@pinkribbonscars
I’m going to requote what I said earlier about the voice acting for Black Mesa as it’s pretty relevant and responds to most of your statements.
I seriously don’t get what everyone has against the HECU voice overs. I think the devs stated that they’re over the top on purpose. And it was a real pleasure listening to the audio track pinkribbonscars posted. Some lines alway get a smile on my face!
Is that some scenes feel unreal, literally without emotion. I don’t remember the situations but I remember that I thought so here and there.
They sounds exactly they’re playing a part, and not as they was there.
As said they aren’t professional voice actors and so we shouldn’t expect a top quality, but that’s the feeling I had.
That’s what didn’t grab me inside (thing that the level design and the astonishing light system has done).
Regardless, the dialogue clearly indicates that the owner of the casserole wasn’t in the room.
Still, saying the voice acting is subpar is downright wrong, and even disrespectful to the voice actors, in my opinion. I found it just as good as other “professional” voice acting from other games (
Killzone, for example, a huge budget $60 game funded by Sony themselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYDIBvn4lTM). The fact that it’s a free mod shouldn’t be used as a scapegoat, it should be used as a testament for praising the BM dev team with what they accomplished.
But oh right, this is Valvetime, the most miserable, pessismistic group of Half Life fans on the entire planet who always focus on the negatives instead of the positives.
I, for one, have trouble to take them as a serious threat the way I did in HL.
I think this post really shows just how well and truly awful the VOs in the original Half-Life were. Maybe it’s because they’re so ingrained into my brain I still get a sense of nostalgia hearing the radio static, but my God, in contrast to the new VOs, they really were shite.
Okay, maybe I have to explain my perspective. I’m German and when I first played through HL1 when I was younger and less educated, I did not understand a thing of what the human grunts were actually saying, due to the low quality and lack of knowledge. So maybe that’s why I have a different perception of them, but for me, their voices never seemed threatening but always a bit “over the top”. Some lines of the Black Mesa HECUs are a clear tribute to this fact. You are right, you cannot take them seriously, but I couldn’t and still cannot in HL1 either, so what remains for me is the funny part of it, and that is definitely on par with what we got in Half Life.
Until now, I was pretty pissed for the review and the outstanding mistrust and angry feelings between the Black Mesa team and ValveTime.
And while I felt like some aspects of the review were really grabbing at straws to criticize, I’ve still got to give props to James Rossi for sticking by his shit even in the face of the recent and brash feedback. I give respect to an individual who stays true to something like that.
Again some posts vanished. Please stay on topic. This thread is about the review ValveTime posted. Two members have received infractions for derailing this thread into a flamewar about the voice acting. One of them had a previous infraction and has received a timeout from the forum.
I wasn’t kidding when I warned against flaming in this thread. There’s a good discussion going on here about the review, it’s either gonna continue being a good discussion or end peacefully.
The main issue with this review is that, even if it is an sincere effort to sum up their experience with the mod, it ends up being a little too focused on the “where Black Mesa has failed”.
It mostly follows a distinct pattern:
"Black Mesa honestly attempts/aims to do this… but fails and instead it achieves that unwanted and so-not-Half-Life-proper effect. "
The weight of the review is thus put in the negative points. The narator seems also (and this is my take of it) rather bored to go through the “what’s good about it” part of the pattern, and seems more into the “and now what I/we really think” second part.
There are also a few but striking “but don’t be fooled”, “modified for the worse”, “silly sequence”, “poor voicework”, “this is a shame”, “confusing nonsence”, “poor personality”, “(music & sfx) forgettable at best”, “poorly implemented”, “set-piece moments reduced to powerpoint presentations”, “multiple crashes to desktop” (to name but a few) peppered here and there. Those don’t help an honest review case, in the light of the background story. This is at best failed humor.
While a way smaller subset of such comments could be a part of a well formed review, altogether they work as a flame post would in a forum thread.
In the end, if there’s anything to take from this, they highlight some valid issues, which have all been also pointd mentioned in these forums. I’ve never experienced a single crash in my playthrough, but that doesn’t mean that others haven’t as well. I love the music to bits, and I appreciate the good work of the voice actors, but that doesn’t mean that others should agree with this too.
The problem is… if you are having all of those issues mentioned in the review with BM together, then you are probably have been scrutinizing for things to annoy you.
That’s why I think the review is bad. Of course the background history (with the leak) as I understand it must play an important factor in this too.
I thought the review was absolutely spot on.
Its refreshing to someone actually constructively criticizing the game and bringing up legitimate points instead of ass licking the devs like 90% of people on this forum.
The only points i did not agree with was his comments on the voice acting and the music
This review was garbage, it’s fairly obvious if you’re read more than 1 review of this game. My biggest problem with HECU voices though, is when they catch Freeman and the other one says “we caught him” only in the gayest voice possible. It goes out of HL style IMO.
I biggest problem with this review is someone has to come to this board to defend it. That in itself is proof that it does not stand up on its own.
You know, had they had called it a ValveTime critique instead of a review this would’ve been acceptable.
If you take any piece of media that is considered great by popular consensus, spend almost all your time explaining its flaws, then tell the viewer it’s good and they should spend their time on it - not only are you sending mixed messages, but your audience will think you’re an idiot.
Under representing the subject in it’s entirety is indefensible for a review; the result is an ill-informed audience, but thankfully playing the game itself will be almost everyone’s primary source of education. I’ll be damned if this ‘review’ talked a single person out of trying a practically free game.
@pinkribbonscars
I actually like the Killzone voice over better than the HECU voices. The effect on the voices works better, and the acting feels more natural. It doesn’t blow me out of the water but I’d have been happy with that end product had I worked on it myself.
@OldDirtyBastard
Free ODB! ATTICA!
