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?
First feeling I had: Damn this mods gets so much of the oldschool HL Mod Design Philosophy right, I feel as if They Hunger just came out. Awesome.
Then the intro was over and the horror started.
As much as this mod gets right in terms of Goldsrc Map Design, as much it does also get wrong.
Every wood surface makes the func_breakable sound, this wouldn't be a problem if some crates actually open after 10 seconds of bashing onto them. This ends in plenty of time wasted in trying what crates actually break and which don't, since there is absolutely no consistency.
Light never leads the way, overall light design is absolutely horrendous in some areas, being more eye-rapey than actual moody.
Combat didn't feel fun at all, some enemies lash out way too much damage, there also wasn't enough health scattered around, I barely found 1 HP item after a few levels in. (inb4 "ueh you didn't look enough", it's just bad map design)
The charme of the mod sure is great, the voice-acting fantastic, also like the overall flair of it all. The gameplay and mapdesign (enemy placement, item placement, the func_breakable sounds being slapped onto everything, no good lighting) absolutely break the experience for me.