I honestly loved this, feels like playing someone's unfiltered stream of consciousness. Gameplay is fun, visuals are lacking - but come on, it's a mod from 2006, what do you expect? I'd love to see a modern remake of this.
Very Half-Life-y gameplay and level design. Like other reviewers mentioned, it's kinda short and there are some inconsistencies there and there (SECURITY being reversed on a face of some doors, a critical scientist can be killed and you get soft-locked...)
One annoying thing: there are no auto-saves, if you die, you need to start from the beginning all over again. Not everyone has the reflex of doing manual and/or quick saves.
If you are willing to ignore those details, it's a good experience overall.
A nice but short little combat mod with good lighting and enemy placement. Not much to it, but it is nice for what it is.
A little short. Level design is Half-Life like, classic and good. Enemy combat was easy, despite playing on hard. There is no trigger to return to the menu once the game ends, but I do not blame the author, the way it was made to end a game in GoldSrc is nothing short of dumb. Great little mod with potential to expand upon!
The units are amazing , the map is beautiful , and the mechanics are better than the original mod , but I don't like the fact that nearly all the custom maps of the original mod are removed for some reason. Also the turn times are horrific , I have a top tier PC and yet it takes a very long time for each turn to conclued , not to mention that they become outright unbearable in the late game.
Overall the mod is like a step forward and 2 steps back , I still recommend it though if you have the patience for long turn times.
love the music and the guy with the voice makes me hahuahua
some maps could do with some beautification though, and the pacing along with some encounters are pretty uncomfortably tight
I like the updated texts and items! Unfortunately the game crashes pretty often in sea battles.
This review is for HLC 4.6, on normal difficulty.
First thing's first, this mod is not Doom but a classic style survival horror. As such, you're not an nigh-immortal Doomguy but a guy in a hazmat suit and everything can and will quickly kill you. So, no run and gun deal here.
The game's premise sees you infiltrating a hotel building and locate a group of SWAT team that was sent in earlier and disappeared without a trace. Since this game is set in the infamous Backrooms internet mythos, you can guess what happened. Most peoples that went in got noclipped through reality and into the alternate dimension called The Backrooms, while some otherworldly lifeforms from over there got noclipped to ours. Hell broke loose and we're left cleaning up the post-apocalyptic scene.
Healing items such as pain killer, Snicker bar, Pepsi and Cocaine can be picked up and use later, providing a much needed flexible strategy. Unfortunately for some reason, only one of each healing items will be carry over to the next level no matter how many you have.
For weapons you have a rather mundane set of arsenal with typical reload system found in most shooter, no magdrop or anything fancy. A more fancy list of secret weapons and weapon upgrade (one that I know of) can be aptly found inside many secret rooms.
Monsters can be separate into three tiers: the lower tier fodders in which you can dispatches them in melee with ease. And the high tier enemies which are unreasonably tough, fast enough to be a jumpscare of its own and can one-shot or two-shot you regardless of your health and armor. Every encounter with these pure evil can be considered a miniboss battle. There's also enemies with firearms which is something of a tier of their own, in that they're highly accurate, hits realistically hard and can take as much hit as it can deal. Not to mentioned the stronger variant of these guys will actively strafe away from your reticle, making every firefight with them very intense.
Atmosphere-wise, this mod is phenomenal in crafting some of the most nerve-wrecking setpieces ever. You will travel through a hotel floor and a messy alternate version of it, an absurdly large indoor pool, a dark hell of rust and blood that immediately brings Silent Hill to mind and a very interesting take on the deepest level of the Darkroom: a dark valley suspended above the abyss where various massive otherworldly entities are floating and stomping around, minding their own business. A combination of labyrinthine hallways, aggressive droning ambients, fast moving creatures and occasional break into big fights make this mod an extremely intense experience from start to finish. There's nothing bad to say about the map design except for a rather box-y, jumbled and inorganic map design which seems to be intentional, making it in line with the actual Backrooms aesthetic.
However this mod is not without its flaws though and there's quite a number of them:
-Very high difficulty, even on normal. And like I said above, HP and Armor are useless in this game.
-The mod can be very taxing to play. The constant droning noise can put the player on edge all the time and can become extremely annoying, even if it stays true to what is described in the Backrooms. Unfortunately, the intensity is going to get worse the further you go into the mod. The Silent Hill level in particular genuinely makes me want to puke in a bad way due to how disorient combined with how dark it is.
