Reviews - ZikShadow

A magnificent work of art, filled to the brim with attention to detail, well balanced difficulty (played on Hard for first playthrough), and level design that is both beautiful and one you couldn't get lost in unless you REALLY tried, the usage of cut enemies that are done well are also something commendable.

I suppose if there's a nitpick it'll be that one part in the beginning where you could see construction workers crouched under the electrical plant yet if you go under it you die even though the cables don't go low enough to reach you. I also got killed in the elevator part with the garg, it's almost cartoony how jumping up in the air kills you but standing still on the crashing lift as it shatters from the impact doesn't even scratch you. There's also some occasional moments where I wished there was more interactivity like helping out the Black Mesa vs Xen sideshow battle while you're on the giant elevator (shots blocked by invisible walls). There's also the occasional crashes, though thankfully not repeatable for me (some might be not as lucky). Not to mention the royalty free soundtrack, even though Half-Life 1 or 2's are already available to use, a bit unfortunate in that selection.

But those are minute inconveniences that doesn't do much to shatter this mod's ability to captivate me from the start to the end. Highly recommended.

Fantastic level, the only minus one point is because of how short it is. Beautiful architecture, neat looking textures, no confusing level design, cool secrets, flexible gameplay allowing for gameplay mods to wiggle in, just sublime.

A very pleasing experience, pretty much the equivalent of an actual proper game.

The new weapons sound good to use and useful in all aspects, even the so-called lowly pistol gets much use when you don't have a good sniping weapon. The upgraded variants are even more fantastic, with the Golden Cowboy Shotgun being particularly beastly for close quarters encounters.

Level architecture is quite fantastic, with some maps just had me struck with how beautiful they looked. The design's not too bad as well, getting lost didn't happen too often and the exit is usually not beyond hard to track down. Most of my time is spent searching for those elusive big coins and their cousins, the gold spiders with the skull jewels.

Platforming was never an issue for me, thankfully, using moves like strafe-running or diagonal jumping often helped to get past long/high gaps. Though I should preface this by saying that I'm one of those people who were rarely against platforming in FPS'.

I've played this on Starman for my first playthrough, and while some things can get particularly savescummy thanks to their high damage, overall it feels kinda fair since there are absolutely no enemies that utilize hitscan weapons (though the Super Revenant's missiles and those Snifits do find themselves being the bane for my existence in this mod's run).

Some parts maybe slightly edge on the frustrating part like Fallen Knight's invincible hand mole squads, some big coin locations (ones hidden underwater particularly, those took me too long to find), those miserable Snifits and Imps that can snipe you past fogs, but get past that alongside that inner twitch you get when you hear FPS platforming, and there's gold to be found here.

My thoughts of the mod (played on Hard for first playthrough):

- Some invisible walls could've been blocked better, a couple of gates at the early areas have gaps on their sides that kinda makes question the security of such a structure.

- For a TC with a lot of custom VA, I'm surprised that there's no subtitles.
Makes it slightly difficult for me to notice the small stuff.
The VA itself is alright I guess.

- Is it just me or am I missing a melee weapon somewhere?
Went through the whole mod without one and thought that maybe I wasn't supposed to have one.

- The combat is "interesting".
In that you either spot the enemy and have already killed them first, or you're already dead. Would've been nice if crouching doesn't alert them, but I still managed through.
Having somewhat "realistic" combat almost makes me wish for a no-crosshairs-but-have-ironsights mechanic put in, but I guess that's out of the question for now.

- The pistol seems to be significantly more powerful than the rifle, which might be the whole idea of balance, still feels weird though that a pistol launches corpses to the air like a magnum would while an assault rifle struggles to put down enemies. Ended up having full ammo for the rifle, just sitting in my inventory collecting dust.

- It's nice having both carriable medkits and on-site health restoratives, the hacking stuff is neat as well for exploration rewards (though I usually ended up saving and loading to check if the stuff is worthy enough, ditching them if they're not, some of them allows you to get the secret books as well).

- Might be just me again, but I noticed the weapons not having faces on the top of their magazines, as in, you can see through them when reloading.

- The bomb defusing parts were quite tricky, but possible.
It definitely is more of a trial and error than actual skill and strategy though, might need to tone down the timer or the combat itself just a tiny bit.

- Every encounter with the lady seems to always start in death for me.
The fact that she comes out of nowhere unannounced at times packed with a shotgun of all things is quite silly, not to mention that she's more resistant to bullets as well makes for a surprise boss fight of sorts, an unpleasant one.
There a single part near the end where I swear that she respawned multiple times (I think it was near the final book), a complete sap of hard-earned inventory.

- The maps are quite good, I didn't get lost a lot exploring things, the signs help as well.
Nice too that you can backtrack easily to some pickup-filled areas, helpful when things get hairy on the health/ammo side.
The whole moon colony architecture itself is also pretty cool, though the early maps could do with more citizens going about their day instead of cold dead silence, and the later maps having actual chaos unfolding with resistance from both sides occurring throughout.
In general, less lonely feeling.

