I have just completed the game and want to leave my feedback here.
(Beware, there may be unintentional spoilers.)
First off… this Mod is a damn masterpiece. From the redone level designs, to the textures all the way to the enemies and soundtrack. Just pure brilliance and worth waiting on the development time.
However some constructive criticism here.
- Stability.
The amount of times the game crashed for me was ridiculous. The worst part was with the Helicopter you have to shoot down outside after seeing the jets. I’ll say more in my next point because I died… a lot. But each time I died… the game crashed.
Another time, I simply turned around too fast. The game crashed. I turned my flashlight on, the game crashed. I fire a shot off with 357, the game crashed. The game is so unstable. Not too much of a problem as the game loads back up fairly quickly on my machine but still rather annoying.
The FPS gets rather choppy at some points also. One point there was electrified water that dropped my FPS from 120 to 7 or 8 while I had my flashlight on. I turned it off and it jumped up to 30. Expected due to the effects but that’s still an unreasonable jump down. Same with some sections outside. A tank moving around a corner should not drop my fps to 20 and back up to roughly 100 when it stops moving.
- Balancing.
While I was going through the beginning of the game, I read a post here about the balancing issues. At first I though “What are you talking about”… but then I got to the soldiers… They are SO fast. They respond to your presence way too quickly from a good distance away… too far for your better weapons such as the shotgun, the rifle and the 357 to be of much use due to the poor accuracy on some of them.
This brings me to another point, the enemies are bang on with their shots. While you’ll fire the rifle and notice bullets fly past them regardless of where you’re aiming, they will slam round after round into you… I found my self using the crossbow for the one shot kills because I simply got too annoyed with having to be in their face to accurately hit their head with anything else.
It got to a point where I had to memorize their positions and fire rockets, crossbow bolts and grenades at their locations the second I moved out of cover.
This is most noticeable at the end of Questionable Ethics when they drop in from the roof. Not only are you surrounded but you have very little cover so you’ll find yourself dying VERY quickly before you can even work out which angle you’re being shot from.
Also when the black ops ninjas come at you. I found my self moving left and right attempting to doge the shots but getting hit every time they fired at me.
- Enemy AI.
I don’t have too much of a problem with this part as I stated most of it in my last point being that they react too fast and have dead on accuracy. But this part is for the fact that some of the enemy AI seems as odd as in the original game. I find it hard to believe that marines would charge straight at you stand still then fire at you in seemingly unending torrents of bullets until either you move out of their line of sight, to which they immediately chase you down again, or kill them. I would have expected they kept to a reasonable distance and occasionally rush you or flush you out with grenades.
Also with the big tentacle creature in the Blast Pit. I remember playing the original and finding it very difficult to navigate around because without grenades, you would find it near impossible to get past it. But here… I would hit it with a grenade and rather than retreating… it just went to a new floor for a few seconds then returned. I found it by far easier to just run past it. It makes what I found a fun part of the first game slightly laughable in terms of difficulty if I can just run past it one of the biggest enemies in the game and win.
- Some areas it’s difficult to know what to do.
Now I have completed the original game several times and I expected to get through the puzzles easily, but some parts I found myself scratching my head on where to go next. For example, When you get chased through the tunnels to the outside by the great big monster with what is essentially a flame thrower, I ran past where I needed to go into water and saw floating barrels similar to the ones earlier in the game. So my first natural action was to begin picking them up and looking for where I needed to put them. It took me several goes after getting killed to realize that he was grabbing that structure for a reason… you were supposed to be on top of it using the mortar and tactical map.
Even after killing it and remembering that in the original, you blow up a door with it to proceed. I must have fired 20 shots at that door and surrounding area before I had a brainwave to knock out the radio tower next to it to use as a bridge.
Again in Lambda Core I got lost very easily and found it difficult to know where to go to flood the reactors.
Though these are minor complaints I want to leave a bit of praise here.
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The voice acting.
It’s fantastic. The scientists sound like they did back then and you find yourself getting immersed with nostalgia and you actually want to listen to them. The main noticeable part was when you see Dr. Kleiner. It’s spot on and you believe its a younger version of the one you meet in Half Life 2. Eli… not so much
One part where you open a door to 2 soldiers talking about getting revenge on Freeman… one was really good… but the other… it seemed as if he was subtly humouring the guy with the bad gruff voice and random pauses in the sentences. But other than that… I made it a point in my playthrough to speak to every character in the game that I came across just to hear them speak. -
The level designs.
Though I complained about some of the points where I got lost of found it hard to realize what to do, the levels are just amazing. You know exactly where you are in the game from Half Life 1 but still find yourself exploring the area just because of how great it all looks. You can tell a great deal of effort was made in the designs of the maps, the textures and the overall feel of it all. I expected a re-texture of the same maps but what I got was the same maps redesigned to look the same and different at the same time.
This for example was a point where I was just like… “this is fantastic.”
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The enemies.
Again I expected a lot less than what was delivered. The vortigaunts… expected them to be a direct copy from Half Life 2: Ep. 2 but they are different. Even down to the little details of their shackles and even the animations and attacks. They all look fantastic. Even the zombies. I do enjoy the new sound effects and I though, again, they’d be a direct copy off one of the Half Life 2 games.
Even the houndeyes. I though it would be a more HD looking blue wave as in the original but a whle new effect was given. I just love fighting the enemies and not thinking “Oh great… another vort…” I was thinking “Holy crap, another vort… maybe I should let it hit me so I can see that effect again and hear the chants!” -
The humour.
The developers didn’t cut out the subtle humour that Valve love to put into their games.
Running through the beginning of the game I peeked into the office windows as I went along and took a double take when I saw this.
I chuckled a bit then proceeded to shoot it. I felt bad immediately.
Even the food items… Ramblers (In the UK, it’s Walkers), Tittles instead of Skittles. Apline Hue instead of Mountain Dew. I did enjoy that.
- The soundtrack.
Finally, the soundtrack. My god… I don’t know who they hired for it but this may be the best soundtrack to a game i’ve ever heard. The music is fantastic and great for the parts of the game they are in. They really get you pumped. I had to download it for myself to listen to when not even playing the game… a soundtrack i’ve only done that to other than Portal 2.
In conclusion… this game is a damn masterpiece. Other than the pretty minor issues i’ve had with the game, it’s been the best game i’ve played this year. For all the nostalgia and parts of the game where you just sit there staring at the scenery and thinking… “I know where this is…” even though it looks completely different… just pure amazing. The developers should seriously pat themselves in the back for this and I would pay, if I could, for this game. Because it is a game… not a mod… it feels like a full, professionally made game despite the development time and they should be extremely proud of what they’ve achieved.
END OF THE LONG AS HELL RANT!!