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.
Worst beta mod ever
Not a worst beta-style mod, but a bad one.
eh.
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.
This is a nightmare - an absolute nightmare.
I've seen plenty of beta mods in my time, some good, some bad, and others in-between, but none have come this close to being downright insufferable. To put it simply, Raising The Bar: Redux is a greatest hits collection of beta themed setpieces that should've sat in the oven for far longer than was given due. While walking through the eerily empty and impossible streets of City 17, I quickly came to realize that this sense of space, rather than being intentional, was a byproduct of aimless direction, and downright lazy game design; there is no sense of atmosphere or soul, only the advent of haphazardly tossed together levels and downright nonsensical design choices. Now, I will give credit where credit is due: many of the individual efforts of project contributors are fantastic and worthy of such praise, but the sub-par utilization and management of such contributors are astonishing, and ultimately prove to be the straw that broke the camel's back.
Should the leads continue to ignore and dissuade any form of criticism as they have in the past, there will be no hope for a brighter future, and no reason for Raising The Bar: Redux to be remembered as anything more than just another failed beta recreation with no understanding of what makes such a project unique in the first place.
Think I'd rather play Dear Esther than this. Levels are way too long and confusing which make it feel like a literal walking simulator and if you're one that hasn't seen HL2 beta stuff in the past then good luck finding out where to go.
There also seems to be very little originality in the map design. A few places actually feel like they were pulled from the old beta content and mashed together very lazily. A couple I immediately recognised was the Terminal Plaza and the "Free TV" (haha yes funny meme) map which has been ported to GMod near countless times to the point where its burned in my brain. Adding to that some of the lighting in these maps don't make sense like the sun colour and which way its casting, could be wrong but it feels very off. Also some of the other areas like the "factory district" seem largely unchanged from the beta content.
On another note on originality, during the sequence where you first meet Kliener, is that dialogue actually original? Having played a very similar mod Dark Interval it almost feels like it was ripped straight from that, I could be wrong but some of the lines seemed almost word-for-word.
The mod does seems to do a pretty decent job of capturing the old beta feel and atmosphere, but its very much the same with how other mods have done this in the past.
I was going to write another paragraph full of blah but honestly I don't know what else to bring up apart from "come back later until its better". Though that seems somewhat unlikely from what this first release contains, unless the dev team REALLY get their game together starting from now its gonna be a very bumpy ride. I could go on about the some of the voice-acting, textures and materials etc used but I'm just going to leave it here. As of right now being a first release its very sloppily put together and unfortunately feels like another one of those wannabe beta revival mods from years past (that rarely work).
Have you always wanted to relive HL2? But this time as a soul-draining and terribly dull walking simulator with bad pacing and unbelievable levels? Have you ever wanted to know what it feels like to walk around in a City 17 that is an endless labyrinth of nothingness? Yes? Well, then this mod is just the thing for you!
This feels like a mod that released too soon. I hope everyone goes back to this chapter and really gives it a overhaul. Anyways, I'll bullet point my criticisms and praises for this mod to keep it simple:
-The model to map fidelity is really off. It feels like Half-Life 1 with super HD weapons that don't match the world they're in.
-The level design is lacking in areas with overly big areas to walk around in but with nothing to do so it just takes up your time.
-Some key areas are just out of order and feel weirdly stitched in, and don't serve a purpose anymore. The manhack arcade is a great example.
-The gun play isn't very diverse but it's satisfying. Dark Interval doesn't want you to have weapons which is lame so props for doing that.
-The overall journey is a bit boring. The maps really aren't eye candy so I'm not really enjoying the long walks.
-The voice acting is a mixed bag. Gman is great while Barney isn't. I'd work on that.
-Gordon has giant sleeves.
Anyways, I'm not about to attack this mod like everyone seems to be doing pretty ironically given their track records with mod release quality. Best of luck with future releases!
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
I originally gave the very first release a 5/10 because it felt quite amateurishly put together at the time. I'm pleased to say this project has come a *long* way. The maps, models, animations, everything you can think of has been drastically improved. Lots of HL2's fundamental mechanics have been tweaked to give a more enjoyable experience too!
In my original review I compared it a lot to Dark Interval, saying how I was hoping it would eventually reach a similar quality and I'm happy to say that indeed it has! Maps are gorgeous to look at, gunplay is fun, pacing is substantially improved.
For the first hour you wander around and look at stuff, but there's so many little moments, easter eggs and scripted sequences to keep you interested and make you feel the world is really alive. (I replayed it multiple times and kept discovering new stuff that you could miss if you weren't looking at the right time)
Then you shoot stuff for the next 2-4 hours.. it's a decently lengthy campaign.
Gunplay is very satisfying *especially* with the new 'draw-frame' system, something all mods should implement it's that good.
One of my criticisms that still holds is that I feel Barney's lines aren't delivered very well. And it's clear (at least to me) that the dialogue in Kleiner's lab is Valve's original script while other dialogues are by the devs and feels less refined by comparison.. but you can chalk these up to me just nit-picking. It's not a big deal.
(Holy hell Grigori's lines and VA is awesome tho!)
Though the biggest thing I dislike is that the gravity gun doesn't seem to have the draw-frames that all other weapons utilize, so it's really annoying to use the gravity gun, because it feels like Freeman has a little war flashback every single time you pull out the gravity gun, so you're stuck holding it for a second before you're allowed to actually use it. It's noticeable since none of the other weapons have this issue.
Anyways, it's really enjoyable to me seeing games get refined and improved as time goes on so I'm really excited to see how Div. 3 will expand the campaign as well as any other possible improvements might get implemented to the base game!
My rating is closer to a 7.5 for the overall experience but I really admire the impressive amount of effort that went into this mod.
(Btw the Alyx gun has no right to be THAT good. Best weapon I ever used in a Source mod. Also plz delete the entirety of Ravenholm k tnx.)