Reviews - Tleno

Takes a solid classic game and evolves it's level design. and storytelling while sticking with vanilla assets and gameplay. A refined over years experience that got iterated on many times.

Like Brutal Doom for HL2 but way more tasteful and with a way more reasonable mod author.

Polishes the visuals, AI, combat and other aspects making them more spectacular while maintaining the feel of original game intact, which is commendable.

And it can be made compatible with any other HL2 map, so that's impressive!

It doesn't change the general experience radically though, it just freshens it up - and that makes me wonder if it can be taken further than that.

My expectation for this mod was that, while likely flawed by technical limitations, it would offer a bridge between factions and stories of Fallout 2 and Fallout New Vegas in a way that would make you wish it was enshrined in official canon. Unfortunately, the writing of both characters and plot came off rather middling, with some good amusing or touching moments, but still slogged down, often feeling derivative, even companions you spend more time with. The intro part in the Vault feels pretty great, has interesting moments, but things kinda peter out from there.

There are some new content bits, like shields that add more protection, or new guns and outfits, they're nice additions but ultimately the world is under-populated for it's scale - I got to talk with the dev and I can understand the desire to stick with already thought out and finished world terrain, even if it doesn't match the scope of story (the mod mostly focuses on it's branching main story). also it's a big shame the mod is tied to New Vegas main game in that once done with New California story you get to play New Vegas with the same character, as it kinda leads to a scenario where none of big decisions you go with make a difference, you end up pushed away to Mojave regardless of faction you aligned with - it would have been so much better as a self-contained story, since I imagine it would be too big of a scope to add changes to main game depending on what you've done in NC, especially lacking the original game voice actors.

Overall it really came off as a disappointment to me, I guess it's just like many I consider game development to be like aging of wine, even though a lot of that time is spent on reworks and fixing more than polishing. Ultimately it's a wonder the project of this scope still came out in the end.

Offers quite a few new additions while lacking the polish of other mods that attempt to maintain a close to vanilla feel and experience - would even crash repeatedly. While some units are interesting and unique they're not worth the time.

A very impressive total conversion that, while maintaining many trappings of vanilla Skyrim, introduces it's own unique setting, game world, characters, quests, monsters, systems, and art assets from AAA grade voice over to memorable soundtrack.

Anyways, Enderal is a sequel to same team's Nehrim mod for Oblivion, it's world is absolutely unconnected to TES series beyond common elements, so you will feel like playing a brand new game, familiarising yourself with new lore.

Second, they put a great effort to fix some design flaws of Skyrim, rebalancing or reworking many aspects, such as making magic more useful while also limiting healing with a new lore-based condition, or creating parity between different perk trees. Even Skyrim's RPG aspect shallowness is reduced as you make a lot more genuinely meaningful choices both in dialogue and when solving quests. Quests may have time limits or failure states, which makes them feel more "real" and adds additiinal challenge as you risk more in a rush.

Third, the quality is amazing and it's definitely one of those "why are they making a free mod and not standalone game anyways?" projects.

Overall totally worth buying a Skyrim over.

Probably one of best Half-Life mods ever. An impressive effort, retaining the atmosphere and combat of HL1 while introducing more detailed visuals and level design.

Its yet another story taking place in Black Mesa, playing as a generic employee coming to work. The tension builds up super fast and it doesn't stop getting only more intense from there on. The grungy concrete network commute quickly becomes into a terrifying escape amid confusion, then a scramble for allies in research facility turned deathtrap, and then an all out battle as HECU troopers join the fight. The sequencing of scripted events is on point, with many very well thought out scenes that take goldsource engine to its limits. Many of scenes are super inventive. both level design-wise and general premise-wise. Fights to are highly entertaining, requiring some wits, with many new scenarios not seen in HL before making you develop new approaches.

