Reviews - Valkinsenn

|||| This review is based off v1.4007 and will contain little to no spoilers. ||||

I've been a fan of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for years, and Lost Alpha is just Shadow of Chernobyl uncut, so I got even more of its creepy atmosphere and interesting story.

Starting with the gunplay, it's decent, for the most part, though enemies take a lot to kill in comparison to the player, who can drop like a sack of potatoes with little to no warning. They also seem to have far too little ammunition on their corpses, in stark contrast to the flurries of bullets they can throw at the player. Weapons have a decent amount of attachments that can be added at any moment, and thanks to certain NPCs, weapons can be upgraded along several tiers for a certain price. However, the game's world has a pretty rough economy, so if you're gonna upgrade a weapon, make double sure before you do it, 'cause if not, you're just gonna be throwing money away.

Moving right along, the game's environments might not look the best, they still manage to sell a broken reality brimming with danger around every corner. That being said, the game's pretty badly optimized. On a rig that can run Battlefield 4, Prey 2017, and Doom 2016 on high settings at 1080p without dipping below 60 frames on average, often times, I struggle to run this game at anything above 40 frames. At times, I get 55 - 60, but quite often, it's dipped into the 20s. (I'm running the Extended Weather mod, but my rig's specifications more than exceed the mod's requirements.)

Making matters worse is how confusing and needlessly complicated the game's environmental layouts are. Case in point: in Shadow of Chernobyl, there were at least two ways into Barkeep's compound, both of which were relatively easy to get into and out of. Now, in Lost Alpha, there's only one way in, and it requires circling around the ENTIRE complex to get to! There are other examples, like the complex around Duty's headquarters, or Sakharov's lab, but in most cases, a lot of environments I found myself in shared this same problem.

And that's not even addressing the elephant in the roo-- oom--

*A crash has been detected by Bugtrap*

Or the fact that-- more often than not-- the game's got a bad-- habit of-- suddenly-- freezing for a few-- seconds and then-- en--

*A crash has been detected by Bugtrap*

Sometimes, instead of just crashing the game, it also crashed my system, too. Needless to say, aside from the fire key, the quick save key was the second most-used function out of every control available. And even then, the game would go for long stretches without acting up, leading me to become somewhat complacent until freezing for a few seconds, or just outright crashing. I don't even know how much progress I've lost overall thanks to game-breaking bugs that forced me to reload saves.

Then, of course, you have the rather bland voice acting in so many areas. Granted, the game's no Resident Evil: Classic in terms of bad voice acting, but it still leaves something to be desired. Then there's the cutscenes. Honestly, I'd have seriously preferred not having any, or having the camera cut from person / event to person / event instead of awkwardly flying through the cutscene area, sometimes through walls or NPCs. Worse, thanks to the game's buggy nature, cutscenes would often break, leaving me staring at a wall and not able to move even after the cutscene was supposed to have finished.

And the worst part about it all is that, despite the glaring amount of issues I've laid out, the game itself is actually not that bad. It would be a great game if it weren't so buggy, poorly balanced, prone to crashes, and badly optimized. Despite all the issues, I could honestly see myself firing it back up to trudge through the Zone until I finally finish the game, proper. That being said, the issues I've laid out seriously hamper what could've been one of the finest survival action-horror experiences I've ever had, and I'm probably not gonna go back and play through the game again after I've completed it.

Bottom line, my final verdict is:
I like it, but it could be so much better.

That translates to a 6 out of 10.

Thanks for reading my review.
I am Valkinsenn.

Until next time.

Graphically, the mod is excellent and boasts some serious visual refinements and overhauls that breathe new life into Doom 3's horribly dated visuals. However, technically, the mod is nothing short of a complete disaster. Unavoidable crashes related to certain characters merely speaking to the player is a glaring nuisance that's entirely unforgivable. It's made worse by the fact that these crashes occur EVERY SINGLE TIME these characters go to speak. The first crash occurs almost immediately during the first few minutes of gameplay, specifically the "welcome to Mars" phrase the first encountered NPC utters. Skipping to the next level was warranted, and thankfully allowed, but any hope that the next NPC dialogue section wouldn't cause the game to crash again was quickly crushed. The NPC in question attempted to do a "Mars Sec radio check," which promptly caused a crash. Every. Single. Time. Tweaking some of the settings before loading the aforementioned sections again didn't rectify the issue, any time.

This mod was something that could've been completely enjoyable, but sadly, it's unplayable due to a glaring level of either technical ineptitude or just plain incompetence. It's hard to know which.

5/10

Rough around the edges, but a good beta.

I like the inclusion of iron sights onto the Glock and the MP5, but the iron sights on the MP5 are buggy. Either the front ring gets misaligned, even when standing still, or it doesn't even put the bullets where the front sight is, in the case of reloading during iron sights.

The Glock is not so buggy, but it definitely tries to mis-align itself. And the Glock's iron sights are so close to the screen that it is difficult to tell where the bullet's going to hit, since the front sight blade is too big. Plus, when it fires, the recoil of the weapon causes it to snap up off of, and obscure the target.

About it being noticeably rough around the edges, while aiming outside of iron sights, the arms move around, more than they should. For instance, looking up at normal speed will end up swinging the arms WAY upward. Or turning around will cause them to swing hard in the opposite direction of where you're turning. While not game-killing, it can be a bit distracting.

Textures in the game can be a bit funky/strange at times. Being honest, I don't remember Barney being THAT terrified during the events of Half-Life (it's the eyes). Also, I was able to see Gordon's hands clipping through the HEV suit's arm plates, it looked like there was a red light constantly underneath the crowbar in places, and I could even see through parts of the Glock and MP5 (Glock was most noticeable).

I'm a bit divided on the addition of a "bloody screen" damage indicator. It seems like a fresh addition to a mod of this type for Half-Life, but when used in game, it can prove to be too distracting. So much so, that I was tempted to turn it off.

However, even with all the bugs, it is definitely a good proof-of-concept mod/game, and I would like to see more from it in the future.

:)

I give this mod a 7/10.