You play as Thomas Redgrave. A scientist working in Area3 Research labs. The story is parallel with the events in Black Mesa, the same day when Gordon Freeman and Scientists in Sector C started the whole event. INSTALLATION: You need to have HALF-LIFE installed on your STEAM (original half-life, no half-life:source or Half-life2). Run it at least one time. Install BraveBrain v1.1 to your STEAM/steamapps/common/Half-life directory and restart STEAM.
Every mod has its level design leave a flavor particular to its designers tastes. This one is alot like valve's Black Mesa, theres even 2 areas where you get to revisit.
The beginning was a little on the hard side as you had to deal with aliens with a axe. And it stays that way for a little while before you finally find a ammo room which makes alot of sense to me.
Most mods give you guns straight away with the crowbar and I've never thought that realistic, weapons and ammo should be in storage or on a dead guard. Thumbs up for that.
Most fights are a little to easy but Half-Life was like that mostly.
Most areas are all broadly lit I noticed and its a shame to see that lighting wasn't really used well.
Some unique scenes like a prototype vehicle and a falling elevator where nice, other people have had issues but not me, no glitches or bugs of any kind.
Some areas could have had more detail but its length is decent so I guess it would have required a fair bit of polishing. And I have to admit I cringed at gman talking in the end :D
I do like 17th years old voice acting.
Very good mod!
A bit too easy tough.
A nice old-school mappack.
The maps are generally well done. Like mentioned, it's old-school mapping with a familiar disaster scenario as story. Some really nice scripted sequences here and there and a cool intro is there at the start. A couple of fun puzzles are sprinkled throughout too. There are some maps from original HL that are recreated and re-populated, you get to cross different paths that take you to familiar locations. Finally there is a nice driving section in the end where you drive a mini-tank with a minigun attached to it, it's fun.
The weapons are unchanged besides the crowbar. It has been replaced by an axe which deals double damage. Alongside a general damage increase, some sound changes made to the usual weapons too. There are a couple of new lines for the scientists as well, voiced by the creator.
One criticism I have is that sometimes maps can look a bit too barren and undetailed. Some areas needed a little more detail to really shine.
Other than minor issues, I had a fun time with this mod. Try it if you're looking for an old-school and familiar mappack that takes place in good old Black Mesa.
Now this mod isn't that bad. It's a mod that is quite unique if you ask me. First of all, 30% of the map is maps from Half-Life, which is cool to explore parts you never got to explore. It's basically Half-Life as another scientist perspective. Most of it is Black Mesa maps but its good. I like the amount of weapons you spoiled my choices with, but I don't like neglecting my weapons and losing them at the end. Another thing that actually means a tell-tale sign its a good mod is a tram ride. Some mods like Infected use it along with other unknowns I haven't discovered. The puzzle solving you added and scenes where elevator breaks, A MACHINE GUN VEHICLE is awesome. I thought from the looks of this tram ride, i woudlnt expect this mod to have those but i was wrong
Not so good side:
Revolver and shotgun is given too early especially for a easy-fight mod like this. Gluon or gauss, either one should be here. The pistol if i am not wrong, Is a bit too op. Xen could have been bigger, at the starting point. Even tho you tried to add a cluster of enemies like vorts and marines when you return to a section, to drain my ammo/health, its placed as if a arena was mixed a bit here.
Summary: A mod that stands out unlike mods that are just black mesa only maps. Level Design is amazing. Puzzles are intricate. Unique. After all, this is a mod worth making a on-going series. Reminds me of how old-school mods were made back in the day, with most black mesa. I liked it!
I liked this one. Interesting take on the Black Mesa incident from another scientist's perspective. Short and sweet. No complaints really.
This is the third Half-Life mod that I played. Poke646 was definitely a 10. There was a lot that I hated about Azure Sheep, but it got really good in the second half of the game and it was very lengthy so I gave it a 7. I'm starting to think that maybe it deserved an 8, but maybe not. So anyway, I was expecting Brave Brain to be better than Azure Sheep, but I don't think that it was.
