Story: HL2 mod continuing story of HL:Opposing Force character Adrian Shephard in a time set somewhere between HL1 and HL2. It brings you from a Black Mesa like base trough an outdoor environment and a Soviet marine base into a early combine citadel to end in a ancient alien location here on earth, the combine stumbles upon when creating a citadel. What you get: Intro and 5 playable maps roughly good for a hour of playtime. The mod includes custom props, textures and music but NO new weapons or NPC's.
The game starts off with an intro sequence similar to that of a movie: tense music and Combine troops closing in on a base as the people inside scramble to defend it. This sequence drew me in, but after a few minutes of sitting around I got bored. The first lines of voice acting made me wince; the voice actors barely came close to the original voices of Eli, Dr. Kliener, Barney, G-Man, Judith, and Dr. Breen. (Noted that the woman in the airvent who looks like Mossman is actually named Tess, but I digress.) The gameplay was good, but got a little tense at times when, as it always seems to be in HL2 mods, I appear to take more damage than I should. The music was amazing; I can't stop playing the Kilo Base level for no other reason than the song that plays in the background. Level design and gameplay elements (puzzles and enemy location) are also a strong point in this mod. Overall, I say this is a good mod and a wealthy addition to anyone's HL2 mod collection.
What a great mod. Voice acting was just okay but I really enjoyed the maps and levels. Just the right amount of challenge and story.
Voice acting is absolutely terrible, though, other than that, this is probably in the top 10 Hl2 mods out there. They did a VERY good job. I just wish they would have gotten better voice actors, and had I been around when they had done it, I probably would've done it all for them myself. Again, other than the voice actors, it was a very good mod that I enjoyed very much.
Nice, I didn´t like GMan voice, but, hey, its a fan made mod and its a great one
A great single player mod overall. It only has about 5 chapters but very fun and enjoyable and a great way to expand the half life 2 story.
The authors of the mod gave their best in terms of creativity, the environments are greatly designed and even if the mod can be beat in about 2/3 hours or less, they still managed to present a large variety of situations and warfare styles with a mix of urban,environmental and futuristic fight scenes. Extra points for features like the portal to the citadel (i don't really like the part where you couldn't enter the portal before the elite combines came out, it would be a lot better if they simply weren't there), the strider eleavator on the foundations, the submarines on the artic port and the excellent mapping used on the underground antlion captivity.
The story of this mod is pretty good at all. The simple fact of a continuation to the history of Adrian Shephard already amazes mostly of the HL fans, the intro is also really interesting, the combine invasion into a rebel base is something everyone wanted to follow up closely as a spectator since the events at east of Black Mesa on HL2, and this time we could do it, but i seriously expected more resistance from the rebels, i gotta say it's extremely odd not a single elite was taken down even with the absurd quantity of RPGs the rebels were carryng.I didn't quite like the idea that shephard was taken directly to the antlion infestation place only because every path turned out to take him there, i think a g-man interferance would fit nice in the transition of the citadel to that place. I also add extra points for giving a origin to the antlion occupation on earth since we never got to see them on xen. However i was very disappointed about the voice acting (simply pathetic in about every character) and about the NPC animations that could be drastically improved; there's not much to say about the gameplay, it's balanced and don't drag you too long with exhaustive combine fight scenes or abusive zombie encounters but the mod gains another extra point for a plausible origin of the use of a Gravity Gun.
Final Score: 8,0
sweet
The Good:
Great settings (Snowy Russian environment).
First levels are very well mapped.
Adrian Shephard!
The Bad:
Terrible voice imitations.
Later level designs feel rushed.
Very easy combat.
The story starts off promising, but disappears by the middle of the game.
As a whole, Awakening is pretty well a run-of-the-mill Half Life 2 mod. While the gameplay stays fresh, there is still nothing unique about this mod. It's simply more Half Life 2 gameplay with bad voice acting and a cliche story. I would consider it more of a map than an actual mod as there is absolutely nothing new or interesting put on to the table save for the Arctic environment. Other than that, it's just a basic mod. Verdict: 7.0/10
I really enjoyed it! An interesting thought as to what happened to Adrian from Opposing Force, as well as the Antlion twist at the end. The gameplay was top notch and everything was well crafted...but it wasn't long enough. It was probably and hour to ninety minutes at most. In terms of audio: the music was fantastic, the same can't be said for the voice acting, which was terrible. One more thing: the scripted sequences and little cutscenes were put together really well! Bluestrike, if you're reading this: good job. 9.0/10.