhat taking away from the experience.

The secret around the gnome also leaves something to be desired, though I appreciate the effort in having a secret to the gnome.

I also really appreciate that it includes the map source for reference. That's always a nice gesture.

Overall, it feels like a good Half-life 2 experience.

I noticed this had no reviews so far and that's a damn shame. This was an extremely well-crafted map pack for Half-life.

While I don't think there's enough to make it memorable when compared against other mods, the added voice acting, the attention to detail with interactable parts the levels, and the clear flow of the level design made it a gem.

The only flaws I felt were in some of the health balance for the player. For example, it would have been nice to give the player a chance to recharge just before the final helicopter fight.

An awesome job!

This mod is extremely well done and a great experience. I have very little to complain about.

The levels are extremely well-crafted and balanced for combat, are rich with detail, and do a great job utilizing the *newer* behaviors of the enemies, which seem to be either part of the Spirit of Half-life engine or may even be custom made for this mod. There's also a large amount of little secrets and scripted sequence easter eggs scattered throughout the mod, which elevate it to another level for me.

My one issue, and it feels like an issue to me, is the ending of it. For the fun that the game presents, the ending is a bit anti-climatic and a bit of a downer. I wasn't sure if it was an alternate bad ending of some kind, but it didn't seem like it.

It'd really be nice if there was a more 'positive' end to the experience or at least one that the player could feel was earned because the rest of it was crafted with so many memorable scenes.

Otherwise, if you like Half-life and want to play a mod, there is no reason not to play this. It is near flawless.

A solid, high quality joke mod.

The environments are pretty basic, and the combat is serviceable, but it's a lot of fun and hilarious in places.

The cutscene at the beginning and the ending just land perfectly, imo.

I remember playing this a long time ago and having a decent amount of fun with it then.

However, nowadays (2018), so much of the core mod is broken down and difficult to play. If it wasn't for a lot of help from the comments section for this mod, it couldn't even start it up without immediately crashing.

Once that was fixed, however, the rest of the mod is riddled with difficulty issues, buggy iron-sights logic, an unreliable flashlight, and unexplained sudden lag spikes that will bog down whole sections of the main campaign and additional bonus content.

The 'story' itself is a bit hammy and difficult to appreciate too now, mostly because the other warts make it hard to look past flawed writing and flawed voice acting.

Unfortunately, because of so much having fallen apart with the Source engine and despite the efforts rebuilding this mod, it's too far gone to be enjoyable.

Just an unfortunate case of time moving on, and updates withering away at a once-promising part one to a series that never happened.

Unless you have a lot of free time (also patience) and a running knowledge of Source engine commands to cheat through the unfair bits, I do not recommend downloading this mod. But it would be great if these problems get officially patched to bring it back to working on modern day Steam. :D