The Unknown Menace has its very own story and challenge, but like most creations, it took inspiration from other games and mods. The Unknown Menace took nothing from the storyline of Half-Life, and is completely independent from it, although the user will have to possess the game to play the mod, because it uses some sprites, models and textures from it, that wont be featured in the pack.
Good storyline, And I feel like Being Spy agent, But the in the final story is so hard to kill the barney.
Unknown Menace experiments with stealth in Half-life, the author, Evan3k, does this by carefully positioning enemies in a way so that the player can take advantage of their limited spotting capabilities, and so that they can crouch around them and collect things, interact with consoles or just move around, players are encouraged to do this, because combat is much more difficult, with enemies being able to easily one shot the player, if they get a lucky hit on them.
A problem that arises is that there is only so much you can do with the very limited AI of Half-life, so even with the changes to the difficulty, the player can still take advanage of corners to shoot at the large hitbox of enemies and stun lock them in a flinching animation until they die, that is if the player simply can't just aim for their heads and kill them instantly. So then that trivializes stealth for most sections, except for those where killing an enemy turns on automated turrets, but even those can also be killed with the same tactics, and they are rare. Unfortunately the unforgiving difficulty makes this more of a corner shooter, and personally I didn't find that to be as fun, but I understand that the Evan was working with the limitations of the engine.
I really love how the levels are designed to be locations, with areas that don't really contain anything for the player to pick up, but that serve as a room that exists, independently of the player, I'm particularly fond of the dark, silent lobby area located between the base and the surface, it truly feels like you're inside this space that hasn't been used for months, I imagine Evan drew some inspiration for it from some real life experience, having seen a place like this before, and I always love it when those small little touches make it into a game. I also really like how you can basically walk back from the final area of the game back to the beginning, and that there are multiple paths to use to do so.
Unfortunately there are a couple obscure puzzles, one of them that comes to mind is a certain control room protected by turrets, which are linked up to a laser grid at the entrance, I simply had no idea how to deal with that, until one time, when using grenades to try to kill the turrets, I accidentally destroyed a power box located between two consoles, I reloaded my save afterwards and discovered that it was linked to the laser grid, I basically lucked out and discovered the solution to the problem by accident, I would have *never* gotten it right on my own.
The voice acting was a little difficult to understand near the end, when the terrorist leader talked to one of their subordinates, I still have no idea what they said, but I can only assume he told the other to stop me at all costs.
The ending was a bit unsatisfying, just a few short sentences with some pleasant pictures in the background, that is if you don't accidentally walk into the room that triggers the bad ending, where the game just crashes as a result, which is kinda weird.
I'll give The Unknown Menace a 6, it's creative and unique, and the author did what they could with the resources they had, but it could use some polish in various areas.
A great one in my opinion. The only Half-Life mod that was as fun, as to make me replay it. The enemies kill you in around two shots so make fair use of the quick save button.
There are a bunch of new weapons, including a Uzi, a high powered Barret sniper rifle and much more. Though, you won't be using much of the weapons too frequently, because their use is fairly limited.
The game starts off all stealth-y-ly, towards the mid-game hovewer, you'll be going all John Wick on the terrorists, head shott-ing with the help of aim-assist. (And you can't turn it off either, because if you will, or change any options at all, you will pretty much break the game.)
7/10 from me.
+ Very satisfying gameplay because of the headshot mechanic.
+ Great mix of stealth and action.
+ Has that old school style of difficulty.
- Some of the weapons look weird, and some have very limited use / are ineffective.
- Dull voice acting.
- Aim assist makes it too easy, and the game pretty much breaks if you try disable it.
I played it and the thing is total conversations are always either a hit and miss or extremely good. This one was more of a hit and miss for me. The models and weapons are rather unpolished, and you get tons of ammo with no possible way to use it all because of the realistic damage. You have to rely on accuracy and quick reflexes and not ammo conservation... though health is in short supply, if you play correctly you will rarely get shot.
The game gives you a impressive selection of new weapons. 3 pistols, 3 machine guns, sniper and grenade launcher. Along with c4 and 2 grenades.
+New enemy models (1 for the terrorists, 1 for a assassin and 1 for the captain and the scientists have their company signature)
+New weapons
+Quite long clocking at just about 45 minutes.
+Realistic
-Boxy level design, although the textures give it a unique feel
-Can be very challenging, to hard on higher higher difficulties
-Timed event at the end might get people annoyed, I passed it quite well.
-Voice acting can bring you out of the game immersive wise.
The ending has its heart in the right place with its message but may come off a bit cheesy.
This mod was great, before approaching any battle you have to have a strategy, cuz enemies can take you down with two or three shots so you gotta be careful and check the radar before you make your next move,
weapons were really nice, all the new models were awesome with a cs 1.5 feeling. Mapping was good enough but at times it felt kinda weird (S shaped corridors for example).
The mod was a lot of fun anyway, It´s a nice change of mood from the original half-life.
The levels are somewhat boxy and while there are plenty of nice weapons available, they look and feel rather unpolished.
The combat is also overwhelming on harder difficulty settings and, like Trespasser, running to stop a timed nuke launch while under fire from plenty of mooks just isn't fun, it's infuriating and stressful.
Nonetheless, this mod is still playable, although, those looking to play through the end on Normal or, god forbid, hard, should probably activate Sv_cheats 1 during the ending D: