Comments - Timusius

Thanks DzjengisKhan. I tried again and it worked. I don't know if it's something with my screen resolution or something, but I have to move the mouse so much that the hand basically goes out of my view to pick up the bottle.
It's like the "sensitivity" for this scene is way too low. It worked fine for the other ones.

I'm stuck at the same spot as Chamberlyn

Zlandals hint does nothing much for me.

I tried entering the two pipes etc.
When the arm is sticking out of the toilet I'm unable to do anything. Can't reach the bottles, can't see anything else to reach.

When going up the other tube the result is simple. The boss comes running and sets me on fire in a matter of seconds.

:-(

This is the most finished/complete and true to the half-life universe I've ever played. (And I've played a LOT of them ;-D)

It only has minor flaws that hint that this is not Valves own work.

The level design and puzzles are just as great as the original HL2.

It's definitely worth a download if you want to spend a few hours on yet another HL2 mod set in the HL2 universe.

I just managed to get through this mod. I started out a few weeks back, but after the first few levels I got so bored that I didn't want to play it.

Today I didn't have anything at all to do, so I decided to continue. I was a bit more impressed with the middle section, but at the end the mod got boring again.

Positive:
1. You obviously know a lot about HL2 mapping, and how to use things like the HL2car, different enemies etc, triggers etc.
2. A few scenes were very good like "The long fall where the floor breaks and you continue into ......"

Negative:
1. The maps lack detail and often have seriously boring areas. Also they are not believable. Example: Near the end the player runs around in a house-like-area with living rooms etc. But all rooms only have two doors and lead into each other. No one builds a house like that.
2. Often the player meets a door that won't open. But suddenly after killing some combine, the door has mysteriously been unlocked.
3. I had several problems in the later levels with doors that would not open. I had to use noclip. Also, one of the "air shafts" that needs to be used to continue was too low for the player to fit into.
4. Some levels had seriously bad performance due to way too many physics objects in them.

Since this mod is a part of the HL2 universe (same weapons, same enemies) the only difference from the normal HL2 is the new maps and the story. This makes the competition really hard.
You should focus a lot more on fewer, but better, maps. And introduce a story of some sort. This mod didn't have any story at all which sort of made the entire thing feel extremely pointless and boring.

Also.. you should probably delete the old page for the mod: Moddb.com

Ohh yes, works fine now.

This mod looks very interesting. Especially since you don't use any of the usual recipes for HL2 mods you have a nice ground for making something really new and great. Also because of the political aspect, this is a mod that people who don't usually play, might want to try out.

I downloaded the mod, but was unable to find the servers. (Even after adding them manually as described on your blog.)
I guess they are being updated at the moment (The new version came out yesterday.) and I will definitely check back in a few days.

I messed around a bit in "single player" though.
The maps and player models look great!

Keep up the good work.

Why is this marked as released when its clearly not?

Keep up the good work though, this looks great!

From looking at the mapnumber im halfway through this mod. I don't think I'll get through it because I honestly don't like it.

The levels are too dark, so you'll need the flashlight on all the time. Thus.. you'll spend half the time just waiting for the flashlight to recharge.

The mapper clearly knows what he/she is doing, but unfortunately the maps seem unfinished and completely unrelated to each other.
You simply walk around the maps because you can... you never know why, or where you are supposed to go.

The maps break some of the "half-life 2 gameplay rules" which is really annoying:
1. Doors without doorknobs are sometimes important in this mod.

2. Valve usually steers the player towards areas with light in them, sort of guiding the player around. In this mod you sometimes have light in places where you wonder why its there, and at other times the way you need to go is completely dark. For example in Ravenholm08 I spent 45mins after solving the puzzle... trying to figure out where to go. I turned out that I had to go down a narrow very dark "dead end" to continue to the next level.

3. You can easily bring yourself into a situation where there is no way out. For example by breaking wooden boxes.

4. You can bring yourself into a situation where the only way of retrying a jump/puzzle is to kill yourself.

Add to that a high level of difficulty. (On normal you are basically not allowed to get hit by headcrabs because you'll need the health later.) There are way too few med-kits and way too little ammo around.
Creators of HL2 zombie mods tend to forget that its never fun to bash zombies with the crowbar hour after hour....