-Monsters can get unfair. Not just from the monsters themselves but the map also actively working against you. Throughout the map, there are many holes that connect two hallways together that only the monster can use, ensuring that fast enemies will always be few steps behind you no matter where you run. "sleeping" enemies can also hear your gunshot through these holes and trigger their chase before you even know it.
-Unintuitive weapon hotkey placement is the biggest issue I have about gameplay. For example, a lighter "weapon" which gives you a much needed respite in the darkness are bind together with the knife (key 1) and require two presses in order to pull it out, instead of having a flashlight key of its own. While for some reason, The Fire Axe which is a more powerful melee weapon, is bind to the pistol slot (key 2). Another mildly infuriate example would be the secret Supershotgun that, instead of sharing slot with the Shotgun like it usually did, got relegated to the "big gun" key instead.
All in all, this mod would've been a perfect horror mod, if not for the glaring flaws outweigh the goods by just a slight margin. So I'll give this a 7/10
this is not PVE is joking
but i don't know what is this
I fun little twenty minute romp through a section of Black Mesa.
The combat encounters are pretty nice throughout, though not particularly challenging. It could be improved by upping the number of enemies in some of the wide open arenas.
A couple of mapping issues I noticed throughout which could be fixed are a number of railings in combat areas that are func_walls, meaning you cannot shoot through them even though it looks as though you should be able to. Also, a lot of the windows in this mod are practically glowing. They are far too bright and far too opaque.
Otherwise, this is a very enjoyable, bite-size experience.
It's unfortunate this is the latest version.
In the 0.92 the bots shot a lot better, but in this version, they are more innovative.
So it's more fun to play with but too easy compared to .92.
My main problem is the garand has 10 bullets, not 8, only in this version and the pistol is only fast run and not usable.
As of this writing, The Old Realms 1.0.3 is 10% of one of the best mods that Bannerlord will ever have.
The asset creation alone is incredible. If you had a friend who knew nothing of Warband or Bannerlord and showed them screenshots of this mod, and told them this was a new Warhammer game, they'd believe you.
But while I'm excited about what this mod will someday become, assets do not an experience make. And the reality is while there's enough to enjoy for a couple dozen hours, its framework (Bannerlord) is already skeletal enough as it is. A lot of the features of this mod give an impression of "Yeah, it's cool, but...."
Yeah, the magic is cool, but... It lacks utility and build variety with an ALMOST cookie-cutter format across every school. You have your buffs, damage spells, aoe, so on and so forth. And these spells can be incredibly powerful (and need to be, have you ever tried chopping a Chaos warrior with a battleaxe?). But there are very few reasons beyond aesthetics to pick one school over another, and as a human you only get one (and vampires get two).
Yeah, the necromancy is cool, but... You only get less than a handful of units after most battles. During the battle, two necromancy spells summon low-tier units, and the master rank spell after many hours summons fifteen mid-tier units. Better place them behind the enemy so you can enjoy your roleplay for thirty seconds before they get totally demolished.
Yeah, the custom companions are cool, but... Every single one of them in a particular category (Necromancer, Wight King, Warrior Priest, etc etc) has the exact same stats and dialogue as all the others.
Yeah, being able to forge weapons from the mod is cool, but... Most of them are missing, and some of them bug out. At least one weapon category is missing entirely.
Yeah, playing a vampire to declare war on all humans is cool, but... The mod still uses the standard Bannerlord relations algorithm, and every lord will hate you - including the vampires - after executing a few puny human lords.
The Old Realms will be amazing. Will be. But right now it's a glorified asset demo with tons of blogs, and it's been that way for 8 months now. Download it. Play it for a few dozen hours. Rate it. Then go back to Warsword Conquest on Warband to wait for it to update.
First of, I liked playing the mod. Especially since it's free, that's pretty nice and I'm looking forward to what will be added in the future.
However, I don't really know what the mod wants to be. It feels like a Half Life 2: Reimagined with roughly the same story, but just the details changed a little bit and all the characters are retextured. Some of the character outfits look straight out of Star Trek, very out of place. Of course, there is more of a nuance to that, but you get the gist. I think the new Combine outfits look amazing, though!
