July the fourteenth, 1883: Being rather rudely awakened after a night of drunken revelry; Half-Rats is thrust into a rather dire situation. Utter calamity has erupted in the streets outside of the general store which he calls home - calamity of the most unnatural and horrific kind, that is. Now he and the shop keeper, Mr. Trask, must hold out against this infernal host of creatures together. Will they survive the night?
You'd be forgiven for not thinking too highly of this mod at a first impression. The mod stars the developer himself, as voiced by himself, with a mod page full of promises, alcohol references, and "Half-Pun: The Game" being the title card. These are traits that I have seen in earlier okey-to-awful half-life mods, but as a amalgamation of all of it, Half-Rats manages to be something different. Rather amazing, in fact.
The mod drenches you in atmosphere as soon as you get to the start menu. From there you're engulfed in a moody and strange experience, futher enforced by the fantastic voice work. The opening dialogue had me succumbing to The Develeoper's repeated recommendation of drinking something while playing, so after getting myself a "Rusty Nail" I was right back into the fever.
Okay, some sort of a joke... The only thing not from the early 1900s is the developer's modding skills. Haha!? The map design is smart. Mostly straight forward, always clever. It manages to make the dreaded Sewer levels entertaining, and the wonderfully detailed indoor areas are what makes this a immersive mod. As said earlier, the voice acting is great, and so are the scripted sequences, the dialogue itself... And I'm still talking about a HL mod!
I suggest that everyone play this on easy or normal first time through. Combat is just challenging enough but can get hard at times, in particular since there is a need to conserve ammo, demanding some melee from your hand. Be also vary that pausing during any dialogue might mute it, a fault of Half-life itself.
Despite there being talks of references to earlier works, such as They Hunger, I didn't notice any of them in the mod. I might be shoutout-blind, or maybe, any and all of these references are so carefully hewn that they have become a part of the beast.
After what Half-Rats: A Fever Dream has given me, I have given in. I'm eagerly anticipating the sequel, and the rest of the "multimedia experience" That Half-Rats has told us about. Sir Half-Rats is not a mere developer, but a genuine renaissance man.
A good, solid mod for Half-life! Whilst it's not terribly long, clocking in at about an hour, it's good fun that does indeed feel like a callback to the good old days of Half-life modding. The voice acting is pretty good, the story is intriguing and the level design has some interesting ideas in them.
Perhaps the biggest criticism I could level is that there's precious little colour variety in the levels at times - whilst understandable given the time it was set in I think some artistic license might of been preferable. It wasn't enough to draw me out of the game though, and all together combined with the voice acting I did feel like I was in the right time period. Half-rats is a fun character as well!
All in all a Fever Dream is a good solid mod, and I'm looking forward to seeing future stuff in the series as well. Good job!
The greatest half-life total conversion. It remakes everything into a accurate depiction of 1800s, plenty of getting lost and walking about exploring. Which is a good thing because you want to search everything thoroughly just to see what else you can unlock early on.
It's like I just went back in time to 1999 :D
The level design, sound quality and texture work are so on the point it's astounding. If you told me this was released in 2000, I'd believe you without question. It's marvelous how much this has emulated They Hunger while still maintaining it's own creativity.
The writing for our main hero is fantastic and delicious, and the combat can be quite tense with only a 6-round magnum at my side.
Ammo can be very scarce so some combat scenarios are quite unforgiving for those who are bad shots or are not the most perceptive looters, not to mention the lack of more weapons can make dispatching the foul demons rather one-note beyond the Gatling guns and cannons in fixed positions.
The short length and a bug that prevented me from getting into the train-yard also deterred my enjoyment slightly, but I'm not going to let it hold back back my admiration for the overall product.
Half-Rats is a work of love with some kinks in the fender here and there, and is certainly not something any fan of half-life should miss, especially if they adored They Hunger.
I look forward to the sequel!
