Experience Half-Life 2 like never before. Return to City 17, held within the iron grip of the Combine and the Consul. Reunite with old friends, and enemies. Traverse vicious canals, make new allies, and brave the horrors of the Quarrytown. Immerse yourself in a revitalised combat system featuring old arsenals made new again, with added features to raise the bar in gameplay. You've been waiting for quite some time, now. It's time to climb aboard.
I'm giving 10 for the effort.While it's not complete yet , the amount of effort is really impressive.With just a bit more polish it can become the half life 2 we lost.
Honesty, this mod needs to be polished a bit more before it's release and the next update.
1. The G-Man intro doesn't need to be a chapter
2. The voice acting is "okay-ish", but Barney's voice is the biggest offender for improvement
3. The map design is lacking in areas
4. Some areas feel like they're out of order and just weird in placement
5. The journey could have been a bit more exciting
6. The gunplay is alright, but It feels like the SMG needs to improve a bit
7. The crowbar thinking everything it hits, is made out of metal.
But!:
1. The train sequence feels nice and looks cool
2. The models on the weapons, vehicles, NPCS, etc look amazing
3. The lab looks good
4. The sounds are great
5. The guns look and sound good
6. I like how they reused the Beta's voice lines for Mossman and Kleiner
7. Although the maps are a bit too wide and not having the "eye-candy", it feels it tries to fulfill the Beta's goal of being bleak.
Although this is a demo that feels a bit rushed and released too early, I wanna giver props to this team for dedication and I hope for more future release and they address the issues with the mod.
This is such a great piece of work, I've followed mods for over a decade and many "beta" mods have fallen as quickly as they've risen.
Of course, this is just a quarter of the mod, maybe less... We've still to see the Wasteland, AirExchange, Kraken base, Borealis... !!
But still, we now see what we could have only imagined or seen in a rough state for 15 years : the original City 17, the original Citadel... the cremator in action, the manhack arcade...
Of course DARK INTERVAL has been released before but it took a much more personal take on that Beta story, turning it into a gloomy and nihilistic state, while RtB appears to be really more faithful to the RtB book and other canon things about that beta we can see on HL wikia.
What's very pleasing is that not only we can wander on the streets to admire that old Eastern countries' design, but a special attention has been given to the fights, be it new weapons such as stunt baton, redesigned guns, enemies, but also unpredictable events such as that hide-and-seek battle against a Chopper on City 17's streets.
Really, it's hard to be harsh towards this mod, of course we can criticize some "place-holder" citizens frozen on different positions, some paths badly foundable, but overall it's a fun and interesting experience for die hard HL fans which want to finally get a true taste of what that beta thingy HL2 was.
Keep up the good work.
Have played about 80% of the demo and i have to say that i can clearly see that the makers have put much work and effort put in to this. Believe i did read somewhere that it was tested for several months with several men. That really does surprise me because i did find quit a lot of errors and unclear scenes in the mod. From weapons that were 'given' to the player by dead combines. Just to disapear minutes later out of players hands and to be replaced with a large 'red error' sign above the player that moved with him. Right from the start in i believe map 2 i did get stuck. A citizen tells me to follow him to a closed gate, a combine opens the gate and one comes from behind. The citizen says then to wait a second. Waited for hours there, played the whole part 3 times. With noclip i then noticed that door at the other end of the map was opened ??? So i moved to there.
The mapping was very inconsistent. Some parts were very well done and others were looking less. Like different skilled mappers worked on this. The Barney part were he takes his mask of felt like a real HL2 rip off. We all remember that scene ofcourse from HL2, probably was that the idea, but to take it so right out of HL2 felt odd and well, i say it, like it was just a copy apste job. There were many other issues. The city clearly was made to make the player feel hunted by the combines. But, in many cases i stoud right beside people who did get shot or were taken away. And not one combine did something to me which felt really VERY odd. Some npc's did act very strange, some were frozen in there animation, others were just.... well, it was all very odd. So, i really hope that this demo will not be a sign of how the mod will be. Seems there is still lots of work to do guys. Sorry, as mapper/modder i know how harsh my words are, but, i just can't say it any other way. Sorry,
Leon
It lacks soooooo much polish. The maps feel very wide, open and absolutely barren. The maps themselves don't live up to the term "eye candy" with any significant landmarks or events that pop out; the events that do happen are very confusing and don't tell much to the player, or just skim over sequences very quickly in an odd retelling of what we know about them. The NPCs that aren't main characters hardly do anything, and guidance throughout the maps either. Walls on many buildings are just flat textures without much else to look at, and it feels incredibly basic and blocky, as if the maps were made in GoldSrc or the Quake 1 engine.
The voice acting... I can live with it. It's a mod, not a triple-A title, however the *models*, specifically viewmodels, look great, although the animations aren't as nice- Passable I guess? It's a stark contrast to a bland, featureless mapping environment. I understand the beta's all about being bleak, but this is a slap to the beta's face currently with the lack of polish.
I wish I could say much about the mod being enjoyable. I guess the combat was fun, although, again, the maps were too large and featureless to provide any interesting gameplay; and again with the lack of guidance, it just dragged on towards the end of the mod.
I want to like it, and I certainly believe it can get much better if the development team sticks to it and learn from the feedback! But as it stands, I'm not particularly thrilled about playing the next chapter.
Visually impressive, but pretty much everything else is mediocre at best.
I sincerely hope Ravenholm gets refined further because at the moment, it's not really a fun experience, especially compared to the retail version. The maps are full of cramped rooms, extremely cluttered spaces and so, so many locked doors. You see a couple of boxes stacked on top of each other and a wooden plank acting as a slope and it clearly looks like a path you can actually traverse. You get there only to realize that the area is completely blocked off by invisible clipping. I think the removal of such red herrings could greatly improve the quality of the maps. The last part with Grigori was terribly executed. Who thought that having Grigori give his only weapon to Gordon would be a fun idea? Because it isn't. Yeah, it was cool to use the Annabelle and all, but it was annoying to try and keep the zombies and Gonomes off of Grigori. Took me several tries to beat that section. IMHO, it didn't feel challenging, it was downright obnoxious. On an unrelated note, I love how the areas from E3 2003 were integrated with the rest of the maps. Well done on that.
My other suggestion would be to make minor changes to the airboat's model. It just doesn't make sense when you try to jump on the side platforms, only to be blocked off by the clipping.
I found the enemies weirdly tanky on normal difficulty (?) but I guess that's fine.
The shotgun was a complete let-down in terms of sound design.
The weapon animations are REALLY good, but overall gunplay just isn't satisfying.
Grigori's and Kleiner's VAs do such a great job. The problem with Barney's VA, I feel, is that while he does hit the right inflections, his voice simply isn't right for the job. Other VAs were fine.
Still, all things considered, this is a good attempt at a beta mod and I look forward to its completion while hoping for the necessary improvements to be made.
This was such a fun experience to go through. So far, it's definitely the most complete and fleshed-out Beta recreation mod, and the work put into it is very impressive. The gunplay, especially, is very satisfying and fun. The levels also feel very distinct and are highly detailed, making them fun to explore every nook and cranny.
The only real downside for me is that the beginning feels like a bit of a slog. I enjoy seeing more of City 17, but in comparison to a mod like Dark Interval, the early exploration of the city feels a little less interesting with not as much to do and taking a lot longer through more winding and twisting locations.
However, after that, the rest of the mod shines with IMO some great level design and fun gameplay, especially in the later chapters as you get some more weapons.
Very much looking forward to Division 3 and the rest of the mod in the future.
The best mod showing what the Beta Half life 2 would look like if it came out today, the models are really very good, so are the textures, the story is addictive, the music is great, the Combat... centered.
Probably best mod for Half life 2 that I ever played. It feels so much like original game but at the same time it is its own thing. Cant wait for full version.
Great effort, good visuals, good gameplay.