Reviews - They Hunger Again mod for Half-Life 2: Episode Two

It's the worse case scenario of a remake. Made and published too fast by inexperienced modders, without care of anything. Not beta tested at all.
They used Source but they didn't take advantage of it.
They made some areas even worse looking than in original. For example the church is really ugly, smaller, without some areas (bell tower). Just imagine what they could have done with Source powers.

Ok, I understand they wanted narrator in the intro, but pls, if english is not your native language don't do this. It sounds more funny than creepy. I wouldn't dare to make any voice acting myself for example.
And why is this train so slow? ;)

What's wrong with level transitions? When you enter the gate in canals (there is no padlock btw, another drawback to original) you got fade to black and you are teleported to another place. I even broke that at first, game faded to black but level didn't change.
Almost all the rest transitions take place in the same cave corridor. On the last map transition I just had black wall behind me.
There are also broken ladders that you can't easly detach.

Water pump puzzle - ridiculous.
There is that water pump you have to use to rise water level. The pump valve is on top of it along with item crate. But you can't acces the top of the pump! Well you can (by the little tree) but there is no textures on top (so it's more like breaking the map). You can't even jump on a little pipe right beside it. You need to turn the valve from the bottom. But then, why they put it on top at first place? It's just bad made puzzle.

Fighting is also terrible, there are literally zombies spawned right behind you, from thin air:

Gfycat.com

And further is even worse. When you first meet police guys, there is this fence opening and blue barrel. This is so wrong for many reasons. Zombies attack you from both sides, and that barrel can block your way through the fance, you can't grab anything in this mod, so you are in really bad posistion here.

Canyon with water is one of the best looking parts of the mod. But it's so bad gameplay wise. You are fighting zombies in water. Whatever the reason I got launched up in the air everytime I wanted to hit a zombie, and I'm slower in water, and I just escaped from little cave that I was crawling in it. It's just unplayable. Nobody tested this.

Another example is vulcan area. You enter an area by narrow passage and you are instantly attacked by 2 policemen, 1 zombie, a headcrab and second zombie from behind (spawned from thin air again). You can't escape and they hit you hard. On top of this. Far ahead there is this third police guy in the ledge above also shooting at you, almost invisible because of his dark color on even darker background.
I had to switch to godmode to pass this. And there is this jumping on hot air right after. I wasn't able to perfmorm this, there is almost no control once you are in air. And those ledges are so tiny and made from dispacements, you can slip to your death any moment.

Train part is slow and boring, besides opening the gate you have no need to stop the train at all. There are like 3 areas to check, but why would I if train is safer? Also don't try to jump in it because you won't be able to fully return to the train's cabin.

And the most funny thing:

Technical stuff

This mod has just 9 maps but weights over 2,5 GB. Why?
Because those guys "can't into" textures ;)
They have tens of 2048x2048 textures 16mb each. There is even 65mb single texture of grass!
Source can't even handle properly something bigger than 1024px, and with so basic brushwork this mod has it just look bad.
Original They Hunger looks better because it was at least consistent. Here you have this little radio with like 4k res texture standing on a table made from 4 brushes:

Also minor issue - no umbrella? It's iconic and easy to do.

Dear authors, you should really go back to basics and fix this mod. Well, you should remade it from scratch.

It started out tickling the hell out of my nostalgia, but then everything went straight down hill as soon as the zombies showed up.

It's understood that this is a small team, but still, this mod really doesn't take into account what made They Hunger so great. Although, I'll give credit where its due. Many places seen so far are nice looking, with good lighting, and at the very beginning of the game, despite the awful voice acting that shouldn't be there, I was genuinely eager to see familiar environments looking for detailed and creepier especially the catacombs, which I think is the best looking part of the game, thanks in some part to the lighting, but as the levels diverged more from the original, the lack of quality became apparent, especially with the church. Another thing I dearly miss was the distinct colorful lighting. The lighting when used appropriately isn't bad here, but most of the time its either strictly orange-yellow, or navy blue, with very few complex shadows, giving a kind of repetitive feel, but its not too bad.
The sound design is pretty decent, but can be massively improved. Having a soundtrack for a mod this size certainly is impressive, but is a case of, "but does it actually make the game scarier, intense, or significantly play with emotions?" While the soundtrack is definitely pretty good, and I'd love to have it on my iPod or something, I'd probably opt not to have it in this case, as often times it takes away any scare factor. The ambient noises are very good, with the sound of the zombies and headcrabs being welcome, despite missing death sounds, and background crickets increasing atmosphere as well, but should really be utilized more, as its fantastic and underused. But one more thing. The voice acted character is absolutely horrendous, and I think should be removed immediately, as previously, in They Hunger, the protagonist was a blank canvas, a troubled writer that could be anyone you wanted them to be, but unfortunately this is now gone. Kudos should be given to whomever made the zombie models, as they're really good, but nothing else super fancy in terms of models, although the cars are pretty good, but the train is a tad basic. ALso, what happened to the umbrella? The story has really been toned down due to the size of the team, and a lack of the protagonist's voice would at least help this, due to its irritability. The gameplay has definitely been improved from the first version. The crowbar used to be abysmally slow, but now it works perfectly fine. You get to use it first on a zombie in a jumpscare (really? A jump scare?), but unlike v. 1, the zombies (and cops) have reasonable health, making them fun to kill. Also, unlike They Hunger, you aren't always sprinting, but I expected that. Before, there was no sprinting, but now that it's back, the melee combat, and even some of the platforming is much better. In short, a ton of gameplay was infinitely improved, but still isn't at the level of quality of They Hunger. One such example of this, is receiving huge amounts of ammunition, sometimes making the game too easy. The game has bad navigation, with many small waterbanks that should be easy to climb, but are often times impossible to traverse, with me using the crouch button to barely clamber on to it. Other problems with navigation include many props in the water that you automatically climb on to, and always being caught on the aesthetic prop scenery when moving backwards, only to be attacked by a zombie. One small but important gripe, is that its impossible to crouch into the furnace without jumping first. Some minor annoyances include really bad platforming, where I would fall off the sloped ledges constantly, or fail difficult jumps, making it tedious, and one stacking puzzle, where the barrel would always be sideways for me. The gunplay has also been vastly improved. (There is a glitch if the pistol's empty and you hold down the left mouse button) This mod is currently around slightly above average, with more elements of scary lighting and sounds/less action being very welcome. Thanks, devs for listening to feedbac

