Cinematic Mod Awakening aims at further delving into the expanded gameverse of FakeFactory's Cinematic Mod which added a lot of depth to the award-winning blockbuster of HL2. CMA uses CM2013 platform with additional work being done by third-party/community members. All work is done with the original author permission from FakeFactory.
what did I even play? I just can't stop asking myself "the hell was that meant to be"
First, I grabbed the most recent upload, and for some reason it was Crysis Warhead? What? How? I thought it said "hl2 episode 2 mod" up there. And it's not even a mod, it launches by itself and it's kinda shady, and then you gotta tweak files just to launch it.
I decided to try it anyway and there was no gameplay, no story, no point to anything.
You start on a train, and there were random text messages that usually didn't make sense. Some of them were Breen speeches from HL2, with no sound. All you do is walk until the screen randomly fades to black and next area loads. There was a part where green dudes start shooting at you for no reason and you have to run away, while they shoot you, and movement is slow af.
Then there's some forest and you get a gun, but there are no enemies. You follow a hazmat guy that you can't shoot, and then text message tells you it's Barney. Then you meet another same-looking hazmat guy, and game says it's "Alyx Vens". And then you follow them for 10 seconds, and it ends, and drops you to menu.
I've heard about beta HL2 story with gasmasks and smog, but right after you exit the train you see birds flying right through thunderstorm, green trees, and grass, and later there was a bunch of chickens and some other birds running near dudes in gasmasks and happily chirping. That bit was just surreal.
Levels are a mess. Just on a single street you get:
- Same two NYC buildings ripped from Crysis 2 and copypasted everywhere
- several huge gothic cathedrals with some weird black texture
- two copied fantasy-looking ruins
- docks and scaffolding near bus stations and playgrounds
- a random lighthouse between warehouses, and some ruined wooden house near it
- scifi military bunker next to one of cathedrals
- Chinese gazebos decorating a warehouse
It's all randomly put together and also bugged. You can walk through things and buildings, and then get stuck forever inside a random plastic bottle. You can't save for some reason, or pause the game, only quicksave. There are lots of places where you can walk out of level, but sometimes you can't go in some corner because it fades screen to black and just breaks everything, so you have to reload.
Atmosphere: It could work, if it wasn't the same "thunderstorm with very annoying nonstop flashes of lightning and rain and muted dark colors" everywhere. There was some ambient music on background, but when I muted it, it was just dead silence all around, you could only hear player foosteps, and storm felt so fake because of that.
I absolutely hated one of human models, because it has some terrible and weird green texture, how could anyone use this. The rest were okay, but there are only like 3 of them, everybody are clones.
You could try it if you really want, but it's like a short and broken tech demo
Not bad.
Многообещающий проект
Not bad, but unplayable
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