The weapon handling feels great, also all the new HQ textures look really good. But it's not really change that much. There is nothing terribly amazing about that, it's the source engine after all. It's fun sure, but I didn't notice anything too much "revitalised", except the textures and the animations. I liked that there are special animations for when you press reload on a full magazine, that's great attention to detail!
The voice actor for G-Man at the start was surprisingly well done, I really liked that! Barney on the other hand was irritatingly off, unfortunately. All the others were different, but solid. I wish the voices were a bit louder, though. Compared to me hitting the crowbar at something, I could hardly understand the voices at the same level.
Now to the map layout. Since the sequence of events is basically the same as Half Life 2, the maps are in part also pretty similar. Not the exact layout, of course, but just the look and feel. That's not a bad thing, though, except if you're tired of Half Life 2 maybe. One thing that I found very odd is the fact that some character textures and weapons look very modern, but most of your surrounding are still straight out of 2004. Like you have these high-res Combine NPCs running around, but the wall next to them is just a flat object with a wall JPEG on it. That breaks immersion a lot and it somehow also kills the mood. I know that retexturing the entire game, especially in such a dated engine is hard, but that's just how it feels at the moment.
Also, sometimes the map was just way too large for absolutely no reason. All in all, though, it feels like Half Life and that's a good thing so job well-done with room to improve.
I also feel like the introduction took waaay to long. It felt like running around for 30 minutes before anything really happened. Also some of the more story heavy sections of the game were pretty boring to be completely honest. You just stand there and click on things and wait for the NPC to finally stop talking. It's also not very interesting since, like I already mentioned, it's at least at the core, the exact same story. But I'm not going into much more detail here, cause of spoilers.
I've played Half Life 2 a lot of times now, so maybe that is just me and this point is not so important for others.
==> In Conclusion:
What would I change?
- Shorten the introduction a lot, at least cut a good 1/3 of the walking simulator
- Look for another voice actor for Barney
- Shorten most NPC dialogues or scripted (!) sequences, especially when nothing else is happening
- When you have to look and "E" at random things that the NPC will then explain for you to be able to continue. Yeah, remove that and make it optional if the player really wants to hear the story.
- Rethink some of the larger maps where not much happens
- All in all, make it a bit more dynamic. Sometimes the game can feel quite long-winded. Go through this vent here, around 10 corners there, follow the hallway and at the end listen to NPCs.
- Try something new with the story. I know this is a bit exaggerated, but it feels like you did to Half Life 2 with this mod, what Disney did to Star Wars with The Force Awakens. That's not to say it's inherently bad, but some people just don't like the repetition. If that's all intentional then please communicate that more clearly. That's why I mentioned it felt like a Half Life 2: Reimagined.
What did I especially like?
- The new HQ textures look pretty much all awesome!! I think CP looks a lot better than in the base game, for example. Not just due to the high-res textures, but just the overall look and feel is a lot more dystopian.
- Very neat feature that you get to play the NPCs gun while they're busy doing NPC stuff and calling an elevator or something. That's a nice change!
- Some new weapons and enemies. That was an especially refreshing experience. Maybe that's the "revitalised" combat system.
- Also that new green flamethrower guy! Looks absolutely terrifying and I like the weapon.
Overall, it's pretty fun to play. There are a lot of things that can be improved, of course, but I'm looking forward to what the team will be doing with the mod in the future. I think they're headed for the right direction! Hope this review is helpful.
PS: Also the consul looks absolutely ridiculous, why make it this weird looking bald guy? Is that supposed to be a re-skinned Breen? My god...
In comparison to 'Shadow of Chernobyl' it goes like that in my opinion:
the +'s:
^ the most functional and transparent 'Reclamation Project' (patch/mod)
^ better clarity of presentation in the user interface
^ better visuals and aesthetic finish
^ more sophisticated gameplay mechanics (artifact detectors and anomalies housing artifacts)
^ better game economy (traders actually have stock, artifacts respawn)
^ quick travelling system (dynamic feasibility depending on worldmap status)
^ weapon upgrade system with tech tree (could use some tutorial)
^ emissions
the -'s:
^ somewhat bland and relatively story-weak
^ absurd faction wars ("rugby zone") and annoying quest push
^ brutal and uneven difficulty balance ("spec ops" grenade spam)
^ machinegun nest trial (deserves special mention)
^ unplayable without the 'Reclamation Project' (still buggy)
^ janky hand and weapon animations (invisible third hand paradox)
^ stray design choice with pistol no-ironsights
^ emissions
Summary: one step forward, two steps back; perhaps not the most genuine or welcoming 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R.' game in the franchise but a very decent game alone.
