The only thing that drives me nuts about this game is ladders. I’ve died and lost more health more times trying to get both on and off ladders (at both the top of a ladder and bottom) that I’ve lost count. There is little to no rhyme or reason as to what key combination/direction will work to get me on and off a ladder. Jumping works sometimes, using WASD works sometimes, but mostly I just end up falling 20 stories and break both legs. The effect is complete with bone crushing sound effects. And death follows after that. Who knows - headcrabs might zombify me.
So far I’ve avoided having to be in a major battle while attempting to get off of a ladder and then humiliatingly fall down and die. Stairs seem to be a constant of every major battle so far.
The music in this game is nice, but for some reason is REALLY loud compared to the rest of the in-game audio. That could just be my audio settings though. However I’m pretty sure I’m using the default audio settings. Some of the voice acting seems a bit quiet too compared to other voices, so it might be a good idea to evaluate each audio track and normalize the audio so it is all at a similar volume in-game for the default game audio settings.
The crowbar response time, when it isn’t attacking anything, is rather sluggish given the short distance it travels on screen. When it is attacking something, it speeds up significantly even though it travels a longer distance. It sucks when I miss a flying headcrab and then have to wait for the crowbar to reset to just barely miss the next one. Then again, headcrabs only cost a couple health. It has been forever since I touched HL1, maybe it did the same thing, but it feels weird.
Jumping and jump-crouching are occasionally very flaky. Especially jumping onto pipes and other irregularly shaped objects.
Sight shooting doesn’t work any better than crosshair shooting. It actually feels worse, IMO.
The game occasionally crashes back to Windows. This might have to do with the version of the SDK being used. The automatic quick saves really help a lot to get back into the game and not feel like a crash is a terrible fail. I remember HL2 crashing and thus forcing me to redo entire sections all over again because distances between automatic saves were few and far between.
Quick saves occasionally happen at very inopportune times. When a player has less than 35 health, they probably don’t want a quick save to happen unless the next section is a cakewalk and/or contains a lot of health kits. I’ve survived an extended 15 health quick save reload but only barely (4 health left before finding a medkit).
Other than those issues, this remake is awesome and your team did a very, very good job. The attention to detail is incredible. I was only expecting some cheesy little rendition of a few scenes of HL1 and instead we’ve all been treated to a damn awesome game. Plus, it is free. For what I paid for it, I really should not be complaining, so take these gripes with a grain of salt and this last paragraph is really what matters 