Blogs - sharktamer

Just finished playing Get a life, a Half life 2 total conversion. Another mod I'd heard great things about...and another one I've been left disapointed with.

It starts off pretty strongly. The story is good from the beginning, different from the many "you are a nameless rebel" or "you are Gordon Freeman" mods. The action is broken up by interesting cut scenes, which progress the story as well as explaining the additional mechanics in the mod. It also introduces some nice new elements, including a very interesting health system, where you must heal different parts of your body that are damaged, as well as some nice custom weaponry.

These are really the only good things I can say about this mod. The common grunts are reskinned combine, which keep the combine voices, despite being unmasked. Friendly units have custom voice acting, which is frankly awful. However, these are minor problems which I could have easily dealt with.

It is very buggy, with the AI scripting of the enemies often messing up and different light sources throwing solid blocks of light that prevent the player from seeing anything beyond them. Even the custom health system is extremely tedious to use, if an enemy hits you and causes you to bleed, you will continue to lose health until the bleeding is stopped using a bandage. If you don't have any bandages, you're dead. This means you can be killed by a single bullet.

Once night falls, another shortcoming and very strange design choice will become apparent. For a while, you'll be left without any flashlight, which would be fine if the developers chose to remove it to help with dynamic lighting and a fear factor, except there are no fixed light sources and the most common enemy at this point are black spiders which are impossible to see in the dark or even dim lighting. A flashlight is found later on, but for some reason, the developers thought it would be a good idea to have the flashlight as a separate weapon. This means that you are unable to fire your weapon and light your surroundings at the same time. The flashlight can fire flares, but these do not help with lighting the surroundings at all.

It was at this point, I stopped playing, after a few hours, which was probably only a short way in, since this is meant to be a pretty long mod. I was just unable to continue on. The maps are very hard to navigate, with ladders and gratings always being the way to progress, which blend into the surroundings. The fact they are completely hidden in the darkness really doesn't help either.

In conclusion, this is a very poorly made mod, which I wouldn't recommend to anyone. It's a shame, the story and the custom content were appealing, I was looking forward to playing the rest.

Just finished playing Joutomaa, a half life 2 mod. You play a citizen, looking to join the rebel forces in white forest. You must travel to meet the forces, fighting combine and zombies on the way.

I had heard great things from this mod, from reviewers both on moddb and Planet Phillip. After playing, I am pretty disappointed.

While the mod looks incredible, especially in the background details, overall, it is just not that interesting. The only enemies you will face are some combine, a few zombies, a handful of antlions and the antlion guard featured in the screenshot above. The antlion guard encounter was too easy as well, something must have gone wrong with the mapping or coding, since it didn't even try to attack me.

The creator is working on the second chapter, although there hasn't been too much news on the development recently. As it stands though, this mod is just very uninteresting and I wouldn't even say it's worth your time playing at all. Experiencing the visuals doesn't even make it worth it, there are mods that look just as good and better, with much more appealing action and content. Give it a miss.

Just finished playing the Half life 2 mod, Too many crates!

A warehouse has been infested with crates and as the only man in the world who possesses a crowbar, it is up to you to save the day. There are 1,000 crates for you to destroy.

I had a lot of fun playing this mod. The level design of the factory was excellent, the different hiding places for the crates were very imaginative and the humour was funny too.

The mod was a bit buggy, but nothing unforgivable. I did run into a problem that stopped me progressing further, but a quick save then a quick load fixed it.

I only reached 895 out of the 1,000 crates. Even after noclipping, I was only about to find 930. This did leave me feeling a bit unfulfilled, but the experience wasn't dampened too much by that.

Just finished playing Cool gluon, a short Half life 2 map I found on Planet Phillip.

This map was good, that's all though really. A few nice set pieces. Most of the setpieces borrowed from parts of Half life 2 that I haven't seen used in mods too much.

The level design was very nice looking and made for some nice combine battles. Nothing too outstanding though. The puzzles were alright too, but also borrowed a lot from existing puzzles from Half life 2.

The ending was extremely abrupt, but this doesn't bother me too much in short HL2 mods.

In conclusion, this map is worth playing, but there are so many better HL2 mods/maps you could be playing instead.

Just finished playing half-quake, a half life mod.

Taken from the half-quake website:

muddasheep wrote: The player has made a mistake in the past and has to face the consequences now (suffering). The punishment comes to the player in 4 parts and one additional final part.

The mod takes place in a prison type environment, where the player has to complete trials to progress to the next level.

This mod is awesome. Very very imaginative. Reminds me a lot of Portal, despite it being 6 years older.

Level design isn't amazing on the whole (obvious exception being the level in the screenshot), but it works extremely well. Enemy placement is perfect. The story is really well done. It does seem like a rehash due to the similarities to Portal, but that's the "Seinfield is unfunny" trope in action. The announcer is really poorly done, but perfect at the same time :D.

This is a definite must play for anyone who can. There are two more chapters, Half life amen and Half life sunrise. I'm really looking forward to playing them.

Just finished playing Factum solus, a Portal mod. This is the first episode, not entirely sure how many there will be total.

Really enjoyed this mod, one of the best I've played. Very inventive ideas, both in the puzzles and the overall story and the way it was told. I can't really give away too much, but it will move in directions you won't expect.

The puzzles weren't extremely challenging, but I prefer that to them being overly frustrating. They did follow the Portal theme of not being too hard to execute once the solution was actually figured out. Also, since this is the first episode, I expect the later episodes to have much more challenging puzzles as the story becomes deeper.

I've heard some people have experienced quite a few bugs in a few sections. While I didn’t experience any of these bugs mentioned by others, it is still disappointing to read about them. It’s obvious a lot of work went into the design of this mod, it’s a shame to see there wasn’t so much put into the execution and testing.

I'm definitely looking forward to the rest. Definitely worth checking out.

Just finished playing the sprucecape map pack. A set of 3 maps, telling the story of an alchoholic chasing his escaping family.

HUUUUUUUNGER!

FLEEEEESH!

I've just finished playing part 1 of "They hunger", a half life 1 mod.

I was looking to play something scary tonight, kinda disappointed with this, it's about as scary as stock half life 1. It might have something to do with the dated engine.

Still, although the mod wasn't scary at all, it was definitely enjoyable. Everything is custom, all the zombie models and gun models, as well as the way they fire. Even custom vehicles. The story is implied through radio transmissions throughout and actually works really well. I especially loved the ending.

The mod is split into three parts, I look forward to playing the last two parts when I have time.

Played some of the UDK game, Dungeon defense.

Nice simple tower defence game, with a cool action-RPG element. You place your structures with the money you receive in the build phase and during the defending phase, you must attack the monsters with your main character to help protect the crystal at your base.

Very enjoyable, I will definitely play more later. I didn't get very far the first time, but that is through no fault of the game, it's all to do with me being rubbish :D.

Just played the UDK game, Whizzle.

The controls work well and the graphics are nice, although they do not look nearly as good in motion as in the screenshots.

The game consists of one level, where the goal is to break open five cages. The cages are all in sight and the level is extremely small, the whole thing could probably be completed in 3 minutes.

In conclusion, I'm sorry to say it, but this is a complete waste of time. I'm really surprised this game is featured on the UDK showcase. I understand it may just be a proof of concept, but it's still not worth the time in my opinion.