Good
While I think this is a decent mod, I also find it very problematic. Instead of dropping a review and leaving it at that, I want to list some of the issues I've come across while replaying Half-Rats:
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- Map Issues & Lack of Polish:
While the brushwork is great, there are also some errors that makes me think they could have used more polish. From a very obvious info_node error to enemies spawning out of thin air, from being able to skip sections to frequent invisible walls, there are many oversights present. Many times the mod doesn't tell you its rules either. Some crates are breakable, others aren't. Sometimes you have to press the USE key to interact, other times you just touch the objects.
In one of the final maps you have to destroy a garg, to do so you have to find and turn a valve, which will reveal a cannon. You have to use that cannon to kill the garg. The mod never gives a hint about this. Even after the cannon is free the boss fight is non-existent. The garg just stands there, unable to attack, and you just spam rockets at it, it feels like this could have been designed much better.
- Enemies Spawn Out Of Nowhere:
From the very start, where you supposed to protect the store, enemies just pop in. Weird thing is, the creator could have easily pulled an invisible wall there to stop us from seeing it. There are many invisible walls in the mod already, another useful one wouldn't hurt. The visible spawns doesn't end there:
Two ichys spawn behind you during the diving section.
Teddy spawns behind you if you choose the wrong path.
Teddy spawns behind you in the maze.
Teddies spawn inside the house after you speak with Barnaby.
Train station enemies, every single one of them pop into existence.
All these spawns are visible to the player, most of the time the creator didn't even try to hide them.
- Long Dialogs Affect Gameplay:
Commonly, you'll have to stop dead in your tracks and listen two characters speak with each other. This wouldn't be an issue if you could progress while doing so. Instead, the whole game comes to a halt and you wait for it to be over. Reminds me of HL2, how's that for an unpopular opinion :)
- Escorting NPCs:
Every HL player's favorite activity. Even though I don't mind escorting NPCs in HL, in this mod it bothered me. Barnaby commonly stops in place, in one instance he refused to move completely. Towards the end the mod wants you to not only escort one, but two NPCs. Remember the previously mentioned long dialogs? I listened one of them, took the two NPCs with me and continued. After a while I of course noticed one of them wasn't following so I turned back to get him. While I was gone the other NPC I stopped died thanks to zombies and since there were no autosaves I had to listen to the dialog a second time. It wasn't a fun time.
- Enemies Attack Behind Objects:
The retextured alien slaves can attack you behind brushes, this happened to me two separate times. They can zap you behind the cart in the first map and also during the trainyard, where the slave that constantly spawns behind the boxes can zap you through said boxes.
- Unbearably Loud Enemy Sounds:
The teddy zombie enemy makes terrible sounds that are much more louder than any other enemy, combine that with the low HL audio quality and it's an assault on ears. When one is unbearable, you can imagine how four or five of those sound like when grouped together. It's awful.
- The Maze:
This section is short but annoying. Enemies can see and hit you from behind the hedge maze bushes, but you obviously cannot see them. Putting something like two assassins behind a wall that you can't see is just evil. Dying and then killing the enemies behind the walls by memorizing them isn't good game design, it's trial and error.
- Weapon Count:
There are two weapons only. A bayonet and a revolver. Many period specific weapons could have been added to the arsenal, but that's not the case.
- (Bonus Nitpick) Chimpanzees ?:
We have teddy bear demons, diaper wearing electro hellspawns, hellpigs, assassins with 666 carved into their faceplates and then chimpanzees?
For some reason the headcrabs are now chimps that lunge at you. They're not even made bigger, they're just tiny chimps alongside all those devils. I don't know why :)
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After all this you may think I hate this mod but I actually like Half-Rats. It's worse than I remembered but it still has an amazing atmosphere that's very hard to find in HL mods. In fact, the biggest strength of the mod is its atmosphere and maps. They look great and are filled with lots of tiny details. Some enemy models were not that well made initially, but that issue has been solved thanks to an official model pack.
In the end you have a somewhat short, gorgeous mod that isn't without problems. While the gameplay isn't that solid, it's absolutely worth playing at least once.
Very very very great mod
noice
Nice