Only thing I can complain about is difficulty of some "boss fights" being way higher than rest of encounters, sometimes without offering an obvious solution (I had to abuse cover in a very unsportsmanlike manner to beat the glowing grunt, even with the crossbow). Even that doesn't ruin the impression from this mod in any way though. Its that good, I'd put it above Blue Shift and Opposing Force combined, such a nice combination of old school gameplay and modern level design and storytelling practices.

Abominable. An absolutely incomplete, flawed in most regards attempt to cash in on one of the greatest PC FPS series.

This shouldn't have a price tag on it, you should be offered a payment for playing it. Not to mention the lead developer exploited many talented or aspiring content creators for minimal or no pay, promising pay after release, then rushing production to such extent that the game came out so raw it breaks and crashes and many environments lack textures, rendering it unworthy of purchase and thus leaving all that work of people who put the real effort unpaid. Also, this project was implicated in asset theft, and leaving some accessible only with a Valve-granted license Source 2013 development tools, which demonstrates quite incredible levels of lack of professionalism.

This mod offers an alternative Tiberian universe timeline where NOD's victory in the first game is canon, with GDI discredited and on the run for years. Eventually Nod's mysterious leader Kane vanishes, leaving a terrifying world where most authorities to keep it safe from encroaching mutations and alien terraforming are dissolved, the most powerful force is a directionless technocratic cult that likes red and black, and the tiberium is developing even faster than it did in original timeline.

Now, while this standalone mod improves every aspect of original game, from compatibility with modern computers and gameplay, the best aspects would be the brand new custom soundtrack - very rarely do you see a mod sport it's own track of such great quality, and so fitting it's atmosphere. Environments are also very neat, with most visuals improved, and many new doodads and structures creating more pretty levels, depicting a steadily morphing world full of strife, with few fortified urban centers keeping the civilian populace safe. Also the launcher is very neat, allowing many options for customization and working on modern systems.

On other hand, one aspect of game is super disappointing. The campaign. See, the mission pacing and difficulty is pretty bad. Sometimes they got for too long and sometimes the difficulty comes not from challenge itself but nasty surprises like infantry hiding in trees or scripted surprise attacks sabotaging everything. There is a surprising amount of baseless missions, especially early on, but because neither TibSun or Twisted Insurrection ever had as cool commando or gimmick units as, say, Generals or Red Alert 2, these usually just end up being generic assaults when you send a blob or armor or infantry to destroy everything in it's paths, carefully selecting route and exploring the area because you're most certainly bound to be f-ed over if you don't find a reinforcement or other secret before advancing onto enemy fortifications. Wish there were more hints or recon options in such missions. And nasty surprises are quite present in base missions too. And in multi-stage missions. While missions have lovely environments, everything else about them is quite bad, I must say. I hope they get overhauled hard.

Quite a dated mod attempting to bring CnC universes together. Even taking in consideration the fact it's over a decade old, one of oldest mods of this scale even, it's still hard to forgive it abysmal visuals, and the weird combination of factions into a single one - sure, you get some iconic units but it just doesn't feel like you're actually playing a specific faction, just some weird Frankenstein monster. Oh, and most of new units added don't introduce anything outside generals paradigm despite coming from very different games, that's a real big shame!

Despite being quite anticipated and even receiving an award, this mod seems to be bound to be quite a disappointment - it's been in production since 2010, and yet the latest "early access" release of 2017 is quite lacking in substance, featuring just a single brand new faction that's extremely bugged and incomplete. Seriously, I couldn't even construct barracks as they would get stuck, thus locking out a portion of tech tree for me! And there were no proper tooltips explaining abilities and their effects. And that lack of polish ranging from appalling incompleteness to minor flaws is omnipresent! The hack center animations miss a frame or two so they don't loop that well. The unit and structure palette is too uniform within the faction, too - while I can see the intentions, it doesn't help while playing, just unique shapes won't do unfortunately.

I really dunno what took them so long to deliver just so much, but seeing such productivity I cannot think that either the team's heart is in a wrong place, or that they simple cannot create a project of this scale, and it will take them another decade to release something playable.