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.
First of, I liked playing the mod. Especially since it's free, that's pretty nice and I'm looking forward to what will be added in the future.
However, I don't really know what the mod wants to be. It feels like a Half Life 2: Reimagined with roughly the same story, but just the details changed a little bit and all the characters are retextured. Some of the character outfits look straight out of Star Trek, very out of place. Of course, there is more of a nuance to that, but you get the gist. I think the new Combine outfits look amazing, though!
The weapon handling feels great, also all the new HQ textures look really good. But it's not really change that much. There is nothing terribly amazing about that, it's the source engine after all. It's fun sure, but I didn't notice anything too much "revitalised", except the textures and the animations. I liked that there are special animations for when you press reload on a full magazine, that's great attention to detail!
The voice actor for G-Man at the start was surprisingly well done, I really liked that! Barney on the other hand was irritatingly off, unfortunately. All the others were different, but solid. I wish the voices were a bit louder, though. Compared to me hitting the crowbar at something, I could hardly understand the voices at the same level.
Now to the map layout. Since the sequence of events is basically the same as Half Life 2, the maps are in part also pretty similar. Not the exact layout, of course, but just the look and feel. That's not a bad thing, though, except if you're tired of Half Life 2 maybe. One thing that I found very odd is the fact that some character textures and weapons look very modern, but most of your surrounding are still straight out of 2004. Like you have these high-res Combine NPCs running around, but the wall next to them is just a flat object with a wall JPEG on it. That breaks immersion a lot and it somehow also kills the mood. I know that retexturing the entire game, especially in such a dated engine is hard, but that's just how it feels at the moment.
Also, sometimes the map was just way too large for absolutely no reason. All in all, though, it feels like Half Life and that's a good thing so job well-done with room to improve.
I also feel like the introduction took waaay to long. It felt like running around for 30 minutes before anything really happened. Also some of the more story heavy sections of the game were pretty boring to be completely honest. You just stand there and click on things and wait for the NPC to finally stop talking. It's also not very interesting since, like I already mentioned, it's at least at the core, the exact same story. But I'm not going into much more detail here, cause of spoilers.
I've played Half Life 2 a lot of times now, so maybe that is just me and this point is not so important for others.
==> In Conclusion:
What would I change?
- Shorten the introduction a lot, at least cut a good 1/3 of the walking simulator
- Look for another voice actor for Barney
- Shorten most NPC dialogues or scripted (!) sequences, especially when nothing else is happening
- When you have to look and "E" at random things that the NPC will then explain for you to be able to continue. Yeah, remove that and make it optional if the player really wants to hear the story.
- Rethink some of the larger maps where not much happens
- All in all, make it a bit more dynamic. Sometimes the game can feel quite long-winded. Go through this vent here, around 10 corners there, follow the hallway and at the end listen to NPCs.
- Try something new with the story. I know this is a bit exaggerated, but it feels like you did to Half Life 2 with this mod, what Disney did to Star Wars with The Force Awakens. That's not to say it's inherently bad, but some people just don't like the repetition. If that's all intentional then please communicate that more clearly. That's why I mentioned it felt like a Half Life 2: Reimagined.
What did I especially like?
- The new HQ textures look pretty much all awesome!! I think CP looks a lot better than in the base game, for example. Not just due to the high-res textures, but just the overall look and feel is a lot more dystopian.
- Very neat feature that you get to play the NPCs gun while they're busy doing NPC stuff and calling an elevator or something. That's a nice change!
- Some new weapons and enemies. That was an especially refreshing experience. Maybe that's the "revitalised" combat system.
- Also that new green flamethrower guy! Looks absolutely terrifying and I like the weapon.
Overall, it's pretty fun to play. There are a lot of things that can be improved, of course, but I'm looking forward to what the team will be doing with the mod in the future. I think they're headed for the right direction! Hope this review is helpful.
PS: Also the consul looks absolutely ridiculous, why make it this weird looking bald guy? Is that supposed to be a re-skinned Breen? My god...
Неплохой мод однако, было интересно поиграть!
Not bad mod, interesting to play