The notes that you can read are annoying. How do I STOP reading them?

Well... compared to many other mods this is still pretty good. It should just have a bit less quantity and a bit more quality, so keep up the good work.

I know theres also a sequel, so I'll check that out in just a few mins.

I just played through this mod and I think its really good.

You really managed to get an interesting story going, and the universe is great. I was thinking "Myst" a lot of the time, really enjoying the rather strange landscapes that even though strange are still so detailed and well designed that you believe that this world could exist. The narration is great. Also being in past tense, is really nice. I don't think I've ever seen it done this well in a game before.

Everything could become really good if you did some more playtesting. Quite a lot of the maps have annoying spots that break immersion, or somehow just frustrate the player.
For example the fight in the arena: Why does the ammo have to be placed on those annoying spots with a single step up. Its difficult to get to the ammo, even though "its just in front of your nose". This highlights the limitations of the halflife engine and bad mapping, and makes this great fight an annoying experience.

Having this mod NOT set in the halflife universe is a great thing. We have plenty of those already. Now you just need to really remove the last traces of the half life universe. For example I didn't really like the "3 armed green men" to be evil. And the old half life 2 zombies... please get rid of them. They are just "so HL2" and boring at the same time. Whenever I play a mod and a HL2 zombie with a HL2 facehugger shows up I just think: "Ohh my #¤%¤# god.. not again!" :-)

Having multiple choices through the game is GREAT. I know this is a lot of extra work, but it really makes a difference.

I look forward to episode 2 of this mod!

I just played through this mod and I think it was good.

The mod has some good points:
In the beginning it sure has the right Half Life 2 feeling.
The challenges are a bit different than the original Half Life 2.
You often have to fight different types of enemies at the time. The way this is done in this mod is close to perfect and results in some good fights.
Some of the puzzles require you to think quite a bit, and yet they are not frustrating. This is very good and rarely found in other mods.

And bad points:
Some of the fights are a bit too hard and require lots of retries to win them.
Often there is too little rocket ammo laying around, so you'll need to make perfect shots.
The levels are way too dark and you often have to spend time just waiting for the flashlight to charge.
The "rotating thingy" near the end is bad. This puzzle depends too much on pure trial and error. (In fact this bit was so lame that I chose to noclip past it.) It would have helped if the player was able to see it from the side in its entirety before trying to climb down.
The final battle is lame and too hard.
The later part of the mod gets worse. The citadel part is truely bad.
The radio story is boring and is really not needed, its annoying as ¤%&¤ to wait for those looong boring speeches. Basically its just some dude telling you his interpretation of whats going on in City17.. explaining you things that you already know from playing Half Life 2.
You should not use the name Gordon Freeman.. As other users have said.. his story has already been told, we don't need yet another one telling us how he destroyed the combine... in yet another way. (No, not even if its disguised as a dream or something.)
During many of the levels I experienced graphical errors that do not show up when I play the normal Half Life 2. Are you sure all the maps are built/compiled right?

Keep up the good work, and perhaps remake the ending and the story a bit, and you will have a truly perfect mod.

Beautiful mod.

It really captured me. I was constantly wanting more and more of the story.

The slow walkspeed annoyed me alot, and also the fact that you never really know if you got the whole story or not. So, after finishing it, I immediately ran through it again. This time with a key linked to the noclip cheat (So I could run faaast). This ofcourse ruined lots of the triggers etc, but at least it gave me an extra look and made it possible to make sure that I had seen it all.

On the second run I noticed at lot more of the "shadows" that I for some reason had not noticed the first time. (I think these could probably be made a bit more easy to notice and it would improve the overall story.)

Finally I read the entire pdf with the script...seeking more answers. Of course I did not get any wiser :-D

This mod is leaving me confused, depressed, happy, exited, and interested.... Just as true art should do ;-)

Great MOD!

The first level had me blown away, thinking "this is even better than Half Life 2". Later I ran into a few confusing problems though, and I had to cheat a bit by looking at the youtube walkthrough ;-)

Anyway, this is probably the most detailed and complete single player mod that I have ever played. It's obivous that A LOT of time has been put into making it. I look forward to the next release!