You are John Andrews, a scientist working in Black Mesa. When resonance cascade happened, you didn't know what was actually going on. You hid in an infirmary, hearing the scream outside. The power went off one hour ago, and now you realize the rescue will not come so soon, or never come. But outside, the darkness and monsters are waiting for you. You know that you have a flashlight and a crowbar, and that you have to go, survive, and escape from Black Mesa. This is the story of Light Of Hope.
This mod isn't well-designed. To put it lightly.
Right at the start it puts you in dark corridors with headcrabs, zombies, a alien slave and hounddogs a little while later on. These enemies all have to be fought in the blackness while the player is given extremly limited ammo, and the crowbar.
The most cruel change in all of this is the damn crowbar, which to me is number one worst weapon conceived through all of half-life's modding community of all time, beating the Pingas Glock from Crack-life. Between each swing there is a delay which seriously screws with any player who wants to use it efficiently, or even just for opening some boxes. It only serves to blatantly pad out the time it takes fighting enemies and to beat the mod, and you're stuck with in in pitch-black darkness.
If you manage to survive that you get to properly see some of the mapping in bright ares, all of which are very basic. It could've been made in 2002 hadn't there been a few keycard puzzles up there.
All in all, it encompasses repeated dying and frustration. It sure is challenging, but it isn't any entertaining whatsoever. Let's hope the creator makes something better next time. Something with a little bit of quicker swinging.
Sorry but honestly it was excruciatingly bad. The mapping was clunky, the crowbar was slowed down which made it really irritating, difficulty was quite unfair actually seeing how I get little to no ammo. Overall, you really need to work on mapping and gameplay of your mods. I don't wanna be too harsh on you but it just wasn't good. 1/10 because it really was bad man.
I did play through this mod.. It does have some innovative ideas how ever it's simply put impossible to play through without god mode enabled.
The author neglected to add enough ammo for you to survive. Monsters are even stronger now and kill you almost instantly but so are your weapons. Well that is if you had any weapons. Because in the first 2 maps you literally run around only with your crowbar. While you can find a pistol and the shotgun they wont last long.
While constantly new headcrabs spawn in like 10 second intervals and in the 2nd map even Alien_Slaves (Vortigaunts). If I had to rate this on Planet Phillip I would be giving it a rating of "2 - think twice"
(Btw you can get the shotgun only: If you go the right way while you're in a vent if you go another way you wont be able to get it at all since the former path leading into the vent is now blocked)
It is pity as the mod could be actually half way decent (mapping aside) if it would be balanced properly.
+It does have a beginning and an end
+Interesting ideas and nice balance changes
+Nice Scientist arms & Blue Shift Armor to collect.
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-On top I said nice balance changes. They are but the Author didn't balance the game itself. It's impossible for the player to survive once your ammo runs out as you wont be able to escape long range attacks or even pass certain areas without using god mod
-Boxy, blocky mapping
-Barely no custom scripts or talking at all (The mod lacks soul)
-To many "find the key scenarios" once or twice is nice but making 2 whole maps about that subject is to much.
-Considering the balance changes unfair and also often stupid monster placement.
If the author would make the required balance changes I would change my rating to 5 of 10 just because the mapping & light choices are terrible. It's either dark or just plain white (outside areas excluded of course.)
I quitted right after the 2nd death after 5 minutes of playing. Thing is no auto saves, ****** up crowbar, a little ammo (how the hell do you think that i am going to kill an alien slaves without a fast crowbar?), bad story. Nothing more to say... its just ****.
1.0 / 10 - Mod made by a five year old.
Somehow managed to get to seconds level, but I quit there. Maps were poorly designed and very high r_speeds, looks like they were compiled without HLVIS. I admit, I used cheats because crowbar is very slow and ran out of ammo all the time.
Good idea, making mod about disaster striking at Black Mesa, but the realization... 1/10
You feel like a simple scientist who needs to survive.
Well the mod was more shorter then anything else , the crowbar might got slow put hey that makes it more realistic , the level desing isnt that bad , i tollaly loved the cafeteria and the parking place with the gargantua , about dificulty it was kinda hard in the 2 maps by some kinda confusing puzzels , ill just rate it 7 because im not much a guy of crittics ( sorry for bad spell :P )
A difficult and challenging mod that was ok to play.
A clever and creative mod, but 2 things are annoying - slowest crowbar (it's OK with monsters, but when I need to deal 4-5 slow hits to break a primitive obstacle/box - it's not so good) and some constantly respawning enemies (it's not very realistic and makes you nervous when you don't know what monster will be respawned and what won't, especially when there are not too much ammo and you trying to save it). Also I got a bug with wrong tranferring of a couple of monsters (alien slave and scientist) when I tried to backtrack from loh04 to loh03 and back. Plus a door of a locker at loh01 sometimes can be opened inside a locker and its' item will be pushed into deep of the locker (and becomes unreachable). Also few message events (text, sounds) are not enough properly set and can be activated again and again after loading of a saved game.
But is's still a very good and challenging mod - about 8/10, IMO.