The biggest disappointment was how short the game was. It just felt like a walk in the park. I wish that it had been twice as long. Another disappointment was the textures. I was expecting them to be better than Azure Sheep's, which used very bland and grainy wall textures. Brave Brain's textures had more detail, but they were also pixelated and blurry. And some of the textures looked like they were just hastily downloaded from Google Images with no modifications made at all. If the game had been twice as long with even higher quality textures, I could easily bump this up to a 7 or 8, but I'm giving it a 5. The weapons placement was lame. You start off with a melee weapon, and then you can go into a harder-to-reach area and suddenly find a few guns and ammo for weapons you don't have in cardboard boxes. And then the rest of the game was just random dumps of a few extra weapons here and there. It didn't feel like I earned the weapons and some did not seem to appear at the right moments. I didn't care for the voice acting. Age had nothing to do with it. The NPCs sounded like some guy from India with a weird accent. It took away from the immersion. But this was trivial compared to the game length and textures. And finally, some aspects of the game were too obvious and predictable, like I always knew exactly where the headcrabs would be. Oh, I forgot. There were some glitches but nothing gamebreaking. If you find yourself not being able to get inside a vent. Keep spamming the crouch button while moving forward (for me it was C C C C C C C C). If that don't work, try doing the same thing but walk instead of run. And in one part of the game, there is a wall that sticks out over a ladder. So when you try to climb the ladder to get on the ledge, the wall blocks your movement. Took me one or two minutes to get out from under that wall and onto the ledge.
The map layout design was good. In Azure Sheep, a large portion of the game was ridiculously stupid, pointless, and unrealistic maze corridors. Brave Brain also put a lot of effort into the puzzles and problem solving, which I respected and appreciated. I liked how the game had vehicles that you could drive and interact with. The game also came with a few twists and spins while giving flashback tributes to the original games. Like starting a training tutorial only to be attacked by the aliens, revisiting "where it all started" and finding a new passage, and witnessing Gordon get offered a job by G-Man.
Brave Brain is a solid 5, and if it had been twice as long with even better quality textures, I'd give it a 7 or 8 or maybe even higher.
I have to say this mod, is pretty........... well idk what it is.
Cause on one hand it's fun to play and it's meh at best. But on the other hand, the two major problems i have with it make it to me not all that great.
And i wanna talk about those two main gripes that i have with this mod. And yeah i know this is an old mod but that still doesn't mean i can't talk about it.
-The Level Design
The level design really shows how this is the creators first and only mod, considering how beginner tier the level design is. Now is it wrong for me to critique a person for being a beginner, well not really but i'll be easy. Other than certain beginner problems like misaligned textures and barren detail-less rooms and hallways, some of the "puzzles" if you can even call them that are really basic, way too basic at least from my experience.
One example i can give is the reactor in the Gamma Reactor area, where instead of designing two pathways to go turn on said reactor, and going to it and turning the valve, here you just open up a door that leads to it by pushing two buttons. And then you go down to the reactor and turn the valve and escape into a portal to Xen.
This to me makes no sense since should this thing have something like a generator to turn it on, other than some rusty valve. It's just really bland level design really, and it feels less like a mod with a story and more like a mod that is a pseudo shooting gallery with some hint of a story, and occasional obstacles that don't feel like obstacles.
-The Continuity
Now i know this is the third review I've made and this is the third time i have complained about continuity. But this is to me a really glaring issue with this mod's storyline. Let me give the best and only example i can give in this mod.
The mod's beginning section starts at during Anomalous Materials(the chapter), and then the incident happens, and after traversing through some sewers and getting on a tram that derails, you then get knocked out. And you wake up later presumably during Office Complex or We've Got Hostiles. And you go through Sector B and wind up in Sector C and you go through there to the Gamma Reactor and then you wind up in Xen, and then after going through another portal you then...... see Freeman getting hired by the G-Man????
Hang on one second, the last like 15 to 20 minutes of gameplay gave me the idea that it all took place during Office Complex or We've Got Hostiles but i guess not. And if you want to say that the main character woke up later during Freeman's time in Xen then okay fine. But if that's the case then why would there be Marines in Sector C, shouldn't they have already left the sector by then.
Idk it's really ******* confusing and hard to wrap my head around. But all in all this mod is fine if you like playing shooting galleries, but if you are someone like me who enjoys at least decent level design and continuity(among a few other things) then skip this mod or go ahead and play it, i'm not one of your parents.
For a mod released in 2003, it's really a great, you get to see resonance cascade during the HEV training, and fight your way trough the canals, I remember back in 2012 or 2013 I had some trouble with a vent, but made it several times, it's a great mod, I recommend it.