Main fault: attempts to trade the 'Zone' for a "warzone" kind of thing.
Secondary fault: broken learning curve despite sufficient information.
Main perk: significantly improves on critical gameplay qualities.
Secondary perk: it was a good looking game and it knew it.
Complete mod count that I have used for my first playthrough on 'Master' difficulty and crosshairless:
^ NTcore 4GB patch
^ FOV switcher version "1.4" - option "90 degrees"
^ Sky Reclamation Project (SRP) version "1.1.3"
*SRP optional: Widescreen patch
*SRP optional: No Intro Movies
*SRP optional: Restored Pistol Ironsights Aiming
*SRP optional: No Enemy Minimap Spots
^ Real Weapon Names for Clear Sky
^ Absolute Structures Texture Pack version "1.0"
^ Upscaled Loading Screens
^ Upscaled PDA Maps (4K)
^ Hades' Real Gore Mod
I did not use the optional features of "Reasonable Machinegun Nest Lethality" and/or "Reduced Grenade Spam" of the 'Sky Reclamation Project' but in the aftermath I believe these could be helpful.
yeah sands lake's
Instinct is somewhat of a hidden gem, if it had came out nowadays it would be praised due to its quality, however, as is, it pretty much flew under the radar of everyone. It reminds me of HL mods of today with its serious feel and vanilla style instead of a mid 2000s mod.
The biggest strength of the mappack is its levels. The mapping and brushwork is top notch, every map is full of details and good looking architecture, though it can get a bit samey at times. Despite taking place in Black Mesa again, the environments doesn't look like BM, it has a more industrial feel to it, not a minus of course, just wanted to mention it. Another thing that differs from HL is the tone of it. This is one of those mods / mappacks that feel lonely, you see a couple of friendly npcs in the first few maps and that's it. Most of the time you'll be fighting aliens and grunts in dark and gloomy areas without witnessing a scripted sequence involving barneys or scientists, hearing them talk, leading them somewhere etc.
Now, the elephant in the room: The pack is unfinished, it abruptly stops after a boss fight with Gonarch. To me this isn't a big deal, just imagine a fade to black after you kill the creature, even with a proper send off it would be an abrupt ending however. That being said, with ten maps of varying length, the experience doesn't feel that short despite the sudden end.
Overall, this is a well made mappack that doesn't have much going for it beside the high quality maps. You don't have puzzles, people to speak to or use in meaningful ways, scripted sequences that would breathe life into the game world etc. and it's unfinished on top of that. Still, I recommend people to try it at least once, there is a fun, quality mappack here despite it flaws.
This is best remake SLRR
Basically: I do think it is good and I do like it a lot for many reasons, but there are big problems. (willing to change my review also)
I think the whole idea of people struggling under the combine coming to disagreements is really interesting, and the setting it takes place in is different from what we have seen before in the official half-life games (and also most mods) and it is aesthetically beautiful, and I loved the majority of the puzzles and puzzles in general. Also Roki is pretty cool, me likey him (I also found the majority of the characters endearing and kind of interesting to an extent). The majority of it had me feeling hyped to do the next thing but wanting to stop and look around at the scenery.
BUT as I started playing the mod as it first came out and as the updates came, some of the scenes broke, breaking the game and making it so I could not continue, making me start over at a couple points, scaring me into not wanting to update it and just sticking to the working "[previous]" beta. The voice acting is also bad but I can forgive it as the dialogue and some of the voice acting was not done by native english speakers, as well as them not being a big team (as is the case with most mods). The worst part about it in my opinion as the two not-typical combat parts at the end, with the first one almost completely depending on luck, and the latter also depending on luck but not as much. Some of the puzzles in the middle of the game were also a bit annoying, but I am patient so that is (for the most part) fine with me.
The achievements for the most part were fun to get. I cannot give this a number rating at the moment as I see big problems but at this moment I see the developers taking notes from people pointing out stuff, so I see hope for stuff being fixed.
Despite the mod being short, it is an interesting experience going through Black Mesa with a faulty flashlight and some dev textures just for a simple task.
Just decent. Nothing special. Good levels, basic puzzles and combat. Solid