They Hunger is an absolute classic and a blast to play, regardless of whether it's the first time or the hundred and first time. It has everything anyone could want from a mod, and in the minds of many, was the standard for all single-player Half-Life TC's.

This is NOT They Hunger.

While I admit that I haven't played very far in, I can't bring myself to put any more effort into this mod than I already have. I tried to enjoy it on its own merit, but realized it had very little. The developers actually lost me at the laughably incomprehensible water pump "puzzle," but I continued on to a fight with multiple zombies in chest deep water before I decided to call it quits. I suppose part of the problem is that the pistol is practically useless, and I can't rightly determine if it even damages certain zombies (after a full clip into the head without any effect, I could only draw this conclusion considering other zombies took three to four shots to the skull on average). Compared to the original TH, in which the pistol provided consistent and reliable results, I threw my hands in the air.

I actually did make it past this fight and had to fight the movement physics to make it into the next area, killed a few zombies, then was interrupted by a single zombie spawning directly behind me and taking me down to 3 health before a headcrab took me out. While I do admit that these "surprise" zombies were also in the original TH, they announced their arrival very effectively. Please understand this, developer: that's how you do it. Use audio cues when you're about to **** someone off to **** them off slightly less than you normally would.

I understand this is an early release (which should not have a 1.x version, because it's far from ready for prime time), but when your list of changes includes a buff to the pistol, I expect much, much more.

And for the love of all that is good in the world, put a gigantic Neil Manke credit before all else and make it stay on the damn screen for a little while. He deserves a hell of a lot more credit than you have given him.

If you are in mood for They Hunger with updated visuals, then check out They Hunger Remod that was released some months ago. Original They Hunger is very much worth playing, and replaying.

This here Source "remake" is a waste of everyones time, including that of its authors. Unpolished, at times plain ugly looking, with maps that are smaller and in every way inferior to ones from now ancient original (exactly what one expects from a remake made in far superior engine, right... right?), and with gameplay that us utterly unbalanced, cheap and frustrating (you heard of playtesting, dear authors? I doubt that even you thought how this was fun, or in any way enjoyable).
15+ years old original is so much more impressive, enjoyable and professionally made that this "remake". There is no excuse for something like that.

First of all, this is honest review, no hard feeling now.

Let´s start with good.

-Nice looking textures and ****
-It´s a remake in source, how nice.
-Good looking hands

Now to the bad.

-Maps are horrible as **** and are not anything like original version.
-A ******* crowbar? Where is my Umbrella?
-Weapons are weak as ****
-Crowbar hits so SLOW what the hell was that idea.
-Recoil, is worse than csgo, USELESS GUNS, USELESS.
-Even with that patch, this mod was still ******* hard, had to use godmode many times.
-WHOSE IDEA WAS NOT TO INCLUDE FLASHLIGHT?
-AND RUNNING WTF
-Voice acting.
-Re-used re-skins..
-Headcrabs, why, in original one they were not like that, and did not sound like headcrabs.
-Metrocop sound alike shooter zombies, really?
-Re-used voice dialogue

Now, the future:

USE UR OWN THINGS, MAKE THOSE, DON´T RE-USE OTHER THINGS, i just could not finish this. This is WIP anyway i think. I look this later when something happens again.

Still, this was better than The Closure for some reason.

Adios.

Can't load maps properly.
Guns are way too weak.
Medkits are very sparse.
Massive cut-outs.
Really bad mod.