- For a TC, I'm surprised the crosshair isn't replaced, bit odd having new HUD and all but still uses the classic 9mmAR 5 dots crosshair.

- Some models (or maybe brushes too, I don't know) had some dodgy clippings that meant shots aren't getting through even though they should, had some gunfights where I shot around a pillar only for it to get caught by invisible air.

Overall, I enjoyed it, it was a pretty interesting mod, though slightly sapped by some odd gameplay design choices and small pet peeves here and there.

Wonderful, brushwork is magnificent, the Xen areas are pretty fun and noice looking, the little puzzles here and there help break up the shooty-shooty, the fights are tenseful when they appear, and the OP4-style gameplay never gets old.

You are able to go around the Xen jumpy area and skip a bit, some of the fights can be skipped entirely if you're agile enough, the other in-the-dark fight can get a bit too unfair-y when I get ARnaded from the darkness that my NVG can't reach while "theirs" can for some reason, and (while it's just me), didn't really like having SC sounds replace the original gun sounds.

This review is for the 2.41 version that i've just finished recently.

Overall, wonderful mod.

Trying to keep it short and spoiler-free so here's my Go/Ba list.

Good :

- Takes the classic SS2 story and tries to flesh it up more while adding time paradox/looping to the mix, it's a bit confusing, but pretty understandable for the most part.

- Additional gameplay elements such as specific damage weapons/new upgrades/tears/cyberspace is truly commendable.

- Attention to detail like the radio HUD is fantastic.

- Additional music was pretty fine, none too ear hurty.

- Multiple endings/paths makes for a nice replay for every playthrough.

Bad :

- The VA is inconsistent, sometimes it's the new ones, sometimes it's the old ones, sometimes it's an entirely different one altogether for a SINGLE character.

- Custom models for specific characters are not specific enough.

I keep confusing major characters from each other/NPCs due to their same-y models/faces.

- Cutscenes are "kinda" inconsistent, mixing the original cutscenes with the new ones, resulting in mixed quality.

I think i played the mod back around 2010-ish, sort of about a year before i decided to make stuff up to make it look better.

The mod overall is okay, i liked the fact that it tried to grab some of the Lovecraft's cosmic horror over despite the many problems that sort-of buggers around the mod.

It is unfortunate that the level design is overall pretty terrible even by HL's nineties standards, the models are mixed up, the coding screwed (had to even remove the shotgun's muzzleflash because of that), and many of the gameplay decisions is just baffling to me.

But hey! I can see a lot of love and imagination put to this mod, even if the lack of skills really stand out during gameplay, so that's that.

This is a pretty well done collab, most of the maps really have a very great looking office architecture to it, with the my personal favorite being the stealth based one (Strider's Chairman).

Puzzles in this mod aren’t too difficult, a few searches here, a gauss jump there, overall not too frustrating for a familiar.
(Though it still took me a while to finish, i think i took about 2 hours to finish this mod.)

Some maps did lag my computer a bit, with the one that troubles me the most being the area where you’re hunted down by Lasiter (Rebella-something) since it was so laggy, but i think it was just my computer being weak.
(I also found the tape recorder, kind of odd that an assassin would leave an evidence lying in plain sight.)

In Hard mode, combat was a bit of an arse, the really closed up space and the lack of ammunition/powerup really puts a dent in my progress a couple of times.

I even had to run from a lot of enemies, leaving them in levels (so much as the cleanup “team”, am i right?).

Giving me a 9mmAR (that's kinda **** without the GL, give me the 9mmhandgun and the shotgun anyday) and glass for cover against the 2 hgrunts (one of which carries a shotgun) was probably one of my most frustrating moments in this mod along with the other one being the roof (reminds me of SoF II’s hospital roof, terrible memories).

The health charger cans was kinda cool.

A crash unfortunately was inevitable, with the one i encountered asking for a missing “valve/models/metalplategibs.mdl”, turns out i literally have to make a valve folder inside the twhltower mod folder and copy over the metalplategibs.mdl itself over to get through, no biggie.

Not sure if it’s just me though.

I also noticed the 9mmAR having the BS/OP4’s problem of the old “sped up idle animation with no muzzleflash event named deploy” as one of the shooting sequences.

The starting NPC (dearest Urby) doing a sudden 180 turn was a bit hillarious, i think this happens too to a couple of other NPCs, but i haven't noticed yet.

Still though, the mod overall is a fun experience that i do recommend everyone to atleast try.

Btw, compliments to NineTNine for the additional horrible flashbacks to Quantum Leaps's (delete_me) Doughnuts.

"Did you submit your status report to the administrator today?"
"Do you know who ate all the doughnuts?"