@Langenscheiss
Guten tag! Wie geht’s? 2 years of German and I can barely butcher by introductions. You bring up an interesting point about the use of English in games that hit international markets. Without knowing the content of the original HECU lines you have to rely solely on the quality and tone of the acting and effects and you can get a very different impression of what is going on. I’ll have to keep that in mind for my own work.
@Distubulator
I appreciate the comment. I am fortunate that a lot of you are willing to accept my opinion, even if there are parts you disagree with, or even disagree with it wholesale.
@ShadowNate
I wish I didn’t sound bored at any point in the review. Unfortuantely I wasn’t in top form for the recording. I won’t make excuses, but listening back to the voice work I could have done better with my inflections and intonations.
There is some snarkyness in the language with our word choice, but not all of those are just superflous choices. Some were absolutely active choices made to try and get as much of how we felt about the particular topic as possible. I could go into several of them but I’ll spare the dissertation. Ultimately, I just want to say that those choices were not intended to simply be petty insults but to be part of how we felt about certain items.
Also, and I don’t mean to be glib, but for me the leak had nothing to do with my personal feelings. We had access to something people would want to see, so we showed it. The Black Mesa devs handled things the way they best saw fit at the time. Regardless of my opinions on the particulars of the response, I wasn’t going to let that color my review. Additionally, I myself still don’t know most of the particulars of what went down and who did what. Much of it was behind closed doors. Additionally, some actions (such as a VT.net member coming here and making a thread) were not ordered by anyone on the VT staff and was a totally independant action that we’ve since dealt with in-house.
@sersoft
I have no problem with you disagreeing with the review, but I’d like to ask that just because other people have opposite feelings, that it does not invalidate ours.
@OnboardError
I hope that the amount of effort I have put into discussing my reasons and responding the members of your community sheds some light onto why I felt it necesary to come here to discuss your mod. There is a lot to be said. A lot to be discussed. Certainly more than could be expounded upon in a 10 minute review. I still stand by the points made in the review. Given the time, I would have loved to have backed up more of the opinions expressed, and in an earlier draft did so. Unfortunately at some point we had to cut it down for time. I hope if nothing else the debates and discussion in the thread will in the end only help you and your team to create a better final product with the eventual Xen release.
@Sable
We weren’t expecting our review to dissuade anyone from playing one of the most awaited mods in gaming history. That’d have just been silly on our part.
I would like to pose a question. Given the nearly violent reaction towards us in some places (not here however), something which we knew was a possibility, might some people choose not to point out what they did not like about this mod? We very nearly did just that ourselves. We considered not running a review at all for fear of an enraged fan base. We surely can’t be the only small publication, or individuals who have wanted to bite their tongue.
I am certain that those who share strongly negative views on certain aspects of Black Mesa may still be the minority, but I don’t think that public sentiment is actually as uninimously praising as it appears. This is by no means conclusive evidence but 1/4th of our Youtube votes are positive. Why so high, when it seems that so few people would agree with us? Or at the very least disagree with our presentation.
Also some people could like the video because they agree with the points you brought up being problems, but at the same time they might not feel many of them have that much of an effect of how much they enjoyed the mod when compared with HL1.
I’d be curious to hear more about what you liked about it though, to better understand the reasons why you would recommend the mod other then the fact that it has a lot of hard work and care put into it. In fact, I’m sure a lot of the hard feelings toward your review would have been mitigated if you have provided a more well rounded review in itself. I respect that you won’t change your opinion, but I’m watching it again and it really feels like it’s an excerpt from a larger review.
ValveTime must have played a completely different game to me if they consider that subpar. :retard:
But if I understand correctly this review was written collectively by a bunch of people, right? Are you the only one responsible for this result? Is this the opinion of one person’s play-through of the mod?
Also, since I was reminded of your post in that dreadful (vaporware) thread in your forums, how did it affect you being wrong about the estimation that the devs “either need to get this out NOW, or no one is going to really care when they finally do. On top of the fact that the longer they wait the more their content ages and has to get redone.”
And did your not-so-rave review factor into the whole
And that’s a bad idea. Nothing ruins immersion faster than outright comedy, I’m sorry to say. There’s a fine line between humour and comedy when it comes to scripting, and I think scripting is where I have the biggest problem. Having Barney throw an off-hand comment about Gordon’s education when all he did was put a plug in a socket - it comes, it goes, and that’s Barney being a dick because that’s who Barney is. Having an entire conversation on the nature of doing science by being told to go to a place and push a button, and then ending it with a rimshot-worthy line of “OK, but first push that button and read that instrument” as though the person saying it is completely genre-savvy goes so far into comedy it comes out the other end into parody.
I can see Black Mesa changing things around, de-emphasising the aliens, strengthening up the Marines, messing with balance and so forth. Those are all technical, or at most supporting role changes. But what I don’t want to see is Black Mesa become a PARODY of Half-Life. I’ve mentioned this before, and I have nothing against the guy who does it, but “Inside Freeman’s Mind” has got to be one of the worst things to happen to Half-Life in living memory, and that’s including the random Half-Life hentai floating around the 'net. It turns a game that - whether you can take it seriously or not - took itself very seriously and created an engaging story… And turns it into a mockery of itself.
I will admit to exaggerating for the sake of argument. The Marine voices aren’t bad, nor are they that distracting. Frankly, I can’t remember a single thing they said - guess constant gunfire drowned them out. And frankly, I liked the “This suuucks!” like at the killing scientists bit. I’m more opposed to intentionally making their line goofy and over-the-top, because this belongs in Half-Life about as much as it does in Silent Hill. It’s out of place, and liable to ruin the experience far more so than missing bits can, and missing bits are BIG for me.
Basically, let’s hope they don’t put the clown nose on Nihilath. Or take out all the jumping puzzles from Xen, for that matter.