I realize this is read by both the people who made this game and the people considering playing it, so I want to be nice about this.

To start, this project truly feels like a labor of love and it does feel like a lot of hard work was already put into this mod.

However...

To call this version a v1 release (currently, v1.2) is opening it to a lot of harsh criticism when it doesn't even feel done. This is definitely not a complete feeling game.

There are parts in the level design that feel unpolished, there are parts that feel untested, there are parts that feel incomplete and blocky. For example, the volcano section of this mod has frustrating small ledges that the player has to climb that are barely visible and a single mis-step means death. Parts of this mod feel like they were built to look good but not to play good, and as a result it does neither very well.

Weapons are made weaker than their original counterparts and there doesn't appear to be justification for this. The crowbar is slow, the pistol is weak and hard to aim, the shotgun is extremely weak (taking a full 4 rounds to take down a single headcrab). The only weapon that feels satisfying is the tommygun.

Health is rare compared to how much damage you unavoidably take from crowds of zombies. This is compounded when travelling from level to level.

There are a lot of things that feel wrong when playing this (including the flavor text for quick saving "your ***".) This mod feels a bit aimless in whether it's trying to be a faithful recreation or an outright retelling. Parts that changed from the original don't feel like they were an improvement, while parts that are directly from the original feel a little better, but don't take advantage of the Source engine.

I feel bad because I can tell this was a major effort from the team. I still feel like the issues with this mod can be fixed, and they need to be fixed, because the mod will feel incomplete until those issues are taken care of. It's still missing a lot of the iconic scenes from the original mod that this is based on, and it feels like level transitions sometimes are fade to black to hide the missing parts.

I would like to see this mod improve over time, but as it stands (v1.2), it doesn't feel like a finished release, and it needs a lot of work still.

Probaly I'm just beating a dead horse here but guess I still should give my impressions about that mod which I tested in its 1.3 version. I'm a huge fan of They Hungers and that attempt of a remake is unfortunately a total failure.

-First of all, the global atmosphere doesnt look or sounds like TH at all. Where is the awesome work on lightning and the nice atmosphere we had in the original version? It's all gone there and has become generic.

-The original games environnements have been totaly butchered. A lot of things are missing like the belltower in the church, the awesome little details from the catacombs (that skull rolling from one of the little tunnels), the car crashing into the second church (which was also much bigger in the original game) or the dam part when taking the train? Why doing a remake if you have to remove or alter negatively what made the original version awesome? Not to mention they are often much less detailed than in the original game. And where's the umbrella?

-Environnements feel globaly much smaller and enclosed. The second church is a total replica of the first one and also lacks the extra rooms (bye bye Vlad Tepes portrait) and hallways. Also the abandonned police car after the second church is not in a very small area and same goes for the cabin you can find right after. And the place where you see a crached helicopter and the zombie cops has turned into a tiny pond... with no helicopter. In general you always have the feelings to run through hallways and enclosed versions of originals locations. Not to mention this cause many loading times which can be sometimes too long.

-The zombies are basicaly barely remade versions of the assets from HL2. No real new models or anything to give the mod it's proper identity. Yes the headcrab looked like the same in the original but that was it.

-The intro was also shortened. Which is a shame because it helped to install the atmosphere. Where are the two guys waving at the player? The radio host talking about strange phenomenas from his BMFR Radio cabin? Also why giving the main character such a weird voice???

-The gameplay needs a total revamp. The Water Pump puzzle is not only completely hellish to solve, it's also perfectly useless and out of place. It's really hard to enter some caves sometimes (like the one after the first fight with zombies in that river) or to get in the train and the volcano part was awful because of the very badly shaped edges. I had to noclip several times...

-Fighting is a pain. Zombies are way too strong. You feel like throwing sponges at bulldozers. Also some fighting areas are total death traps like that river filled with zombies and blue barrels making it hard to go through. Considering also that the medkits are really scarce it's a real nightmare. And why does that crosshair is that big? Once again, Godmode had to give me a hand several times.

-The train sequence needs a total revamp. It's slow, boring and you don't even try to check the little rooms. At that moment I was long done with that mod.

-To conclude and that's a really a really annoying point : Neil Manke, the author of the original They Hunger mod, is NOWHERE mentionned! Which is absolutely unacceptable! This could sound like a case of "art theft" here! ALWAYS. CREDIT. THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR! ALWAYS!!!

Unfortunately while the attempt was a good idea, the brains behind it weren't able to do the job properly. Bringing detailed textures doesn't make a game great and this one is proving it. It's not a remake, it's a "failedmake" and cannot compare to the original one. It doesn't even deserve to be a 1.x version. More like a prototype and still one which would need a huge ton of polishing. Now, there is nothing more to expect from that Mod since it's dead and buried so if you haven't tried it, spare you the effort and stick to the original one which is FAR SUPERIOR in every ways.

This is sacrilege. Don't come here ever again. Avoid at all costs.